The eternal question... Neoprene or Trilam drysuit?

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Hi, I am Bruce Justinen, President of SEASOFT SCUBA in Olympia, WA and we make neoprene drysuits custom and stock. Here is my take.

First of all the suit has to fit, the boots, the seals, all of it, if not, no suit is worth diving. But given a great fitting suit...

"There are a lot of "experts" out there telling people which drysuit they should buy. The problem is they are telling people based on their "experience". Usually that "experience" is predicated on the one or two drysuits they have owned.

It reminds me of the "pickup wars". Traditionally people are very loyal to a brand of pickup, Ford, Chevy, Dodge (now Ram), etc. Rarely, if ever, had they ever actually driven the "other guys" pickup but they would be sure to tell you that they would NEVER own one.

That's often how it is with drysuits. But for the person wanting to buy a drysuit there are a lot of mixed messages, a lot of advice from divers, instructors etc. who have only used one drysuit or type of drysuit.

I have over 5,000 drysuit dives over the last 34 years. I have experience with virtually every type of suit, vulcanized rubber, compressed neoprene, crushed neoprene, traditional neoprene, trilaminate shell, thin shell, heavy duty shell, stretched fabric over shell and hybrid neoprene suits and here is my experience with the two most widely used type of drysuits.

Here are the main differences between shell suits and neoprene suits.

SHELL SUIT: In a shell suit the diver basically dives some type of a squeeze in order to have a useable suit (remember, the fabric doesn't stretch). Because the suit has to be cut large enough to accomodate for their movements in a non-stretchable fabric, there is space for air to move in a large mass. This big "bubble" in the suit would create potential mayhem for their buoyancy and control. So in order to eliminate this chaos, they dive with some type of squeeze (they do NOT add air or they add very little, as they descend).

Since, the diver is diving with a squeeze and since air is what gives them warmth and since the suit itself has NO thermal protection they are forced to wear big thick undergarments. They have NO choice.

For buoyancy control, they would use their BC underwater, if they used their drysuit, instability ensues for most divers.

NEOPRENE SUIT: In a neoprene suit the diver uses air to keep warm. Since the suit fits like a loose wetsuit and because it stretches the air does not form a large bubble. The air is dispersed all around the suit as a layer of air. As the diver descends he/she adds air to this layer. They will get a minor movement of air but it does not move as a "body" of air. The diver does not need thick undergarments because the suit itself is providing a layer of insulation but so is the layer of air. During the dive they can add additional air that can continue to provide additional insulation.

In the winter, many divers will actually add a couple of pounds of weight so that they can add a small amount of additional air to their drysuit for additional warmth. In a neoprene drysuit: Air = Warmth.

They will not use their BC for buoyancy during the dive. They will typically ONLY use their BC on the surface.

SHELL SUIT: Once again, because shell suits do not stretch, it must be made larger, creating a large amount of excess material. This excess material creates hydro-drag. The more surface area (lose fabric, wrinkles, etc.) that water has to flow over, the more drag it produces. This uses up air, slows the diver down, tires them out prematurely and quite frankly nothing good comes from hydro-drag.

94px-Flow_sphere.svg.png
From Wikipedia: "the larger the surface area presented to the water, the more hydro-drag produced."

NEOPRENE SUIT: Since neoprene stretches, it makes for a closer fitting drysuit and presents far less surface area to the water, typically 20-30% less fabric. Thus, there is less hydro-drag in a neoprene drysuit and it is not uncommon for divers to have longer bottom times with part of that reason being that they are also warmer.

SHELL SUITS: So often, even with the thicker undergarment, many divers are cold when they dive their shell drysuits. Of course, part of the reason is because they are diving in a squeeze (no air in the suit). This causes the suit to collapse in on the undergarment and forces it against the body. This can potentially eliminate a portion of its thermal protection. Also, the suit itself has NO thermal protection and with no layer of air, the only thermal protection is the undergarment.

NEOPRENE SUITS: The neoprene suit delivers the first layer of thermal protection, the dispersed air around the diver delivers the second, and the undergarment is the third layer of thermal protection. Three will always beat one.

The argument made by some is that you need more weight for a neoprene drysuit. The answer is that you do! If you were diving a shell suit with a squeeze then yes, diving warm in a neoprene drysuit will require more weight but that is like saying that steel tanks costs more than aluminum. Well, yes, they do, but the advantages are worth it.

In the case of neoprene vs shell, as amazing as it is, the neoprene is usually the less expensive of the two.
 
"There are a lot of "experts" out there telling people which drysuit they should buy. The problem is they are telling people based on their "experience". Usually that "experience" is predicated on the one or two drysuits they have owned.

