Inflator Hose Routing

[sphyon]

So I have tried a number of 1st stage configurations, bungee configurations, BCD's, etc. One thing I never seem to get comfortable with is inflator hose routing. Valves up, Down, Turrets or 5th port.. Nothing seems to help. Hoses are either shooting out low/high or the 5th port is digging into me somewhere.

Now throwing a drysuit into the mix soon it's going to get even worse. I can't seem to find a happy equilibrium.

What has worked for you?

 

[tbone1004]

with a drysuit, your best bet is probably primary on a long hose of some sort out the bottom, both inflators coming out the left, and octo coming out the right. Put the first stage at a roughly 45* angle, just enough off of vertical to get the long hose to clear the tank crown, and you should be good to go

 

[tursiops]

both inflators coming out the left, and octo coming out the right

Octo?

 

[tbone1004]

Octo?

octo, octopus, safe second, secondary second stage, alternate air source, pick your poison on what you want to call it

 

[sportxlh]

I think the question is in relation to sidemount. The backup source of gas is the reg on the other tank.... not a traditional octo.

octo, octopus, safe second, secondary second stage, alternate air source, pick your poison on what you want to call it

 

[tursiops]

I think the question is in relation to sidemount. The backup source of gas is the reg on the other tank.... not a traditional octo.

I don't think tbone realized what forum he was in.

 

[tbone1004]

@sportxlh touche, should probably pay attention to which subforum we are in...

@sphyon 5th port is useless in sidemount unless you are using the a single bungee, or old style bungees *i.e. stock old Nomad bungees, or the current SMS100 type bungees. Those bungees put the tanks much closer to the front of your chest and much higher up towards the shoulders than loop or ring bungees. If using loop or ring bungees, the fifth ports are completely useless.

For the left bottle, you want the short hose and the wing inflator both coming from the same side of the turret and they both will go straight up.
For the right bottle, you want the long hose and the drysuit inflator on the same side of the turret, and both go straight down. Use a standard drysuit inflator hose *typically quite long*, and just stuff it in the top hose retainer on your tank. It will go down and come straight back up, no different than the hose routing of a DIR stage bottle. This will be in the middle of the wraps that your long hose is doing to maximize efficiency of the hose routing down the length of the tank.
When not diving dry, that hose stays on the regulator and just gets stuffed in the bottom hose retainer as well.

Below is one of my bottles. Unfortunately it's not a swivel turret, but for this it doesn't matter if it is or isn't, and you have to use a bit of spacial reasoning with it. You can see two hoses at the first stage in this picture. The right one is the HP hose to the SPG, and the left one is the long hose. The drysuit inflator is immediately behind it. It makes the inside loop of the 3 big hose loops along the tank, and in this case is stuck behind the first stage. In this particular routing, when mounted the second loop of the long hose gets pulled out *tanks are LP121's, so the hose loop is quite long. If done on tanks like AL80's or LP95's, the second loop is much shorter and stays in once mounted*. This is a valves up configuration obviously, but it works and looks the same with valves down, only difference is the SPG is up instead of down.

 

[Patoux01]

What rig? What's your current setup? 1, 2 tanks?

That's the kind of info needed...

 

[sphyon]

@sportxlh touche, should probably pay attention to which subforum we are in...

@sphyon 5th port is useless in sidemount unless you are using the a single bungee, or old style bungees *i.e. stock old Nomad bungees, or the current SMS100 type bungees. Those bungees put the tanks much closer to the front of your chest and much higher up towards the shoulders than loop or ring bungees. If using loop or ring bungees, the fifth ports are completely useless.

For the left bottle, you want the short hose and the wing inflator both coming from the same side of the turret and they both will go straight up.
For the right bottle, you want the long hose and the drysuit inflator on the same side of the turret, and both go straight down. Use a standard drysuit inflator hose *typically quite long*, and just stuff it in the top hose retainer on your tank. It will go down and come straight back up, no different than the hose routing of a DIR stage bottle. This will be in the middle of the wraps that your long hose is doing to maximize efficiency of the hose routing down the length of the tank.
When not diving dry, that hose stays on the regulator and just gets stuffed in the bottom hose retainer as well.

Below is one of my bottles. Unfortunately it's not a swivel turret, but for this it doesn't matter if it is or isn't, and you have to use a bit of spacial reasoning with it. You can see two hoses at the first stage in this picture. The right one is the HP hose to the SPG, and the left one is the long hose. The drysuit inflator is immediately behind it. It makes the inside loop of the 3 big hose loops along the tank, and in this case is stuck behind the first stage. In this particular routing, when mounted the second loop of the long hose gets pulled out *tanks are LP121's, so the hose loop is quite long. If done on tanks like AL80's or LP95's, the second loop is much shorter and stays in once mounted*. This is a valves up configuration obviously, but it works and looks the same with valves down, only difference is the SPG is up instead of down.

View attachment 405565

Thank's Tom! That is exactly what I am looking for here. Also your Poseidon regs never fail to weird me out.

What rig? What's your current setup? 1, 2 tanks?

That's the kind of info needed...

Well I am not really looking for a ton of personalized advice here. Really just wanting to see how some of your deal with various routing options and what works for you!

 

[Patoux01]

It's rig dependent, so basically everything tbone said is wrong on my watch. It's fairly useless to list the many possible routings when over 90% of them are irrelevant to you.