A little extra weight in the beginning.

[DivemasterDennis]

I think you find that weighting is necessary only for the shallowest part if the dive, descending the first few feet, and then being neutral for a safety stop. Depth of the dive is not a factor, unless you are doing an entire dive at 20 feet or shallower. In such a case, I will add about 2 pounds. Remember to do your weight check with a mostly depleted tank, or else add 3 pound to what is neutral buoyancy with a full tank. All things considered, I would rather be a pound overweighted than a pound underweighted.
DivemasterDennis

 

[fire_diver]

I always keep an extra pound or two on me when diving. If you error, or something changes and you wind up being too light at the end, it becomes difficult to impossible to hold a safety stop depending on how you are doing it.

It's important to do a good weight check every few dives in the beginning. A nervous diver is a bouyant diver, so they need more lead. As they learn to relax in diving they need less weight.

 

[Supergreg]

I had the same issue. Took the PPB class, and got my weight down to 24# or so IIRC. Then we did the deep dive, and halfway through the safety stop I floated away despite my best efforts not to. This was a wall dive, so I was vertical the entire time (and why I didn't notice the problem until later, as you will see). Next dive, my trim is all off. I keep rotating to my right for some reason. That's when I discovered one of my integrated weight pouches had fallen out. I think I lost around 8#, most likely sometime during the deep dive, which is why I couldn't hold my safety stop! BWRAF

 

[DukeAMO]

Here's a little trick we learned from the instructor who really worked on getting our weight down. It definitely applies to the Zeagle Ranger and Zena, and probably other BCDs as well. The BCD hose/deflator is attached at the shoulder with a velcro strap. It creates an air pocket at your shoulder. If you open the velcro and hold the hose straight up while making yourself vertical, you can often get a good deal of extra air out of the BC. And that can help you use less weight.

 

[Paladin]

Here's a little trick we learned from the instructor who really worked on getting our weight down. It definitely applies to the Zeagle Ranger and Zena, and probably other BCDs as well. The BCD hose/deflator is attached at the shoulder with a velcro strap. It creates an air pocket at your shoulder. If you open the velcro and hold the hose straight up while making yourself vertical, you can often get a good deal of extra air out of the BC. And that can help you use less weight.

It is my habit to loosen the velcro strap before dumping air. It is surprising how much buoyancy that little bit of air will supply.

 

[eelnoraa]

I much rather to be 2lb over weighted than 2lb too light. Espeically for single tank, you really need to put the extra weight in extreme location to affect trim, otherwise, simple posture usually should be able to counter balance the added weight.

Also, do question AOW instructor about how they determine proper weighting. Not all instructors were created the same.

 

[alan_lee]

What I tell my students and even leisure divers about proper weighting is to look at the amount of gas left in their tank (more gas = more weight) and their ability to hold their safety stop, and whether they are able to control their ascends from their last safety stop. If you have no more than 50bars (roughly 700psi), and able to COMFORTABLY hold a 3 metre (10ft) stop without having to kick downwards on an empty BC or put in too much air into the BC, then you're pretty much well weighted. You might want to be A LITTLE overweighted in the event when your tanks is running pretty low on pressure.

 

[phuonguyen]

It's better to be overweighted than underweighted.
You can always add more air to your BCD, it's a whole lot easier than adding weight, halfway through your dive!!

 

[arthurmnev]

My AOW instructor insisted we put on extra weight for "safety"... I already posted in another thread how useless that class (and instructor) was. One thing that I found books dont teach you well about (though a lot could be inferred) is wetsuit / drysuit and depth.

Suits compress with depth,that is obvious, but what the book doesn't tell you (or at least not in terms I can remember) is that a suit makes it more difficult to maintain buoyancy at about 25 feet or above, it is much easier to lose control and pop from 25' to 0 than from 50 to 25 ( I suppose the difference between 50% of volume change versus 25%).

My honest suggestion: if you use environmental suit, practice 30-0 feet range to maintain buoyancy. Once you master that, the rest is easy. If you want more practice (and better education) go for dry suit training. Controlling drysuit is much harder than wet, and much harder than no suit. On a flip side, I still remember the feeling of perfect control with no exposure suit after several weeks since diving dry.

 

[KCrofoot]

I found it helpful to log weight used and physical weight. When I head out after not diving for a year or so you can look back and read what weight worked best.