The opinion of a company that only makes 1 of the 2 types of suits, that the topic starter asked about, is a lot more trust worthy :)
 
Wow Bruce...that is a nice write-up...but is just as biased as your critique of nearly everyone else. Its even worse because you are the president of a company that manufactures the specif type of suit you are advocating. Not saying that I disagree with your sentiment, it all makes sense...but it is still biased.

-Z
 
It is biased by my passion. I have been in business for 34 years. I could easily choose the pathway to easier profits. I have had at least a dozen companies, mostly Chinese, offer to make a shell suit for us. We could finish a shell suit and put our name on it and collect some great margins and count some great cash. But it simply is not how I roll. I have to believe in what I sell. I have to live and breath what I sell and I just couldn't do it.

So yes, I only make one of the two suits and I AM biased but that is exactly WHY you should listen to what I say! I have over a thousand dives in shell suits and I hope I never have to have another one. Why?

Why would I choose a suit that is colder, harder to dive, has tons of drag, buoyancy issues etc.? The sad part is that there are just so many people who will defend their shell suits out of loyalty to a suit that they have nothing to compare to.

I have four thousand dives or so in neoprene drysuits and I get to watch the look of joy in the eyes of our customers when they experience the ease, the warmth, and the mastery of diving dry. Not the other way around.

Thanks for listening.

Bruce
 
Why would I choose a suit that is colder, harder to dive, has tons of drag, buoyancy issues etc.?

I've had both compressed neoprene and trilam. At the same time, even. I have always been able to be just as warm in a trilam. I've also been able to be much cooler in warm weather and much more comfortable in warm water (where the drysuit is being used as a source of redundant buoyancy) when using a trilam.

If you were anyone else, I would say that your comments seem to me to reflect not having really tried a good trilam that fit you properly. But, you have thousands more drysuit dives than I do, so I can only say that I don't understand why you have made the comments that you did.

My (primary) trilam fits me very well. It has no more drag than a neoprene suit that fits me well. Why would it? If you take 2 footballs and you wrap one in 3mm neoprene and you take the other and wrap it in 2.9mm wool and wrap over that in Saran Wrap, why would the plastic-wrapped one have more drag? I feel like it's easier to get the extra air out of the nooks and crannies when the outer shell is a thinner, more pliable material. Either way, ambient water pressure is going to squeeze as much air out as it can.

MY experience has been that a well-fitting trilam has LESS buoyancy issues than even a compressed neoprene, much less an uncompressed neoprene drysuit. But, if you normally use your drysuit to control your buoyancy, instead of using your BCD, I can see how you might feel differently. Personally, I don't know any drysuit divers or drysuit instructors that teach or practice controlling buoyancy with the drysuit. I have heard that that is how PADI does or used to have it written in their drysuit diving manual, so I suppose you are not the only one that does that.

I only put enough air in my drysuit to allow my undergarments to fully loft - and no more. As a result, I don't really get a bubble of air running around in my suit. Air migrates through the undergarments, but it is easy to control my buoyancy. However, I certainly have put too much air in my suit in the past - as well as, of course, having a bubble form sometimes during an ascent when I don't vent properly. So, I can appreciate the additional challenges that come from having extra air in your suit and a bubble that moves rapidly around inside - as you might if you use your suit to control your buoyancy. And I suppose it would be even more challenging if that extra air were expanding on an ascent while simultaneously having the suit itself becoming more buoyant due to less neoprene crush as you ascend.

My main hood is a Seasoft Ti Pro 6mm zippered hood and it is awesome. Great hood! But, for a drysuit, I tried (compressed) neoprene (it was my first drysuit) and I think I'll be sticking to trilam in the future.
 
It is biased by my passion. I have been in business for 34 years. I could easily choose the pathway to easier profits. I have had at least a dozen companies, mostly Chinese, offer to make a shell suit for us. We could finish a shell suit and put our name on it and collect some great margins and count some great cash. But it simply is not how I roll. I have to believe in what I sell. I have to live and breath what I sell and I just couldn't do it.

So yes, I only make one of the two suits and I AM biased but that is exactly WHY you should listen to what I say! I have over a thousand dives in shell suits and I hope I never have to have another one. Why?

Why would I choose a suit that is colder, harder to dive, has tons of drag, buoyancy issues etc.? The sad part is that there are just so many people who will defend their shell suits out of loyalty to a suit that they have nothing to compare to.

I have four thousand dives or so in neoprene drysuits and I get to watch the look of joy in the eyes of our customers when they experience the ease, the warmth, and the mastery of diving dry. Not the other way around.

Thanks for listening.

