How much weight do I need in salt water if I weigh 205lbs. and wearing a spring suit (long sleaves/short legs 3mil?

On Apr 29, 9:27 am, log_...@verizonnet.addthedot (Rod) wrote:
> Take 2 4 pound, 2 3 pound and 2 2pound weights, On the first dive wear
> it all. at the end try to remember to keep 500 psi in your tank and
> then experiment. remove a weight and take all the air out of your BC
> you are looking to have a float depth of half way up your mask. If you
> go lower take off another weight etc then write the number down in
> your log book along with the thickness of your dive suit

Generally ok, but could be simplified. Float depth to halfway up your
mask is way more precise than necessary. All you have to know is
whether you float or sink. If you float, you need more weight. The
least amount of weight that causes you to sink is what you want.

Plus, when you are doing this test, exhale first.

bracuk@axxent.ca sexually excited me with:

> Generally ok, but could be simplified. Float depth to halfway up your
> mask is way more precise than necessary. All you have to know is
> whether you float or sink. If you float, you need more weight. The
> least amount of weight that causes you to sink is what you want.
>
> Plus, when you are doing this test, exhale first.

oh, i love it when you big macho men do those deep breathing exercises. it
just gets me -so- horny.

"red sea diver" <yasser.demerdash@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1177837739.141137.182950@o5g2000hsb.googlegro ups.com...
> On Apr 29, 3:52 am, "CB" <C...@PrayForMe.com> wrote:
>> How much weight do I need in salt water if I weigh 205lbs. and wearing a
>> spring suit (long sleaves/short legs 3mil?
>
> hi
> we get this question so often here as well in the red sea, and the
> typical answer and the best solution is to PERFORM A BUOYANCY CHECK.
> because no calculation would be useful.it's all individual
> differences, some people are relaxed and some others not, some people
> have good breathing and others don't, some have the most of their
> weight in their fats while others have it in their muscles...
> buoyancy check.
> 1-put all equipment in place.
> 2-enter water too deep to stand up in.
> 3-stay vertical and motionless in the water.
> 4-deflate all the air from your BCD and hold a normal breath.
> 5-if you are properly weighted u should float to eye level, to test
> it exhale , you should sink slowly.
> 6-add 2 kg to compensate for you air as u breathing it the tank will
> go lighter.
>
> i hope you find this information useful
> Dive Well
> Yasser

What he said! Don't guess. Too little and you won't sink. Too much and
you'll have trouble getting to the surface. And put everything down in your
log book. Any changes in equipment, clothing, diet or exercise will change
the weight.

Sheldon

Can you get in fresh water (say, a pool) with the same gear?

If so: get weighted neutrally. Take the weight of the system (diver, tank, lead, P valve, whatever). If you have a
full AL80, add 6 pounds. If you have an emptyish AL80, add nothing, if something else, ask here. Take
that weight, multiply by .0256. That's how much MORE lead you will need in salt water. That's not a rule
of thumb, that's high school physics.


"CB" <CB@PrayForMe.com> wrote in message news:4633fa4a$0$9885$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> How much weight do I need in salt water if I weigh 205lbs. and wearing a spring suit (long sleaves/short legs 3mil?
>
>

"CB" <CB@PrayForMe.com> wrote in message
news:4633fa4a$0$9885$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> How much weight do I need in salt water if I weigh 205lbs. and wearing a
> spring suit (long sleaves/short legs 3mil?
>
>

I ended up with 17.3 lbs. and it was ok. I had to dump absolutely all gas
from my BC to get down passed 20 feet but after that sunk like a rock.

I should say that most of my 205 lbs. is muscle and not from being 'big
boned'...(at the risk of getting homos all excited).

"CB" <CB@PrayForMe.com> wrote in message
news:4636361e$0$15138$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...

> I ended up with 17.3 lbs. and it was ok. I had to dump absolutely all gas
> from my BC to get down passed 20 feet but after that sunk like a rock.
>
> I should say that most of my 205 lbs. is muscle and not from being 'big
> boned'...(at the risk of getting homos all excited).

Sounds good, you should have to dump all of your BC gas to descend.

What you don't want is to do a long dive, be at the edge of a potential deco
hit, have 300 psi left in your bottle and be unable to stay at 20 or ten
feet for a safety stop.

If that does happen, you hit the surface, orally inflate (again not wanting
to get Carl excited) your BC and just be as still as you can for ten minutes
minimum.

Obviously this is not possible in many boat dive situations, but is the
ideal.

It is actually better to dive a little heavy than to be at the edge.

My rig is 5# heavy, and I have a solid 5# weight that I can pull out quickly
to hand off to divers when we hit 20 so they can hang on to it and finish
the safety stop.

In the past 5 years, I have used this so many times I cant count them all.

In my locale it isn't such a big deal, we live at the edge of a glacial
fjord, and most of our dives you can hit 30 feet within 50 feet of the
waterline.

Worse comes to worse, you can just pick up a big rock.

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:29:42 -0600, "Sheldon"
<sheldon@XXXXXXXXsopris.net> wrote:
> What he said! Don't guess. Too little and you won't sink. Too much and
> you'll have trouble getting to the surface. And put everything down in your
> log book. Any changes in equipment, clothing, diet or exercise will change
> the weight.

