Safety Stage bottle duration submerged?

[PfcAJ]

I'm fairly sure I said to test the equipment over the course of the project.

Cycling tanks out willy nilly leaves you with a bunch of working regs and full tanks in your garage instead of in the cave where they could be useful. Plus it's a waste of valuable time that provides no benefit. Doing dives to replace full and working safeties with full and working safeties is just spinning your wheels. Replacing them when they need it (typically 2 years in my experience, esp with anode) is a reasonable interval. Past 2 years things start to leak, valves jam, and tanks really corrode. The above example where we left tanks in for 4 years was because we COULDNT get to them due to conditions.

Once again, if you had any project experience working with safeties you'd know this. It has nothing to do with being ballsy.

 

[Bennno]

@Aquamaster
Those 'long-term' safety tanks were probably only in the cave for this long because it would have required a major dive to retrive them, not because that project was going in for 4 years.
Just guessing though.

Edit: Just saw AJs post after I wrote this.
You have projects that go on for more that 2 years in one cave, ey? That's some project. I'm so jealous of everybody that lives within driving distance of divable caves...

 

[LiteHedded]

Please accept my sincere apology AJ.

I obviously misstated the facts, as you obviously have larger balls and are much more willing to bet your life on a nasty looking safety bottle and regulator left in a system for 3 or 4 years.

You're also obviously comfortable with presenting that time frame to the OP for his purposes, while I incorrectly assumed the OP might want to apply brains to his risk mitigation plan rather than balls. That's obviously not how it should be done, as that's obviously not how you've done it in the past.

Once again, please accept my apology.

is this all based on "i once saw a safety bottle in a dive shop?"
it's coming across (to everyone? or just me?) like you have zero actual experience with using safeties for cave exploration

---------- Post added December 10th, 2015 at 10:52 AM ----------

@Aquamaster
Those 'long-term' safety tanks were probably only in the cave for this long because it would have required a major dive to retrive them, not because that project was going in for 4 years.
Just guessing though.

or because the conditions weren't good for diving. safeties need to be considered disposable on a project like this

 

[PfcAJ]

@Aquamaster
Those 'long-term' safety tanks were probably only in the cave for this long because it would have required a major dive to retrive them, not because that project was going in for 4 years.
Just guessing though.

Edit: Just saw AJs post after I wrote this.
You have projects that go on for more that 2 years in one cave, ey? That's some project. I'm so jealous of everybody that lives within driving distance of divable caves...

The cave I was referencing (a tunnel in Leon Sinks) hasn't been good enough for exploration since 2011. 2 guys managed to get out to the safeties a few months ago and the vis was literally 3ft. Back guy was on front guy's fins and could only see to his waist. Cant explore cave passage thats 20+ft wide in 3ft vis. Cathedral (see other thread) hasn't had vis good enough to explore in for 15 years.

There's quite a few long term projects around these parts.

 

[gearbow]

To answer the question on how long I plan on leaving the bottles. I need to have them out by mid march at the latest. Because of the spring run off in the mountains. The cave will become a torrent by then.

 

[shoredivr]

The cave I was referencing (a tunnel in Leon Sinks) hasn't been good enough for exploration since 2011. 2 guys managed to get out to the safeties a few months ago and the vis was literally 3ft. Back guy was on front guy's fins and could only see to his waist. Cant explore cave passage thats 20+ft wide in 3ft vis. Cathedral (see other thread) hasn't had vis good enough to explore in for 15 years.

There's quite a few long term projects around these parts.

Is the low viz likely due to agricultural runoff and development? Isn't cathedral the cave Sheck Exley had access to from his property?

 

[karstdvr]

Is the low viz likely due to agricultural runoff and development?

Agricultural spray fields over a porous karst envrioment

Isn't cathedral the cave Sheck Exley had access to from his property?

More correctly, it is where he lived, because he had a trailer on the property at one time,but he did a lot of exploration from there.

 

[PfcAJ]

Is the low viz likely due to agricultural runoff and development? Isn't cathedral the cave Sheck Exley had access to from his property?

Cathedral probably. I'm a cathedral newb, there are other folks on here who know more about the system than me.

Leon (that particular tunnel) no, at least not directly. It's under a swamp and there's 2 swallets upstream of it (maybe 3 even) that bring tannic water into the cave. Been low vis since forever.

 

[kensuf]

The above image is an overlay of the Cathedral cave survey on google earth. As you can see, it goes underneath several spray fields, and even a few ponds. There's no doubt that stuff sprayed on those fields soaks into the conduit below.

Although it appears to go under several ponds and sinks, we have not found another usable entrance/exit (yet). This weekend we are planning on validating the survey with radio locations at the 6,000' and 10,200' points.

 

[LiteHedded]

it's important that your safeties look pretty. better get in there and swap them all out with brand new VIP'd tanks and serviced regs!
i'm sure it would be trivial to replace all the cathedral safeties as DA has suggested /sarcasm

meanwhile we have safeties in a cave going on like five years that when we last checked it earlier this year, is still working fine with no pitting. it really depends on the cave how long you can let them soak before they need to be replaced