Dropping weight as you improve...

[ericpheifer]

I'm interested to hear about how some people went about dropping weight as their neutral buoyancy and techniques improved.

I feel incredibly heavy in the water but I worry about dropping too much weight too fast. On the other hand, I'm typically only diving in about 30' of water so I don't really have a safety stop that I would be unable to hold if I were underweighted. Is that the main concern about not having enough weight? I have had no problems descending.

Any comments on this subject would be appreciated. When did you all start removing some weight from your BCD/belt? Do you notice a big difference with 2 lbs less; 4 lbs less, etc? Did your air consumption improve noticeably with less weight?

Thanks!

-Eric

 

[vinegarbiscuit]

I started removing weight from my weightbelt during my AOW dives. My instructor was a wee sylph of a woman who typicially wore about 4lb of weight (3mm wetsuit, Al80 tank), and I thought that was the bee's knees. She cautioned that although it would be great for us to drop some weight - I initially used 12 lb of weight, although I'm about 5-feet-4-inches and weighed 130 lb - she also used very little air, and was very unlikely to finish a dive with a mere 500 psi in her tank. Her tank was therefore more negatively buoyant at the end of a dive, whereas ours had at least 500 psi, so we had to compensate for that. by the end of the week's training and leisure dives, I was down to 9 lb. About 200 dives later, I'm now down to 7 lb, and even though I've put on some weight since my training days (damn domestic bliss!), I've been thinking I'd like to ditch another 1-2 lb, as I've been feeling horridly overweighted on my last 5-dives or so.

Dropping lead certainly improves one's air consumption, but I think experience helps a great deal, too. Both my instructor as well as my fiance - who's also an instructor and an inspirational diver - also emphasized the importance of weight placement for correct trim, and I think that's another contributing factor. Perhaps another key ingredient has been reconfiguring my gear (getting rid of danglies and so on) and learning propulsion techniques like the frog-kick. Better air consumption is the sum of many small parts, in my humble opinion, but there's still miles of room for improvement - I'm nowhere near as good as I'd like to be.

 

[Kern]

It's an individual thing & will depend on where you start on the overweighted continuum. If you're 10lb over & lose 4lb it will be very different outcome to being 2lb over & removing 4lb.

How negative are you now? Have you done a proper weight check? Neutral at the surface with empty tanks, fully deflated BCD, floating at eye level with a normal lung full of gas, sink when you exhale?

 

[Straegen]

The more over weight a diver is the more skill they need actually. In an over weight scenario staying down is easier, but a diver will generally have more air in the bladder throughout the dive. This means each time a divers depth rises a bit and the air expands that diver will have a larger depth swing. Same can be said for compression. When ascending the same problem presents itself as the additional air expands as the diver nears the surface so they tend to shoot up since they have to vent more. Venting evenly is a skill that few posses out of the box so the less air a diver has the easier it is to ascend and maintain buoyancy in the water column.

Depending on several factors ideally you want to have zero air in your bladder at the end of a warm water dive. Couple quick pumps into the BC should be all a diver needs to slowly ascend.

The less air in the bladder, the easier to maintain a given depth and the easier to ascend. It is also a fairly easy process to get properly weighted for a given exposure suit/tank combination.

 

[fire_diver]

New divers are typically anxious. Don't know why, but nervous divers tend to be more bouyant than one whos relaxed. So yes, as you dive more, you may see that you need a few pounds less lead.

 

[Crush]

I feel incredibly heavy in the water but I worry about dropping too much weight too fast.

Eric, that is a problem. You should feel too heavy on land. You should not feel "incredibly heavy in the water."

In an ideal world you would work out how much weight you need to be neutrally buoyant at 15-20' with 500 psi in your tank. In the real world (so long as you wear a wetsuit), your suit compression at 15-20' will approximately offset the increase in buoyancy as you breathe your 3000 psi down to 500 psi, making the following (approximately) true: you want to be neutrally buoyant at the surface (with 3000 psi in the tank). That is to say (with your BC deflated), as you inhale, you should rise to the surface, and as you exhale, you should sink.

If you dump all the air from your BC and you descend with a lung-full of air, you are over-weighted. For a new diver, this might not be too bad. However, if you dump all the air from your BC and you fall like a stone with a lung-full of air, you are very much over-weighted and should try to loose at least 3-4 lbs, if not more.

 

[knowone]

Practice stops. Take your time to avoid hitting your head on the sky or a hull or a pier or....

 

[TSandM]

There are a lot of factors that contribute to new divers needing more lead. Some of it is anxiety -- people who are anxious tend to breathe faster, and maintain a higher average volume of air in the lungs, so they float more. Some of it is technique -- new divers often impede their own descents by kicking, and of course, if you are out of trim and feet low, you HAVE to stay negative to remain underwater, and this is easier if you are a bit heavy.

I know that, as a new diver, I had trouble holding stops, and helpful buddies put more weight on me. But it was all a technique issue.

Formal weight checks are the key. Just as your navigation materials will tell you to trust your compass, even when you can't believe what it's telling you, you need to trust a formal weight check. If it is done at the beginning of the dive, and you float at eye level with a normal lung volume and add the weight of the gas in your tank, you will not be negative at the end of the dive. If you do the weight check at the end of the dive, with 500 psi in the tank, you will get the absolute minimum number (because you have gotten all trapped air out of the suit and BC, and your neoprene has been compressed and may not have rebounded fully) but this may lead to some difficulties holding a stop, if you can't reproduce those conditions at the end of your dive. I'd always rather be 1 or 2 pounds heavy than too light.

 

[wadedeeper]

Sounds like everyone has given some good advice. I would offer a general recap which is this:

1. Don't rush the process...if you drop too much too fast, you'll only complicate things and burn through air faster trying to stay down.
2. Remember that when you do your buoyancy check at surface that you have to exhale completely to drop below the water...that means that when you want to descend, you will need to exhale the air to drop down...many people tend to weight themselves so they can drop without exhaling...this could save you from some extra weight.
3. Remember that with alum tanks, they tend to get real buoyant the lower the psi...so remember to be safe and not deduct too much weight so you can't stay down with 1000 or less psi in your tank.
4. Wetsuit thickness, drysuit type and or thickness all influence the amount of weight you might need to obtain the happy number. Add hood, gloves, boots and that too can influence the weight amount.

Bottom line is stick with comfort over bragging rights...I can dive with 10lbs and my 7mm suit and boots, but I won't. I don't want to struggle and burn through air fighting to stay down if a surge picks me up. So i tend to dive with more lbs for comfort. How much more...doesn't matter...it's what makes me comfortable.

 

[pjhansman]

I'm fairly new to the diving thing but my experience has included starting with 14# during OW training (3mm wetsuit, AL80 tank), dropping to 12# six months later during AOW training, and a year later I'm down to 10# with no issues either at the start or the end of the dive.

Having my own gear certainly takes some of the guesswork out of it when travelling.