Drysuit selection

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First, let me warn you, there are few issues in diving that have more opinions backed by less data that dry suit selection. I doubt if there are more than a few divers on the board here who have, long term, dove more than one or at most two different designs of suit. Dry suits are very expensive items and folks get real ego involved when they make multi thousand dollar decisions, if you know what I mean. Most folks dive what their instructor or LDS tells them to, and unfortunately most Instructors have limited dry suit experience and most LDS only have one or two brands of suit to sell you and don’t really understand the advantages and drawbacks of even those suits. Let me give you an example, drawn from the question of wetsuit selection, but it addresses this problem and should help you to understand what you’re up against:

I issue a very detailed equipment list before each class that students who are accepted into the class need to purchase and show up with at the first meeting.

The suits we were using at the time were, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, 5mm, skin two side, Rubatex GN-231N, attached hood, farmer johns, no zippers. I send my list to all the LDSs in the area and freely distribute whatever they send back to the students (this is a big deal to the shops, in the dead of winter, twenty full sets of gear with no selling or inventory required: take the order, take the money, and deliver in two weeks).

One student did not go to an LDS, but rather to a shop near her home, about a hundred miles away. I got a call from the Instructor in the shop informing me, in a fairly emphatic tone, that, “No diver could possibly wear this
suit. They could not put it on without a zipper.” Now, please understand that I’ve been diving this suit design since the mid sixties, and the only people who need an inverted half zipper in the jacket are incredibly curvaceous women of petite statue. This woman was just shy of six foot, very athletic and quite thin.

Having nothing better to do (and considering that the woman in question was one of the brighter marine geologist grad students), I drove up to the shop later in the day. I brought my
suit with me. I showed the Instructor how easy it was to put on and take off, etc. We solved the problem, but the bottom line was that this Instructor, well meaning as she was, had not yet worn out here first suit and was repeating what her Instructor’s had told her. It wasn’t a marketing issue, the LDS could and did supply the gear (and nicely matched the prices of the LDSs that had sent fliers).

The bottom line is that for dive gear, real information is hard to come by. Most of the opinions that you see on the net are biased either by being the only piece that class of gear that a new diver has ever used or being a loaner that the expert tried out on one or two dives. The thing that you need to do is find an expert who is doing the kind of diving that you plan on doing and ask him or her about the gear. That may well not be an Instructor. Don’t be afraid to bore on in, why … why … why. If you do not get answers that you understand, find another expert. Make sure that the advice makes sense in terms that you understand. When it does, buy the gear and never look back.


With all that said, I really can’t advise you until you define the diving you want to use your new suit for, but here are some thoughts:

Crushed, laminate and vulcanized suits have no inherent insulative properties so they are totally depended upon underwear and gas trapped in the suit for insulation. As you descend you add gas to the suit and that keeps both buoyancy and thermal characterizes constant

Uncrushed neoprene (and please understand that there is a HUGE difference between the neoprene many
suit manufacturers use and quality Rubatex in terms of compression) will crush with depth, but not 1/2 at 33 foot, 1/4 at 99 ft, etc. As is does, you must introduce gas into the suit to maintain neutral buoyancy, just as with a membrane suit, and that keeps the insulation about the same.

Which is best? I don't really know. I've had Unisuits, Jetsuits, Vikings, DUIs, and a Polaris (Rubatex
suit from a small Santa Cruz custom house) over the years. I currently have the Polaris which I prefer for shore diving, a Viking for polluted water (nothing else can really be disinfected) and a DUI that is a joy for boat diving. I use an old set of Unisuit woolies under the Polaris and a ripstop/holowfill/synthetic pile (the blue and gray stuff) set of Viking underwear under the Viking and DUI.

For protection from the rocks the Polaris is the best, for minimum drag while swimming the Viking wins hands down, for ease of in and out, the DUI gets the nod. There is one thing that I have in common on all three suits: SiTec wrist rings (which I use with wrist seals) and SiTec neckseal/dogcollar/dryhood system. I can easily introduce air into the glove by raising my hand and wiggling my fingers (this lets some air past the latex wrist seal) and I can get air out by careful “burping.” The neckseal system allows me to throw away a torn neckseal and have a new one in place in seconds, and the dry hood adds a lot of warmth.
 
I am brand new drysuit user. I thought I’d let you know the biggest surprise I had with my suit. I had studied a fair bit before purchasing, and I was adequately ‘horrified’ about all the difficulties I might have embarking in my drysuit career. Learning the suit was actually way easier than I thought but…

…nobody told that I cannot freely keep the suit on as long as I please because it will eat my neck! Chew-chew-chew. I HAD read about neoprene versus latex seal options but nowhere anybody emphasized how many people with NO latex allergy actually have quite a lot of trouble with chafing. More people complained about the damp neoprene seals. I missed the truth about razor sharp latex necks! Ouch.

For me this means I need to pull the top of the suit off during surface interval even when weather is awful, and I’d rather keep it on. I had not thought of that. (Well, people do also think I have been strangling my buddy who has it even worse.) I don’t know if I’d go as far as recommending neoprene seal (I have no experience) but if you have any issues with latex, consider all options carefully. It gets real painful during diving binges!

