Hog harness: stop stuff from moving around waist belt?

[tbone1004]

The wording was wrong but the point was there, bit distracted with calls this am. Drysuits keep the diver dry because of the air gap and it protects the diver from direct contact with the water. Neoprene does the same thing, but the thin layer of water around you helps warms up much better than an air pocket in your wetsuit. Water conducts heat very easily, air doesn't, because of that you want the air gap between you and the cold water, but having the warm water layer around you helps to keep you warmer. Reason why on the first dive most wetsuit divers are actually warmer than the drysuit guys, it's the 2nd and 3rd dive where drysuit wins out.

Regarding weight, I'd put two 4lb weights in the pocket, and zip tie a pair of 1lb weights to bolt snaps and clip them on your harness as needed. Isn't pretty, but if you can't do a proper weight check, it's the only way to really adjust on the fly.

 

[nimoh]

The wording was wrong but the point was there, bit distracted with calls this am. Drysuits keep the diver dry because of the air gap and it protects the diver from direct contact with the water. Neoprene does the same thing, but the thin layer of water around you helps warms up much better than an air pocket in your wetsuit. Water conducts heat very easily, air doesn't, because of that you want the air gap between you and the cold water, but having the warm water layer around you helps to keep you warmer. Reason why on the first dive most wetsuit divers are actually warmer than the drysuit guys, it's the 2nd and 3rd dive where drysuit wins out.

Regarding weight, I'd put two 4lb weights in the pocket, and zip tie a pair of 1lb weights to bolt snaps and clip them on your harness as needed. Isn't pretty, but if you can't do a proper weight check, it's the only way to really adjust on the fly.

You're still distracted.

When you first enter the water in a wetsuit, it floods with cold water creating a water layer between your skin and the wetsuit. Your body then warms up this water, equalizing the water temperature and your skin temperature. The wetsuit then traps and insulates this water layer so that the heat extracted from your body is not readily transferred to the surrounding water. In other words, the water doesn't warm you up, but rather you warm up the water.

I have never been on a dive where wetsuit divers were warmer than drysuit divers. However, if the drysuit divers were wearing trilam suits with thin or no undergarments, I could see them getting cold before the wetsuit divers.

 

[divad]

What's to break? Mine just have a Velcro flap on the front, a sewn (no Velcro) belt loop on the back, and that's it?

I do think I might use a soldering iron to burn a couple of holes through the belt loop and then thread some bungee cord through and tie a loop to go through the belt loop and around the front, so it ensures the flap can't just come open accidentally and let a weight fall out. Or maybe burn no holes and put the bungee around it horizontally, instead of vertically. I'll have to just mess with it and see.

I just put 1 or 2 SS boat snaps right through the velcro.

 

[tbone1004]

yeah, so the water which takes a whole heaping lot of energy to change temperature gets heated up to your body temperature quite quickly, and the neoprene acts as an insulator to the neoprene. Point being a wetsuit with air pockets in it won't keep you quite as warm as one with the proper thin layer of non-flowing water in it and also can cause a suit squeeze which can be irritating at best, mildly dangerous at worst. Thanks for the sanity check, typing this while on an ultra boring conference call after a night of basically no sleep....

 

[Storker]

I learn something on here every day.

Me, too. I guess I'm not a recreational diver after all.

With my old 15Lx200bar steel single, in my trilam DS and winter undergarments, I need about 18 kilos total weight to stay down. Last time I did the math, 18kg>10#


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[TSandM]

Stuart, if there is anything I have learned about you from reading your posts, it's that you are an intelligent and methodical man. If you say you need 10 pounds of weight, I suspect you do; people vary quite a bit in what they need. Now, perhaps you have a very well-fitting wetsuit that is trapping air (and I disagree with tbone about what that does to insulation), but if it consistently traps air and doesn't eventually lose it during the dive, you need to sink that air, too.

With a 3/2 suit and a steel plate and aluminum 80 tank, I use 2 pounds of additional lead. But I don't weigh 230 pounds. And I am pretty reliably horizontal, and have well-trained breath control, and those things make a difference.

I am quite sure you will continue to play with your weighting on each trip, and you may well eventually be able to jettison some more lead. But a minor degree of overweighting is not a sin . . . it just makes life a bit more difficult. Technical divers routinely submerge 10, 15 or more pounds "overweighted", and cope with it just fine. It takes more skill to stay ahead of buoyancy changes, when you have quite a lot of air in your BC, is all. New divers who are grossly overweighted are also usually bandwidth-challenged, and the gas volumes in the BC routinely get ahead of them and make their lives miserable.

I hope you were not doing vertical, swimming ascents on your trip, and that you were resting in a horizontal hover during your safety stop. Otherwise, it's very hard to determine whether you are over- or underweighted by what happens during the stop, because your buoyancy is probably far more heavily influenced by any leg movement than by what your weighting is doing at that point.

 

[emeshuris]

What's to break? Mine just have a Velcro flap on the front, a sewn (no Velcro) belt loop on the back, and that's it?

I do think I might use a soldering iron to burn a couple of holes through the belt loop and then thread some bungee cord through and tie a loop to go through the belt loop and around the front, so it ensures the flap can't just come open accidentally and let a weight fall out. Or maybe burn no holes and put the bungee around it horizontally, instead of vertically. I'll have to just mess with it and see.

I see yours do not have the rubber tab, that tab rips off quickly. Don't they move around? But they are small, I guess you can put a dring on one side and it should keep it in place, maybe.
Mine have nylon bags for the weights, this is the dumpable portion. The bags have drain holes, it's very nice to be able to insert the weighs after I donned the back plate. That by itself is worth the extra dough, plus it's screwed on to the backplate and they can hold a few more pounds than the xscuba ones.
Agreed, small is nice, to each his own.

 

[Keith.M]

Threading the weights directly on the cam band impacts the grip it has on the tank much more than a pocket would. In addition, it can damage the finish on the tank.

I don't feel there is any difference in the grip on the tank and the weight does not even touch the tank. The threaded cam band is the only thing touching. Besides, I have two cam bands anyways...

Now the best reason I heard for not doing it was TSandM's in that the pockets make it easy to remove the weight. Then switching to another tank is somewhat easier. I just haven't felt that was a big deal.

The biggest drawback I have is having to remove and replace that one cam band all the time when I put the weight on or take it off. $10 a pocket does seem quite worth it.

 

[stuartv]

Stuart, if there is anything I have learned about you from reading your posts, it's that you are an intelligent and methodical man.

Thank you. You are very kind and I say that with more in mind that just this particular comment from you.

I hope you were not doing vertical, swimming ascents on your trip, and that you were resting in a horizontal hover during your safety stop.

When I finally felt like I had my weight right, yes, I was hovering horizontal during my SS. Just hanging out alongside the DM and my buddy, checking my DC. Earlier safety stops featured hanging upside down, gently kicking downwards to hold it. :-\

But, for ascents, yes, I was generally swimming vertically for the ascents. That is what they taught us to do in OW class. Swim up, holding the LPI up and hitting the button periodically to vent the BC, to keep from becoming a cork. Once on the surface, then inflate the BC enough to stay there.

Reflecting on your comment, I could imagine an alternative would be to stay horizontal, use my breathing to control my buoyancy and get myself moving upwards, and still dump air periodically to control my ascent. But, it seems like being vertical (regardless of swimming up versus "breathing" my way up) would be preferred, for the purpose of watching above me and not running into a boat or something.

So, how am I supposed to ascend?

 

[emeshuris]

I just put 1 or 2 SS boat snaps right through the velcro.

That works.