near drowning due to regulator failure

[barbara]

I'm wondering if anyone can explain to me what went wrong with my regulator which nearly caused me to drown last week. I had just started my dive and was down around 15 feet. I started to detect water accumulating in my regulator slowly but did not think anything terrible was happening. I just exhaled forcfully and cleared it. My next breath was fine so I thought it was just a leak from the corner of my mouth. I repositioned my regulator and drew a breath in, and then, I got nothing but water! I started to choke and to cough out the water. When I did inhale again, nothing but water! Thank goodness I'm a seasoned diver and my training kicked in. Even though I was choking and kind of freaked out, I did not go into full panick mode. I stopped, thought and hit the purge button, which enabled me to get enough air to cough out and clear my larynx. It was hard to breathe because my air way was spasming a bit. My buddy joined me on the surface and I was unable to talk well, cause my airway was partially spasmed. They got me back on the boat and gave me oxygen just in case. After about 15 minutes my coughing stopped and I could breathe normally again.

Now, I had just had this reg. serviced and had not dove it yet until this happened. The dive shop where I had taken it to, said it was just a free flow problem but it did not seem like it. They are sending it away for further testing. It is a Mares MR12 AXIS Regulator. It is two years old and I have dived with it dozens of times with no problem. It worked fine before I got it serviced. It also breathed fine when I took my predive check breaths.

 

[CD_in_Chitown]

Did they replace the mouthpieces? Was the exhaust valve properly seated? (It may have re-seated in your struggle, I don't know how likely that is, but you'd never know what caused it if that were possible/happened)

 

[ChrisA]

You will never know what's wrong since you don't have it in hand to check. But my gues is a bad exaust valve. It's just a little disk of rubber in the exaust tee, or two disks. They can get something stuck in there or maybe a fold or a tear. An easy test is to turn off the air and suck on the reg. It should suck hard and NO air should come in. If you get any airflow then you have a defective exaust valve. Do this periodically while gearing up. a simple "suck test" will prevent this in the future.

I had something like this happen to me. The mouth peice came off the reg. So I had just the mouthpiec in my moulth and the reg itself was floating someplace. I inhale and just "water" so I exhale to purge and of course that does not work so I reach for the purge valve and discover the reg is missing. I had to go for the secondary (octo)

I think you should have switched to your octo a bit sooner. As soon as you start getting water. it's a good sign the one-way exaust valve is not working well. It's a common problem

 

[cornfed]

I think you should have switched to your octo a bit sooner. As soon as you start getting water. it's a good sign the one-way exaust valve is not working well. It's a common problem

She took a breath and got a little water. She adjusted her regulator. She took another breath and got a fire hose. This happened right at the beginning of her dive. It's not like she was swimming around ignoring a minor problem until it worsened.

I would have done the exact same thing she did.

 

[Firefyter]

I would agree that the exhaust valve theory is a very plausible one. I had the same thing happen to me last week. I immediately swapped to my backup, then cautiously tried the primary again. It gave me another mouthful of water, so I kept swapping back and forth, forcefully exhaling through the primary until it quit flooding. After a few good breaths from my backup, then exhaling through the primary, the situation resolved itself.

 

[Diver0001]

....snip....

Now, I had just had this reg. serviced and had not dove it yet until this happened. The dive shop where I had taken it to, said it was just a free flow problem but it did not seem like it. They are sending it away for further testing. It is a Mares MR12 AXIS Regulator. It is two years old and I have dived with it dozens of times with no problem. It worked fine before I got it serviced. It also breathed fine when I took my predive check breaths.

Scary. I'm glad you're ok.

I suppose there isn't much that can go wrong with a reg that would suddenly start letting that much water in. I would suspect either that the mouthpiece is falling off or ripped (check carefully), or the exhaust valve is jammed open and/or folded under on itself.

There are other things that will make a regulator leak (cracked housing, missing o-ring, something loose, ripped diaphragm.....) but these should ahve been detectable from the start of the dive.

R..

 

[dbg40]

Torn or unseated diaphragm

 

[ShakaZulu]

Don't know what caused your problem, but I had no problems with my regs till I had them serviced? Does these guys not know what they are doing or are we supposed to live or die with their crap service?

 

[Web Monkey]

I'm wondering if anyone can explain to me what went wrong with my regulator which nearly caused me to drown last week. I had just started my dive and was down around 15 feet. I started to detect water accumulating in my regulator slowly but did not think anything terrible was happening. I just exhaled forcfully and cleared it. My next breath was fine so I thought it was just a leak from the corner of my mouth. I repositioned my regulator and drew a breath in, and then, I got nothing but water!

Now, I had just had this reg. serviced and had not dove it yet until this happened. The dive shop where I had taken it to, said it was just a free flow problem but it did not seem like it. They are sending it away for further testing. It is a Mares MR12 AXIS Regulator. It is two years old and I have dived with it dozens of times with no problem. It worked fine before I got it serviced. It also breathed fine when I took my predive check breaths.

Glad you're OK!

Not sure what they mean by "Send or away for further testing". It sounds like they don't service that brand and send it out, and that they sent it back to whoever did it the first time.

The regs are designed as simply as possible to improve reliability, and there shouldn't be anything that requires "further testing". A qualified technician should be able to disassemble it, check it, fix what's wrong and make it breathe good as new.

In any event, you should be diving with some sort of alternate second stage (Octopus or Air/2 or similar), so the next time Something Bad happens with your primary, you can just switch to the backup.

Terry

 

[redacted]

What did you find when you inspected it after the incident? If the mouthpiece wasn't torn and the reg was holding vacuum afterwards, then it is almost surely the exhaust valve. Maybe dirt lodged in the valve. While it is not clearly a service error, I think I would not have taken it back to the same shop.