BP/W for me and my son?

[RJP]

If you plan to do most of your diving in the tropics ( warm water ), your suit is 3mm or thinner & you have a low % of fat, then a BP/W may be a poor choice and even hazardous.

It may be a poor choice because you may find yourself overweighted. This circumstance will lead you to having to put too much air in your wing ( B.C. ) making buoyancy more difficult.

A BP/W may be hazardous due to the fact that you will find yourself overweighted without the ability to drop weight in an emergency!

If you really believed this to be true you would have posted it BOLD, ITALIC, UNDERLINED, AND ALL CAPS!

 

[Jim Lapenta]

There are jacket BC's that don't give you that squeeze, but it sounds like you prefer a back floatation B.C.

A BP/W may be your best option depending on the answer to these questions:

Where are you going to do most of your diving? Tropical ( warm water ) or local ( colder water ).

What is the thinnest suit that you plan to wear for diving? No suit, lycra, .5mm, 1mm, 2.5mm shorty, 3mm or 5mm or thicker.

What is your percentage body fat?

If you plan to mainly dive in Ohio & your thinnest suit is a 5mm or thicker & you have a high % of fat, then a BP/W is for you.

If you plan to do most of your diving in the tropics ( warm water ), your suit is 3mm or thinner & you have a low % of fat, then a BP/W may be a poor choice and even hazardous.

It may be a poor choice because you may find yourself overweighted. This circumstance will lead you to having to put too much air in your wing ( B.C. ) making buoyancy more difficult.

A BP/W may be hazardous due to the fact that you will find yourself overweighted without the ability to drop weight in an emergency!

Really? And shops wonder why people leave them and buy on line. I heard the same line of utter crap when I wanted to move into a bpw from my local shop. Why? Because he didn't sell them, know how to set one up, and his primary lines didn't offer one. All complete and utter bs. Which is why he ended up losing at least ten grand in gear sales to me when I started buying from retailers that didn't try to pull such stunts.

 

[fjpatrum]

There are jacket BC's that don't give you that squeeze, but it sounds like you prefer a back floatation B.C. A BP/W may be your best option depending on the answer to these questions: Where are you going to do most of your diving? Tropical ( warm water ) or local ( colder water ). What is the thinnest suit that you plan to wear for diving? No suit, lycra, .5mm, 1mm, 2.5mm shorty, 3mm or 5mm or thicker. What is your percentage body fat? If you plan to mainly dive in Ohio & your thinnest suit is a 5mm or thicker & you have a high % of fat, then a BP/W is for you. If you plan to do most of your diving in the tropics ( warm water ), your suit is 3mm or thinner & you have a low % of fat, then a BP/W may be a poor choice and even hazardous. It may be a poor choice because you may find yourself overweighted. This circumstance will lead you to having to put too much air in your wing ( B.C. ) making buoyancy more difficult. A BP/W may be hazardous due to the fact that you will find yourself overweighted without the ability to drop weight in an emergency!

Just to be clear, this is utter nonsense. I dive a steel backplate everywhere. I have about 3-5% body fat, depending upon who measures it, and though I typically wear a 4/3 in warm water, I am never "overweighted" to the point of it causing buoyancy issues. Furthermore, if you can't swim up your rig sans ditchable weight (usually only 5-7 pounds for a steel plate) you really need to reconsider your diving/exercise habits. Stop spreading fear for the sake of sales.

 

[george_austin]

Nothing personal to Stuartv but I do have one question which is -
Why are you doing technical diving when you're an experience level beginning open water diver?
Again, nothing personal but your question - "why would I ever want my rig floating at the surface without me?" is kind of a head scratcher. Poor Tobin. I've been in customer service before and it sucks. -
Maybe I misunderstood and you meant you only have 50 "tech" dives - sorry if this is so

---------- Post added September 2nd, 2015 at 10:27 AM ----------

There are jacket BC's that don't give you that squeeze, but it sounds like you prefer a back floatation B.C.

A BP/W may be your best option depending on the answer to these questions:

Where are you going to do most of your diving? Tropical ( warm water ) or local ( colder water ).

What is the thinnest suit that you plan to wear for diving? No suit, lycra, .5mm, 1mm, 2.5mm shorty, 3mm or 5mm or thicker.

What is your percentage body fat?

If you plan to mainly dive in Ohio & your thinnest suit is a 5mm or thicker & you have a high % of fat, then a BP/W is for you.

If you plan to do most of your diving in the tropics ( warm water ), your suit is 3mm or thinner & you have a low % of fat, then a BP/W may be a poor choice and even hazardous.

It may be a poor choice because you may find yourself overweighted. This circumstance will lead you to having to put too much air in your wing ( B.C. ) making buoyancy more difficult.

A BP/W may be hazardous due to the fact that you will find yourself overweighted without the ability to drop weight in an emergenc

If the above is true then I must be dead already. We dive all summer in California's Channel Islands in steel 72's, shorty wetsuits or a vest and swim trunks. Steel, AL or Kydex plates/packs and no BC's.

