weight belt failure

[XJJoe01]

I am a new diver with about 5 dives since my OW certification. I was diving with a trident weight belt with built in pouches and I had about 14 KGs of weight in it. I was diving with a regular BCD and was wearing a full body 5mm wetsuit, hood, and gloves. About 15 minutes and 32 feet into our dive, the belt broke, literally tore apart were the pouch was sewed to the belt. I grabbed the belt and got my dive buddy's attention. My feet floated towards the top placing me into a headstand while I checked my air pressure and depth (confirmed 32 feet and 2600 psi). My dive buddy and I tried to put the belt back on, but at this stage, we didn't know it had torn at this time, and decided to surface. I held onto the belt, got my head in the correct position and slowly ascended to the surface with my dive buddy. I tried to put the belt back on, but with no luck and this is when we noticed the belt was torn and we snorkeled back to shore.

Since then, I bought a new heavy duty traditional weight belt and new weights, since on the surface, the belt broke again and sank, but is there anything we should have done differently?

Thanks,

Joe

 

[lowviz]

You always have this option: https://www.saferproducts.gov/CPSRMSPublic/Incidents/ReportIncident.aspx

Search on "scuba recalls" to see the results of other complaints. A commercially supplied weight belt should not fail in this manner.

Pays to check here now and again: http://www.saferproducts.gov/Search/Result.aspx?dm=0&pcid=726,2118&srt=0

 

[eelnoraa]

how about make yourself a weight belt using 2 inch wide webbing threading through hard weight, metal buckle. I can't imagine this will even break.

 

[luscioman]

What brand belt was it? You were diving with 30#s with a 5mm suit? Glad to hear that the incident was handled safely. Many people swear by a weight belt but I have switched to integrated weights.

 

[XJJoe01]

how about make yourself a weight belt using 2 inch wide webbing threading through hard weight, metal buckle. I can't imagine this will even break.

This is how the new weight belt is. It is heavy duty 2 inch webbing and I have thread the weights through it.

-Joe

---------- Post added January 20th, 2014 at 12:41 PM ----------

What brand belt was it? You were diving with 30#s with a 5mm suit? Glad to hear that the incident was handled safely. Many people swear by a weight belt but I have switched to integrated weights.

I think I had way too much weight weight, but that is a different topic. I have found a salt water pool and will take almost empty tank and do the weight check. According to the calculators, I should be around 25lbs.

This is more of a what else, if anything, should have been done differently after the event occurred. Also, I am in the process of changing to a bp/w setup, but I am waiting for a new reg set to come it. The current jacket uses an Air 2 and I don't want to swap it. This is also another topic...

Thanks,

Joe

 

[nimoh]

While I agree that the weight belt shouldn't break in this manner, 14kg is a lot to be putting on a weight belt. In an emergency, the idea is to ditch the weight belt to get positive and go up, but ditching 14kg is very likely to put you into a dangerous rapid ascent (assuming you aren't grossly over-weighted to begin with). Also, putting this much weight around your waist will tend to keep you vertical, making it much more work to swim in any direction but up.

You might try distributing some of that weight into trim pockets, and also experiment with getting rid of some of that weight. However, I know nothing of what exposure protection you are wearing, your body type or any of the gear you may be carrying, so I could easily be wrong about this...just something to consider.

 

[CT-Rich]

Sounds like you got a bit of a surprise... you did the right thing aborting the dive. Without pictures of the failed belt, it would be hard to say much about its failure. When I read the start of the post I thought it was going to be about a buckle failure. Most weight belts will have a band of nylon webbing that is the actual belt and then the weights are slotted on to it. 28 lb is a lot of soft weight to hang off your waist, and I could see a pocket failure (I've seen that with people trying get all of there dry suit lead packed into a BCD). You did the smart thing to hold onto the lead at depth and surface.

For the future, I would suggest that you look at how you are distributing weight. I keep 12 lb on my belt (cast lead 2 x 6 lb), 12 in my BCD (2x 6lb) and about 4 in pockets next to the tank (those are the only non-ditchable weights on my rig). For a belt I like a metal buckle and nylon. With this configuration I have options about how much to drop while not becoming a missile. I don't hang anything off of it for 2 reasons 1) I won't be tempted to keep it because I don't want to lose my camera-light-or expensive toy, and 2) if I ditch it, it will not have anything to catch on as it comes off (not a guarantee, but hey...). I have never had to ditch on a dive or at the surface, but I always check/ adjust it when I get to depth so I know I am still good.

 

[XJJoe01]

While I agree that the weight belt shouldn't break in this manner, 14kg is a lot to be putting on a weight belt. In an emergency, the idea is to ditch the weight belt to get positive and go up, but ditching 14kg is very likely to put you into a dangerous rapid ascent (assuming you aren't grossly over-weighted to begin with). Also, putting this much weight around your waist will tend to keep you vertical, making it much more work to swim in any direction but up.

You might try distributing some of that weight into trim pockets, and also experiment with getting rid of some of that weight. However, I know nothing of what exposure protection you are wearing, your body type or any of the gear you may be carrying, so I could easily be wrong about this...just something to consider.

In retrospect, I agree with you the belt had too much weight in it and I will follow the advice of you and others to spread around my weight. Per my original post, I was diving with a full body 5mm wetsuit with gloves and hood. For my physical size, I am 5'8, 190lbs. I am not a gym rat, but I run 8 minute miles.

Thanks,

Joe

 

[eelnoraa]

This is how the new weight belt is. It is heavy duty 2 inch webbing and I have thread the weights through it.

So which part of the belt broke? Is it webbing get tear apart? every unlikely with 14kg. buckle broke?

I also agree that 14kG (30lb) for 5mm suit seems on the high side. Beside redistribute the weight, maybe also do weight check once more to comfirm if you need that much.

 

[XJJoe01]

For the future, I would suggest that you look at how you are distributing weight. I keep 12 lb on my belt (cast lead 2 x 6 lb), 12 in my BCD (2x 6lb) and about 4 in pockets next to the tank (those are the only non-ditchable weights on my rig). For a belt I like a metal buckle and nylon. With this configuration I have options about how much to drop while not becoming a missile. I don't hang anything off of it for 2 reasons 1) I won't be tempted to keep it because I don't want to lose my camera-light-or expensive toy, and 2) if I ditch it, it will not have anything to catch on as it comes off (not a guarantee, but hey...). I have never had to ditch on a dive or at the surface, but I always check/ adjust it when I get to depth so I know I am still good.

It was a bit of a surprise, but I figured since I grabbed the weight belt and had plenty of air, everything was okay. Also, since I was at 32 feet, I figured worst case, I would ascend to the surface much faster than recommended, but since I did have the weight belt, I can surface with the loose belt and control my accent.

My current bcd does not have an integrated weight system, but my dive buddy thinks a good idea would be to place 4 kgs of weight in the pockets of the bcd and the rest on the belt. I just have to see if the zippered pockets are strong enough to handle the weight and this would place the rest of the weight as ditch-able.

Thanks,

Joe

---------- Post added January 20th, 2014 at 01:14 PM ----------

Without pictures of the failed belt, it would be hard to say much about its failure.

In a little bit, I am going to check my GoPro and see if it caught any footage of the broken belt. I currently have the camera attached to the bcd in a tether. I wasn't messing with it when the belt broke as we were still working our way to deeper water where a 6ft stingray lives. If it matters, the ocean temperature was 61 degrees.

Thanks,

Joe