Quote: (Originally Posted by
Dave Sutton)
You MUST redo the internal counterlung hose connections to the "Y" that feeds gas into the scrubbers. They have become undone and lead to scrubber bypass. We "almost" lost a diver here because of that. I jumped into the water off the boat 30 miles ofshore and rescued him. He was *totally* incapacitated by the C02 and was unable to even remove his DSV and breathe surface air. This was a surface swimming incident, after he entered the water but bfore he made it to the anchor line for descent. It scared us LOTS. I swam clothes and all...
Dave
I had the ever lovin’ crap scared out of me, as well, when I found my dive buddy passed out cold, eyes rolled back into his head, within maybe 30 seconds of death. When we tore down his rig we discovered the very first recorded instance of one these clamps breaking. I later found BOTH of mine broken, just waiting to kill me. Guys, this is a VERY vulnerable Achilles’ heel of an otherwise very robust rig.
Quote: (Originally Posted by
montyg)
Hi Dave, others
We have been lucky here in SA since all four IDA-71's came with very sturdy metal clamps on all three sides of the T-piece on the exhalation side going through the counterlung.
rgds
monty
Hi Monty-
Here is what becomes of your ”sturdy metal clamps” after a busy season of diving. The folded over tab breaks and allows the hose to come off inside the bag. Instant total scrubber bypass.
It gets even better: The clamp can break but the hose not come off right away- what happened to me IN TWO PLACES. Why is this bad? It can give you a false positive on your secondary negative pressure check you should be performing to verify the integrity of just this small portion of the loop. The suction can hold an unclamped hose in place. Also note that the nature and location of this failure dictates it will NOT be revealed by a standard negative pressure check!
The localized (second) negative pressure check can be executed by plugging the bag’s outputs w/ rubber plugs & attaching the INHALE fitting of your breathing hoses to the EXHALE fitting on the top of the rig. Suck ‘er down & see what happens. Vacuum gets released by unscrewing the attached hose fitting.
Hope this helps- to keep you & mates alive!
Dive safe,
Ken