I have to wonder if perhaps the dive shops don't really go much into
proper weighting these days... Kaitlyn finished up her open water
dives for her SSI certification this weekend and this was one of the
things that I noticed... It seems that their philosophy is to just
throw enough weight on them so that they can *definitely* sink and
then rely on the BC to make up for it... I spent some time between
dives with Kaitlyn, adding one weight at a time to her weightbelt,
getting her as close to neutrally buoyant on the surface as
possible... Since she was using Grace's BC (which is a typical jacket
style unit), I added soft weights separately to it in the pockets to
get it neutrally buoyant with no air in the BC and a nearly empty
tank...

I saw students who would not jump into the water with their weightbelt
on and their BC not on because they weren't sure how negatively
buoyant they would be without the BC... Personally, I figure that is
something that you should figure out either in the class or at least
in the time before the dives on the open water days...

It was kind of funny to watch the students trying to put on their
jacket style BCs in the water for one of the skill tests... They would
pump their BC completely full of air and then to wiggle around and get
both arms in it... What with all the dangling hoses and straps and the
fact that the BC was way up on the surface, this ended up looking like
some sort of contortion contest...

It's a good thing that they were doing the skills tests on a platform
that was suspended well off the bottom... The students had gauges,
regs, and whatnot dangling all over everywhere... If they had been
near the bottom, everything would have been dragging through it and
making the visibility even crappier than it already was...

Oh well... It was a busy weekend (and a busy 3 weeks for the classes),
but she's finally certified... Looks like she'll be making the trip to
Florida with me this year...

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:59:32 -0700, "Scott"
<pugetsounddiver@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sounds good, you should have to dump all of your BC gas to descend.
>
> What you don't want is to do a long dive, be at the edge of a potential deco
> hit, have 300 psi left in your bottle and be unable to stay at 20 or ten
> feet for a safety stop.

These days, I'm tending to go with the idea of determining the weight
needed for diver separately from the equipment... Putting it all
together is great if you always dive the same configuration, but you
mix and match things dependent upon the conditions for the dive for
that day, it would be nice to just have a list of weights needed for
each piece of gear... Instead of having to list all the possible
combinations of gear that you might dive with, you just list each item
separately... You probably still have to list a value for the item in
salt and fresh water, but it is probably a bit less work than listing
every possible combination like normally...

Let's say that the equipment choices are a FJ top, FJ bottom, FJ
top+bottom, single AL80, double AL80s, single steel-72, double steel
72s... With the all possible combination method, you end up with
3*4=12 possible weighting options for each particular water type (i.e.
fresh or salt) + 1 more weighting for your own natural buoyancy =
13...

FJ top, AL80
FJ top, double AL80s
FJ top, steel-72
FJ top, double steel-72s
FJ bottom, AL80
FJ bottom, double AL80s
FJ bottom, steel-72
FJ bottom, double steel-72s
FJ top+bottom, AL80
FJ top+bottom, double AL80s
FJ top+bottom, steel-72
FJ top+bottom, double steel-72s
your own natural buoyancy weighting

With the separate method of weight calculation, you would need 4
measurements for each water type:

your own natural buoyancy weighting
FJ top
FJ bottom
steel-72
AL80

Kind of like when we're calculating weight and balance on aircraft,
come to think of it... We start out with a base measurement and then
add on the other items that get added to the plane and their moment
arm locations in reference to some base point...

With respect to the fresh vs salt water weighting issues, if this can
be accurately calculated mathematically as someone previously
suggested, that's one less set of measurements that you would need to
take...

CB wrote:
> "CB" <CB@PrayForMe.com> wrote in message
> news:4633fa4a$0$9885$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>
>>How much weight do I need in salt water if I weigh 205lbs. and wearing a
>>spring suit (long sleaves/short legs 3mil?
>>
>>
>
>
> I ended up with 17.3 lbs. and it was ok. I had to dump absolutely all gas
> from my BC to get down passed 20 feet but after that sunk like a rock.
>
> I should say that most of my 205 lbs. is muscle and not from being 'big
> boned'...(at the risk of getting homos all excited).
>
>
This leads me to ask, and perhaps I am reading something into your
message. Did you have to work at it to get to 20 ft, or did you drop
immediately once you dumped your BC? If you had to struggle, then how
was your buoyancy at the end of the dive? Could you easily maintain
neutral buoyancy at 15-20 ft for you safety stop?

Grumman-581 <grumman...@DIE-SPAMMER-SCUM-gmail.com> wrote:

> These days, I'm tending to go with the idea of determining the weight
> needed for diver separately from the equipment... Putting it all
> together is great if you always dive the same configuration, but you
> mix and match things dependent upon the conditions for the dive for
> that day, it would be nice to just have a list of weights needed for
> each piece of gear... Instead of having to list all the possible
> combinations of gear that you might dive with, you just list each item
> separately... You probably still have to list a value for the item in
> salt and fresh water, but it is probably a bit less work than listing
> every possible combination like normally...

I did something like that years ago.

Only real difference is that I used typical groupings instead of
individual pieces.


> Kind of like when we're calculating weight and balance on aircraft,
> come to think of it... We start out with a base measurement and then
> add on the other items that get added to the plane and their moment
> arm locations in reference to some base point...

Pretty much.

FWIW, I did the same thing for SAC estimates, a baseline plus
modifiers for various environmental and/or condition factors (cold,
current, etc). For the most part, I run these as +X% percentages.


-hh