Some of us, obviously don't wear lead on belts and some of us wear maybe 4 or 6 lbs. We dive the oil rigs, frontside Catalina, Farnsworth Banks, Begg Rock, wherever - it's all the same.

If if you can't swim up yourself and your rig at any point during a dive without a second thought, you haven't been trained in buoyancy control and weighting properly and I am talking SPORT DIVING here. Single tank / Double Tank recreational diving and shooting fish type stuff.

Check out the diving sequences in "Thunderball" sometime. You'll see dozens of divers doing some pretty regular diving in nothing but packs and tanks - as far as I know, they all survived, even Sean Connery was almost attacked by the Bull Shark who broke thru the barrier in SPECTRE Shark Tank

 

[Storker]

Personally, I was shocked at how much weights cost and I would much rather have a slightly bigger wing than dive with a plan that involves taking my weight belt off and dropping it in the middle of, say, an uncontrolled descent because my dry suit neck seal was installed incorrectly and it just popped off.

Personally, I value my life infinitely higher than a few kg of lead, even if the weigts had a blue "H" stamped on them. If - god forbid - I ever get into something approaching an emergency, I sincerely hope that I'll be able to dump my weights before it's too late. Too many dead divers have been found on the bottom of the ocean with their weight belts in place.

I would like my wing capacity to reflect my wallet's desire to not have to drop a weight belt with weights that cost $5/pound.

I would like my wing capacity to reflect my rig's weight, so that it'll stay afloat when I doff it in the water. My wallet, incidentally, agrees on that.


--
Sent from my Android phone
Typos are a feature, not a bug

---------- Post added September 2nd, 2015 at 04:41 PM ----------

A suit should never have more than minimum gas in it, except after a wing failure, hence the maximum loss of buoyancy of a drysuit is the minimum amount of air it requires to not squeeze your nuts.

That does depend a little on the water temperature, no? I dive in 4-5C water every winter, and at those temperatures the amount of air required not to freeze your nuts off is somewhat larger than the minimum amount of air your suit requires to not squeeze your nuts.


--
Sent from my Android phone
Typos are a feature, not a bug

 

[beaverdivers]

Being over weighted is a bad thing, and contributes to injuries and deaths

Agreed!

My definition of ideal weighting is being able to hold a shallow stop with an empty tank and an empty bc.

Correct!

Are there combinations of Backplates and wings that will over weight a diver in tropical conditions? Sure.

Agreed!

**The solution is a lightweight, much less negative back plate.** DSS offers Kydex plates and numerous vendors offer Aluminum plates with similar buoyancy characteristics.

What size wing would be ideal w/ a Kydex plate in tropical conditions?

Are there exposure suit / tank combos that will still leave a dive overweighted even with a light weight plate?

Sure.

Agreed!

Any gear can be hazardous is it is selected wrongly by an unknowing diver.

A BP/W may be hazardous due to the fact that you will find yourself overweighted without the ability to drop weight in an emergency!

 

[JohnN]

Agreed!Correct!Agreed!What size wing would be ideal w/ a Kydex plate in tropical conditions?
Agreed!

A BP/W may be hazardous due to the fact that you will find yourself overweighted without the ability to drop weight in an emergency!

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel

--Samuel Johnson

FUD (Fear, Uncertaint and Doubt) is the last refuge of the desperate

-- John N

 

[Pinecube]

A BP/W may be hazardous due to the fact that you [-]will[/-] could find yourself overweighted without the ability to drop weight in an emergency!

Fixed it for you.

I'd also like to point out that the exact same thing can happen in a jacket or back-inflate BCD if you don't use/have quick-release weight pockets.

 

[rivers]

A BP/W may be hazardous due to the fact that you will find yourself overweighted without the ability to drop weight in an emergency!

And that's called not diving a balanced rig. which can happen in a standard jacket BC set-up as well

 

[cool_hardware52]

Agreed!Correct!Agreed!What size wing would be ideal w/ a Kydex plate in tropical conditions?
Agreed!

Your premise is wrong.

Often a Stainless Plate is a better choice for tropical diving. Sometimes a Kydex plate is the right choice for temperate waters. I for example routinely dive a kydex plate in a drysuit in So Cal in water temps down to the high 40's or low 50's. My tanks, tank bands, dual first stage regs, can light etc. provide enough ballast.

The choice of plate material is a function of required ballast. And you have provided zero information in your question about how much total ballast a specific diver might require.

Wing choice is a function of 1) Being able to float the rig at the surface with a full cylinder if ditched, 2) Being able to compensate for the maximum possible change in buoyancy of your exposure suit.

Again you have provided zero information about how buoyant the exposure might be for your diver.


In general:

Wings get bigger as you move further from the equator, the water gets colder and suit buoyancy typically increases

Stainless steel plates are usually the right choice for both cold and warm water

Kydex plates have definite applications, but they far less commonly required than most people think.

Tobin