Sharky1948:
Personally I vote against the dry gloves. If you choose the ones that connect to the suit, you introduce the possibility of a wet dive if you puncture the glove. If you choose separate dry gloves using a ventilating tube, you will find that they squeeze (and therefore lose insulation) unless you tend to keep your hands higher than the rest of your body. (So, if you do disco dancing U/W, go for it! :D

I wouldn’t vote against drygloves even if the waters were warmer here and it made sense that way. I find that they improve dexterity over clumsy neoprene gloves, and are also way more visible for communicating (blue smurfs in my case). I went with DUI’s DAM gloves (Zip gloves with the inner seal). I have not used any straws this far – by putting them on certain way you can ensure air trapping inside a bit, and nice warm hands as a result (and I have very poor circulation to my hands). I have liked them this far but they have not been to extreme cold, so will see.

For me it was a tossup with the zip-choice, the quick changing is the pro but strongly on the con-side is the price of that change. Diving a lot in remote areas kind of affected this, I want to be self-sufficient. I could have as well gotten DC gloves. In the beginning you can use the seals (that you should get anyway) and wetgloves as you back-up though. I think people exaggerate the difficulty of having to work with the gloves attached to the sleeves. It’s a bit of a pain they are attached all the time (and adds to the puncture-risk) but nothing to write home about. Since I anyway have to pull the top off for SITs because my neck is being eaten away, I do not suffer from that much.

I have DUI TLS350, and this far I have been very very happy with it. One of the greatest things is that it dries so quick. While I get all the other stuff together and into the car, the suit is nearly dry and can be tossed on top.
 
With drysuits in particular, it is horses for courses. What works for you might not work for someone else.

For example, I love my crushed neoprene drysuit and dislike the fit and feel of membrane suits. I hate latex seals with a passion and have neoprene seals on the neck and wrists. These are so comfy I can stay in it all day with no problems, whereas the vast majority of my membrane-suit-wearing mates have to remove the top between dives because of the restrictive nature of the latex seals.

I find crushed neoprene, when fitted properly, is more streamlined than a membrane suit, and gives almost as much movement. I do not feel restricted in my suit.

I have used drygloves, but prefer wet - I use 3mm five-finger in cold water, 5mm five-finger in very cold water, and when ice-diving, I used 5mm three-finger mitts.

Mark
 
piikki:
…nobody told that I cannot freely keep the suit on as long as I please because it will eat my neck! Chew-chew-chew. I HAD read about neoprene versus latex seal options but nowhere anybody emphasized how many people with NO latex allergy actually have quite a lot of trouble with chafing. More people complained about the damp neoprene seals. I missed the truth about razor sharp latex necks! Ouch.

You might want to try putting KY lubricant on the neck seal before and after the dive. My daughter had a similar problem with a wetsuit with latex seals. (She used baby oil to solve the problem quite well, but don't use that on the dry suit as it deteriorates the latex over time.) KY works well to ease donning and I suspect will eliminate your chafing...especially during the SIT if you choose to leave the suit on.

Hope it helps!
 
Give the Bare Trilam a look. I bought a front zip trilam suit last year and love it. I went with the attached boots, neopreme neck, latex wrist seals and with cuff rings so I can dive with wet or dry hands..
 
Drysuit's are nice, and drygloves make icediving pleasant. IMO they are no more risky than diving in a drysuit, both can get holed. Which is a larger target, the body or the small hands? Now you should be aware of where your hands are and you won't be picking up that razor sharp shard of steel, but other than that it's not much of a risk.

Leaks happen everywhere, so use whatever keeps you warm.
 
Thalassamania:
The suits we were using at the time were, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, 5mm, skin two side, Rubatex GN-231N, attached hood, farmer johns, no zippers. I send my list to all the LDSs in the area and freely distribute whatever they send back to the students (this is a big deal to the shops, in the dead of winter, twenty full sets of gear with no selling or inventory required: take the order, take the money, and deliver in two weeks).

You know, Dan MacKay in his GUE's Dress for Success also recommends the same stuff as the best, though he calls it G231N Neoprene or Rubatex. Do they only use this for custom suits (who makes them?) or is there a website out there that sells these suits in stock sizes?
 
*Floater*:
You know, Dan MacKay in his GUE's Dress for Success also recommends the same stuff as the best, though he calls it G231N Neoprene or Rubatex. Do they only use this for custom suits (who makes them?) or is there a website out there that sells these suits in stock sizes?
Its always nice to know that GUE thinks something we old timers believe in is OK<G>. Rubatex is a brand name, "GN-231 N" is a particuar type (specification) of neoprene. GN-231 N can be had skin-two-side or with either nylon or lycra on either surface (in damn near any color or pattern that you want, you up for Urban Camo or Paisley?). Any custom house should be able to get it and make you a suit. There used to be lots of stock suits made from it, but the Asian-origin, chemical blown stuff is soooooo much cheaper.

Here's a company that I heard good things about, I've never used them: Wetwear.

BTW: If you want a warm suit with some more abrasive resistance, try a skin-in lycra-out, a buddy of mine got one and it's a good suit. The lycra's real stretchy and dries in a flash and the black lycra looks dark and shiny and it's oo-la-DIR! You'll love it, Dan MacKay would kill for it.<G>

Good luck and please let me know how it all comes out.
 

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