One more thing to double check!

[Mr. Bubble]

I don't know if this qualifies as an incedent, so I will post it here.

While on a dive trip to south Florida, I jumped into the water with all my gear (steel tanks, BP and pony) and begain my decent to the bottom. The first thing I do is grab my BC inflator so I can control my decent. When I was about 20ft down, I looked over to my inflator and noticed a rooster tail of air bubbles shooting out of the inflator button area, about a foot long into the water. I immediately turned the dive and surfaced. The DM asked what was wrong, and I explained the situation. We all assumed it was a loose conection between the LP hose and the inflator, however, the actual problem was that the screw pin, (the actaul device that conects the hoses togeter, had become unscrewed. The LP hose was connected fine. The DM got a wrench and tightened up the loose screw, and off I went, uneventfully on my dive.

I just thought I would share this with everyone, mainly because it had the potential to be disasterous. If I did'nt pay any attention until I reached the bottom, who knows if I would have been able to get back up! Yes, I know, here come the anti- steel tank mongers. I was able to swimm up from twenty feet, and I have a dual bladder BC, but still, the amount of air comming out would deplete my air supply rapidly, I would have had to dump my BC and ascend with the pony bottle. ( Oh, yeah, and my wonderful buddy was already at the bottom and had begun the navigational dive to an adjacent wreck, never to be seen again until the safety stop on the way back)

Check your BC hose pin valve! Screw that puppy DOWN TIGHT! Check it often!


Mr. Bubble

 

[sharkattack]

I have had that happen. I just disconnected the hose and continued on with my dive. Who's an anti-steel monger?

 

[Rick Inman]

There are a lot of little places where a leak can occur. That's why my buddies and I regularly do a bubble check before we descend. We may not even take any action over a leak at that point - for example, a pinhole leak in a BC, which we might fix later.

Trust me, if you do bubble checks every dive, you do eventually find something worth fixing.

 

[oly5050user]

I don't know if this qualifies as an incedent, so I will post it here.

While on a dive trip to south Florida, I jumped into the water with all my gear (steel tanks, BP and pony) and begain my decent to the bottom. The first thing I do is grab my BC inflator so I can control my decent. When I was about 20ft down, I looked over to my inflator and noticed a rooster tail of air bubbles shooting out of the inflator button area, about a foot long into the water. I immediately turned the dive and surfaced. The DM asked what was wrong, and I explained the situation. We all assumed it was a loose conection between the LP hose and the inflator, however, the actual problem was that the screw pin, (the actaul device that conects the hoses togeter, had become unscrewed. The LP hose was connected fine. The DM got a wrench and tightened up the loose screw, and off I went, uneventfully on my dive.

I just thought I would share this with everyone, mainly because it had the potential to be disasterous. If I did'nt pay any attention until I reached the bottom, who knows if I would have been able to get back up! Yes, I know, here come the anti- steel tank mongers. I was able to swimm up from twenty feet, and I have a dual bladder BC, but still, the amount of air comming out would deplete my air supply rapidly, I would have had to dump my BC and ascend with the pony bottle. ( Oh, yeah, and my wonderful buddy was already at the bottom and had begun the navigational dive to an adjacent wreck, never to be seen again until the safety stop on the way back)

Check your BC hose pin valve! Screw that puppy DOWN TIGHT! Check it often!


Mr. Bubble

No big deal,as said just disconnect hose and continue dive,maybe even take a look at the device and hand tighten it while underwater..As to not "being able to get back up" -just give slight kick and you are on the surface-just how negative are you diving? Properly weighed should just be barely floating on surface and only sink with a full exhallation. If it takes more than 2 or 3 easy breaths into bc to be positive enough on surface so that no effort required to keep head out of water it would seem to me that you are overweighed.

 

[ToddK]

My wing did the same thing. I unplugged the LP inflator hose and used my drysuit to fine tune the buoyancy. Back on the boat it was pretty easy to get it tightened up.

 

[Nick_W]

While it is frustrating to have something break like that, it isn't the end of the world. As has been pointed out, there is really no excuse at all for a broken power inflator being the reason you can't make it to the surface. You can manually inflate a BC pretty easily and even if for some reason you can't do that, you should be able to make it to the surface under your own power and even if you are poorly weighted and can't do that, your buddy should be able to give you a hand.

Which brings me to that "buddy" you had. If I were you I would have spent a good five minutes or so during the surface interval beating him with an inflator hose. But that's just me, I don't have a whole lot of patience for buddy-(you know what)ers.

 

[Buoyant1]

My dive group has gotten into the practice of 20 ft bubble checks on descent before proceeding... The other thing to check is to make sure your dump valves are screwed down properly..we had a heck of a time helping some guy find all the parts to his when it sprung on descent.

 

[Mr. Bubble]

Yeah, I am slightly over weighted. I use a steel 120 and a steel BP, and sometimes a pony bottle. I usually wear a 5/7 but was in tropical waters with a thin skin. It made a difference! I was'nt all that bothered by it, and as I said, I was able to swim to the surface on my own power. I never would have thought to disconnect the LP though. I thought that was the problem. I was trying to reconnect a hose that was already connected, and a little bit confused.

My only point is that it could have escalated into an unpleasant adventure, and yes, I am buddy-F)&())(78-er bashing as well. There was another incident (a real incident) with this same person on dry land that I will not go into any further. Lets just say, I made it home safe and sound. I will not dive with them again and I will be pushed to go on a trip with them on the mainfest as well.
I am used to doing bubble checks myself, but that is not always possible when the buddy you have does'nt give a rip.....

Leasons learned!