Question Thoughts on current weight being used

[Brett down under]

Hi, I am a new diver and have a question regarding proper weighting. For reference, i am 5’11 193 lbs, muscular build, dive a 2 piece 7mm wetsuit, jacket stile bc (specifically apeks exotech), single steel 72. Right now for my dives I wear 32 lbs of lead, and i believe am overweighted with that much. The only reason I dove with that much in the first place is that with 30 i seemed to have trouble sinking and around 10 or so feet i would pop to the surface with not much I could do about it. I believe I was over inflating my bc at depth and not properly venting so by the time i hit 15 ft I have an uncontrolled ascent. For reference I was trained on 28 lbs of lead, on a steel lp85 (i know instructors typically overweight their students). My main goal with this post is to gauge what others with a similar build and rig who are properly weighted are wearing so when I am experimenting with weight checks I’ll know around what marker to shoot for.

Thanks!

I’m a similar size and weight to you and dive 7mm wetty in salt water with a steel 12L and only use 18 lbs of weight.

 

[FreqFlier]

First, don't compare how much lead you need with anyone else. When you find it, it will be what it is, and won't be the same as anyone else

Ditto.

BP/W will help a little, but not much. 7mm farmer john compresses so much at depth, it's impossible to get your weighting right for full rec depth water column. You can make it manageable to some 40-60 ft, but anything deeper is very difficult.

"Most divers know that neoprene compresses with depth, losing buoyancy the deeper you go. But you might be surprised by how much it compresses. Most lose half their buoyancy in the first 33 feet, two-thirds by 66 feet and nearly all of it by 100 feet. At that point, 7mm neoprene foam has become solid neoprene less than 2mm thick. In this case, the buoyancy shift between the surface and 100 feet can be more than 20 pounds from the wetsuit alone."

Quality of yourwetsuit material is extremely important. Some are made of cheap easily compressible stuff.

 

[Luke99]

I don't think your weighting is really off by that much actually, the farmer john 2 piece style 7mm wetsuit setup is extremely buoyant.

If you have the ability to practice at a shallow shore site, id get a tank, purge to 500 and take 2 IBs off and see if you can still manage to descend. If so, take another 2, and so on.

As others have stated no matter what you do you are going to be quite overweighted at depth, but because of that you need to make sure you are still able to descend at 500, because after coming up from a deeper dive you don't want to then be underweighted and rocket to the surface.

Steel BP&W and steel STA would help quite a bit with getting some weight off your belt.

 

[inquis]

id get a tank, purge to 500 and take 2 IBs off and see if you can still manage to descend

Additional considerations for such a test:

• Flood the suit, as that will be its post-dive condition.
• Cross your legs at the ankles. It's common for new divers to wiggle their fins without realizing it, driving yourself upward.
• Consciously exhale.
• Completely vent the BCD, of course.