Gas failure kills local diver - Washington state

[Wookie]

I thought that regulators would - sort of - always fail by freeflowing, instead of shut down. Can somebody explain?

My wife had a main spring fail in her Atomic T2. That will mess up your whole day.

 

[redacted]

Air2 / Air3 is the BCD regulator and inflator - it was a one way valve that was installed - upside down / backwards...
I dont use an Octo - I use a primary and my Air3.

I am quite familiar with a Scubapro Air2. I do have a few of them. But not an Air3. If you could be more specific or provide a link, I will examine a schematic and see if I can figure out what might have happened.

Also, what was the failure mode you experienced?

 

[redacted]

My wife had a main spring fail in her Atomic T2. That will mess up your whole day.

Yep, that will do it.

 

[Wookie]

I am quite familiar with a Scubapro Air2. I do have a few of them. But not an Air3. If you could be more specific or provide a link, I will examine a schematic and see if I can figure out what might have happened.

Also, what was the failure mode you experienced?

 

[Freewillow]

Thank you awap.

I had a thorn exaust valve that made my second stage wet, but could still inhale some air from it - although I switched to my octopus. Now I understand that no air could come from erroneous re-assembly and therefore no air from the onset. But who could give me example of such a failure DURING a dive. Thanks.

Edit: Sorry Steve, Your post appeared after I wrote mine .

 

[Wookie]

Thank you awap.

I had a thorn exaust valve that made my second stage wet, but could still inhale some air from it - although I switched to my octopus. Now I understand that no air could come from erroneous re-assembly and therefore no air from the onset. But who could give me axample of such a failure DURING a dive. Thanks.

If your main spring breaks during a dive, you will get no air. Likewise, on your second stage, if the demand lever isn't correctly installed and it slips off of the poppet, you will get no air. I've seen both happen.

 

[Freewillow]

Thank you Wookie .

 

[mdb]

Sad to hear of any of our fellow divers deaths.

If this death was due to an equipment failure it would be helpful to know what kind of failure.

Many dive stores do not have the expertise to properly service all regs. They, often, send the
high turnover young "techs" to a few hour seminar at DEMA or some local dive show and then have
them servicing regs.

Of course there are some very fine service facilities, I have visited many of them.

There are also very competent online sites that will service and repair all models promptly and at a fair
cost.

Underwater Sports in Seattle has a state of the art tech center, DRIS-Mike and his crew do
a great job, ScubaToys does the same. Leisure Pro has dedicated techs as well. There are
others of course.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

My bad as well - it was an Aqualung Airsource 3 - I had two issues the BCD would not manually inflate due to a piece installed in upside down - I can not find a schematic - but I remember him showing me the piece (it was round and I think had a check valve/one way valve - which prevented the button from completely depressing and allowing the air from my mouth to bypass and not go into the BCD) and how it could have been done. Second was it was very wet - actually more than wet more like water leaking in to the mouthpiece at depth - but now I am not sure if it was related to the first issue or had a separate issue. Either way my Airsource 3 was rendered useless but would work with the auto inflate which allowed me to continue my dive. When done I dropped it off, showed them my issues and they fixed it.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Given the location in the original story I have to wonder if this wasn't a commercial harvester diving on surface-supplied air.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)