Weight Bags

[ScubaFishee]

I use an Igloo Little Playmate plastic cooler.

Small, waterproof, portable, easy to carry. Works like a charm.

 

[OE2X]

A plastic bucket works nicely ... you can get one at the hardware store for about $3.

Don't leave them in your BC's ... they tend not to dry out, and neither will your BC. That will significantly reduce the life expectency of the material ... not to mention putting excessive wear on whatever release mechanism is used on your BC weight system.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Got to agree with Bob here. Until today I used to carry around 34 lbs of weight in the bucket. I got the deluxe version with the fortified handle from Home Depot for $6.00 .
Because of a checkout dive with Uncle Pug and a new BPW, I'll be carring around only an additional 6 lbs. I wish my diet was so easy to drop the weight.

 

[dweeb]

Don't leave them in your BC's ... they tend not to dry out, and neither will your BC. That will significantly reduce the life expectency of the material ... not to mention putting excessive wear on whatever release mechanism is used on your BC weight system.

Note to self: add that to the growing list of my objections to integrated weight systems.

When I used weights, before I decided to start living healthy, I kept them on my belt, and spares just sort of lived in the bed of my truck or the trunk of my car. A weight belt is really easy to load and store on a boat.

48 lb. for two people is a lot of weight. Find an experienced diver or instructor who can work with you on getting rid of some of it. I used to wear 24 lb. dry and 18lb. wet, but then someone took me aside and said, we gotta work on getting that lead off of you.

 

[The Wanderer]

Plus, I get to work BP/W into a thread completely unrelated to it. How very ScubaBoard of me....

Everyone relax.

K[/QUOTE]



Good job in getting the BP/W comment in this thread Mo2. I can't imagine carrying around an extra 24 lbs of weight per person. For me, even with a 3mm wetsuit, 4 lbs of weight is all I need with my SS BP/W.

Now back to our regular topic.

 

[dweeb]

Available behind a supermarket near you: the new "Weight Milk Creight". They double as a gear bench when inverted.

Just keep in mind, in most states, mere possession of milk crates from a dairy that is still operating is against the law. When I was in college, so many from the local supermarket chain ended up in the dorms, they hired a detective, and a couple students ended up facing possible jail time.

 

[AtomicWalrus]

48 lb for 2 people actually isn't all that bad if you're diving the Pacific Northwest. Keep in mind that up here we're either diving 7 mm 2-piece wetsuits or in drysuits.

Note to self: add that to the growing list of my objections to integrated weight systems.

When I used weights, before I decided to start living healthy, I kept them on my belt, and spares just sort of lived in the bed of my truck or the trunk of my car. A weight belt is really easy to load and store on a boat.

48 lb. for two people is a lot of weight. Find an experienced diver or instructor who can work with you on getting rid of some of it. I used to wear 24 lb. dry and 18lb. wet, but then someone took me aside and said, we gotta work on getting that lead off of you.

 

[dweeb]

48 lb for 2 people actually isn't all that bad if you're diving the Pacific Northwest. Keep in mind that up here we're either diving 7 mm 2-piece wetsuits or in drysuits.

It's a lot of weight anywhere.

The Ohio quarries are just as cold, and in a drysuit, I wear zero lead, and sink with a 1/3 full wing. Salt water would just require emptying the wing all the way.

Several friends are the same way. The lady who taught me to get rid of the weightbelt wears no weight with her drysuit.

It's not about body type either. I've ALWAYS been fatter than my brother, who looks like a Somalian poster child.
Yet, as a novice, he needs 18 lb., wet or dry. When he started diving, the woman who taught me to shed the lead saw all the weight on his belt and said we'll have to do something about that. I have no doubt she will.

The first step to shedding the lead is to stop thinking it's normal to need so much.

 

[AtomicWalrus]

That's a pretty shaky assertion. How much weight you need is going to depend a lot on your equipment configuration.

You seem to be a DIR diver, so I'm assuming you're diving with an 8 lb SS backplate and probably a 28 or 36 lb wing. That backplate weight would allow you to offset your 1/3 full BCD. Then there's additional weight in the form of your reg(s), manifold (depending if you dive doubles), and if you're using steel tanks then you don't have to worry about adding extra weight for buoyancy at the end of the dive. Assuming you have a relatively lean body, you might inherently lack buoyancy, and then the weight of your gear might offset the buoyancy of your drysuit. Also, your drysuit buoyancy will vary a lot depending on what size you wear, the type of drysuit (neoprene being more buoyant than tri-lam), and what type of undergarments you're wearing. So, the rest of your gear might counter the buoyancy of your drysuit, or maybe you just really like suit squeeze too.

However, a lot of people DO have inherent buoyancy. They don't usually wear backplates, and usually dive a single AL80. Then you have to account for the air volume of the drysuit and any inherent buoyancy of the suit material. That buoyancy is going to scale to be a lot more for someone who's 6'2" than somebody who's 5'5" (increase in surface area of a volume goes as a square, not linearly).

At the shop I DM for in my spare time, we put a lot of stress on buoyancy checks because it's so important to get weighting fine-tuned. (A matter of life and death, really.) I can say from experience that there's a lot of variability from person to person in terms of weighting.

So, based on the experience of diving out here in the Pacific Northwest, I can say that 44 lb of weight between 2 people isn't that bad.

It's a lot of weight anywhere.

The Ohio quarries are just as cold, and in a drysuit, I wear zero lead, and sink with a 1/3 full wing. Salt water would just require emptying the wing all the way.

Several friends are the same way. The lady who taught me to get rid of the weightbelt wears no weight with her drysuit.

It's not about body type either. I've ALWAYS been fatter than my brother, who looks like a Somalian poster child.
Yet, as a novice, he needs 18 lb., wet or dry. When he started diving, the woman who taught me to shed the lead saw all the weight on his belt and said we'll have to do something about that. I have no doubt she will.

The first step to shedding the lead is to stop thinking it's normal to need so much.

 

[sharkmasterbc]

nice one G man

 

[bnaudie]

Wondering your opinions... Is getting a "weight bag" really worthwhile or is it another way to spend my money on stuff for diving instead of diving.

Military ammo can at the army surplus store for $6 is indestructible....