New water trap for the KISS

Philippe GERIN

One can tolerate water or recover from a flood on a Rebreather that has lots of loop volume in reserve, especially before the scrubber.
Following that logic, on the CK, how about removing the fitting that holds the CL and replace it with a T that takes: top = exhale hose ; bottom = CL ; side = head. The top orifice (where the exhale hose goes in originaly) is plugged.
That would probably imply to have a new case made with a bigger depth to accomodate that new T, but not that much deeper. And of course, some kind of valve on the CL to flush the water.
IMO this is the best way to gain a water trap without increasing the wob because it maintains a direct path of the gaz (and water if present).
But that's a lot of mod to gain a water trap that I didn't need so far in a few hundreds of hours on the CK. I had only a partial flood once in a drill, never (knock on wood) so far for real.
Best
Philippe

lizardland

That's been my view of water in the CK as well. Water is going to get there either by letting water in through the DSV (avoidable), a break in the loop or a failed/missing seal. With the last two then the problem is going to be persistent so a water trap/dump is doing you very little good, you're just going to be blowing gas out of it as the dive continues.

For natural condensate I've found an absorbent in the bottom of the scrubber works well though I've found tampons can expand and affect WOB. That doesn't help condensate in the head though, I've had some very odd readings at 6m after long dives.

I think Dave's last comment is very relevant. I've tipped a lot of water out of the CK which, apart from a lot of gurgling, hadn't been causing any problem. I think the dead lime in the bottom of the can goes a long way to act as an absorbent, the CK does have a very long lime bed to get through. I'm still not keen on introducing another dump, partly because it's a failure point, partly because I'd be using gas fixing something that doesn't really need fixed when I could just get on with going home.

I can't help thinking either if you want this sort of "expedition" grade performance from the CK then it's not the rebreather you want. But then the appeal of the KISS for me was it's lack of bells and whistles.

Cheers,

Stuart

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EBT

I've also always wanted flood recovery, but then you have to ask yourself, if you cant fix the source of the flood what are you going to do? Unless you're now plugging in an offboard big enough to drive your higher dil requirements you're delaying the problem.

IF i ever manage to find a way to add flood recovery without creating too many other risks, I'll add it. Until then I quite like the way kiss is focused on prevention rather than cure.

Mark, as you probably guessed many of us have scratched our head over the same issue. If you put the dump on the bottom, you need to go upright to dump it, then you have to get the bottom dump to blow before the top one (maybe blank the top off). You'll also have the issue that at least some of the water is going to have soaked into the bottom of the can.

I kinda gave up when my thought process took me towards either;

a. more prevention with t-pieces, but these then mean more loop breaks
b. a redesign of the bottom of the can. (might be as easy as putting hydroscopic membrane in the bottom and an o ring seal around the inner cartridge to prevent water getting around the outside.


/Z

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