weight for wetsuit buoyancy

[spthomas]

I'm wearing a wetsuit for the first time, a 3mm fullsuit. In saltwater, with trunks and t-shirt, I wear 4 lbs lead. Any ideas how much the wetsuit will add (in freshwater, 80 degree surface/65 degree depth)? I want to buy more lead if it looks like I need to.

Also, I'm using a web weight belt with hard weights. Do people still do that? I see all the pocket weight belts with soft weights, and I feel hopelessly out of date.

=Steve=

 

[Diver0001]

spthomas once bubbled...
I'm wearing a wetsuit for the first time, a 3mm fullsuit. In saltwater, with trunks and t-shirt, I wear 4 lbs lead. Any ideas how much the wetsuit will add (in freshwater, 80 degree surface/65 degree depth)? I want to buy more lead if it looks like I need to.

Also, I'm using a web weight belt with hard weights. Do people still do that? I see all the pocket weight belts with soft weights, and I feel hopelessly out of date.

=Steve=

What do you usually wear for exposure protection?

R..

 

[ABQdiver]

I normally dive freshwater, and (of course you know) that salt takes more weight. For me 185# 3/2 Bare jumpsuit in fresh I was using 6#. The next few dives in saltwater I added 4# taking it up to 10#. I might have been a tad heavy, but it felt fine and buoyancy control was good.

I think you might be OK with the 4# you normally use. It wouldn't hurt to have extra weight just in case.

BTW, a lot of people still use the hard weights.

 

[Tropics Diver]

spthomas once bubbled...
I'm wearing a wetsuit for the first time, a 3mm fullsuit. In saltwater, with trunks and t-shirt, I wear 4 lbs lead. Any ideas how much the wetsuit will add (in freshwater, 80 degree surface/65 degree depth)?

Most people need to remove about 6 pounds when going from salt to fresh water. The buoyancy of a 3mm wetsuit is pretty close to 6 pounds (obviously varies with your size and the exact suit), so you will probably end up just about the same 4 pounds after a few dives.

If it is a new suit, you might need a couple extra pounds until it's been compressed a few times. It is also better to be a few pounds heavy than being too light, so I'd recommend starting off with with either 6 pounds or 8 pounds of weight, knowing that you may be 2-4 pounds overweighted.

 

[spthomas]

Thanks for the info. The reason I have so little knowledge about this is that, with over 70 logged dives, I've only been down in freshwater 7 times, and 5 of those were my initial cert checkout in 1978! I have done all my diving in the Coz, Cayman, and Hawaii (tough, I know!). There, in 78-85 degree water, I dive in a t-shirt and trunks! So diving isn't new to me, but colder water diving is.

I bought a 6.5 mm 2-piece when I was in Illinois, but never got the chance to dive there, and I've lost 60 pounds so my XXXL suit doesn't fit anyway.

=Steve=