Bruce

Your opinion is as valid as anyone else's. Its also worth as much as anyone has paid for it. In the rational calculus of what type of suit one should buy you make some good points...but the message that neoprene suits are superior and the rhetoric you use to make that point is only substantiated by your opinion about your experience. If it were true there would not be so many different versions of tri-lam or nylon type drysuits availalbe, there would not be money invested in R&D to find ways to improve these type of suites. Is there benefit to a neoprene drysuit? sure...is it superior to a tri-lam drysuit? perhaps in certain situations but overall the jury will most likely never reach a consensus.

And while I believe you are genuine in that you believe neoprene suits are better, it is hard to separate, as another poster pointed out, the fact that you opened your post with the statement that you are the president of a company that makes the specific type of suit you are advocating for. Perhaps if you left your company info out and just gave your experienced based opinion it would have more standing in the arena of this discussion. I do respect that you did not pepper your post with links to your products and other company info to try to specifically push your product.

In the end there are great suits made from neoprene, crushed, compressed, normal, etc, and their are great suits made from nylon/tri-lam materials as well. There are also some great hybrid suits made by 4th element, Aqualung, and USIA to name a few.

There is no perfect suit for all occasions. In the rational decision making process one must decide what purpose their suit will fulfill and then decide what features in a suit will help them achieve that purpose. Things that may obviously affect that decision are cost, need to travel with the suit, storage space, environment where suit will likely be used, body type/suit fit, etc, etc, etc. For some buying a drysuit is a casual purchase, for some it is an experiment in comfort, for others it is a serious investment...in my household as an example we maintain the mentality that anything that costs over $200 is an investment and should be relatively well thought out...others that I know wouldn't give a 2nd thought about dropping $1000 on something as they don't want to invest the time/energy into a decision...if what they buy does not work for them they will drop some more money on something else until they find what suits them...that does not work for me....but factors like that define the decision making process.

For the OP:
Happy hunting for a suit that will fit your needs.

Cheers,
-Z
 
I teach drysuit seminars around the country. I do so because I feel I bring a unique perspective to the conversation and I believe that I also bring a logical and passionate argument for a better way to dive. I have thousands that swear not by what I say but by what they experience.

So let me try to explain. When I learned to dive back in the 80's in Canada there were no shell suits; there were only 7 or 8 mm neoprene drysuits and VIKING rubber suits and the occasional European suit here and there. All of our neoprene suits leaked - ALL of them. You could tell who the instructor was by the amount of AQUASEAL smeared under your arms and around your crotch. I am not making this up. I actually felt self conscious with my new suit and was relieved when it sprung a leak shortly after my second dive and I got to smear the stuff on it.

In 1987 I was asked to test dive one of the first shell suits, it was a soft blue with red knee and elbow pads and I almost froze to death. I dove about 6 or 7 other shell suits over the next 5 or 6 years.

Why did I do it? They were dry! The only reason! They were really no different than todays shell suits, except they had neoprene seals then. I use to dive every morning before work and 6 to 12 dives on the weekends, I was working my way up the diver food chain. I was cold but I was dry. No more legs filled with water, no more water trickling down my underarm. If neoprene suits had been dry there would virtually be no shell suits today but the adhesive to create a DRY neoprene drysuit was still 5 to 8 years away.

In 1994 or 1995 I was asked to test dive a new 5 mm neoprene drysuit made of a new prototype material known as compressed neoprene. It was a revelation after the thousand or so dives I had done over the previous 8 years in shell suits.

All of a sudden I was warm, fast, comfortable, with a longer bottom time, with easy buoyancy control and other than testing different suits I have stayed with the superiority of neoprene. Will I convince everyone? Of course not, I know that. But for those who really want to experience diving in it's real magic, you should give it a try.

I know that there are those that are sold on their own suits and have limited exposure to other suits and that's OK. What bothers me is when some of them become loud and vocal defending their own suits when they have so little experience with other suits. What if you are wrong? What if there are other drysuits better than yours and your horseradish just kept a bunch of folks from finding it? Be careful. Thanks for listening.

Bruce
SEASOFT SCUBA
 
Stay away from neoprene. Stick to trilam. No buoyancy issues as stated here.
This isn’t why I would choose trilam over neo but everyone I have seen with a neo drysuit has bad trim and ok buoyancy. Everyone I’ve seen with trilam are really good looking divers in the water who know their **** and have said to me to stay away from neo.

The most important thing is fit - whatever suit you buy.
 
everyone I have seen with a neo drysuit has bad trim and ok buoyancy. Everyone I’ve seen with trilam are really good looking divers in the water who know their **** and have said to me to stay away from neo
I think you may be mixing up correlation and causation. And that there may just be a smidgen of confirmation bias as well.
 
I think you may be mixing up correlation and causation. And that there may just be a smidgen of confirmation bias as well.

I think you may be inferring the wrong thing from his post.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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