Sport KISS loop flood...

Andy M

Went for a little pootle with my Sport KISS in Guildenburgh this evening, the visibility was outstanding, and there were more fish than a coral reef dive. seriously.

Anyway, while bailing out onto a stage as practice drill, i managed to forget to close the DSV (went onto onboard OC first, forgot that i was on OC, then stupidly opened the mouthpiece automatically just before i took it out of my mouth) Quite a lot of water went in before i noticed (thought the onboard OC DV had a little freeflow so ignored it for a bit... )

Went back on the loop (cos I wanted to see how it behaves), WOB was pretty hard and the ADV kept firing occasionally, but i carried on diving for another 15 mins around 15m. Was getting a bit of a dull head and that CO2 brainache though, so started doing SCR.

Took Sport KISS apart at home, the entire right side of the scrubber (exhale) was soaking wet, but there was only about a cm of water in the exhale CL. Seems the kitty litter absorbed most of the water. The left hand side of the scrubber and left hand (inhale) CL was dry.

So, loop flood on the Sport KISS, not good. Needs a water trap of some sort. I am using sofnolime 797 at the moment, would using sofnolime CD improve matters if i flooded the loop again? I am thinking WOB would be better when the kitty litter is wet. Seems that one half of the scrubber (on the inhale side) is not enough to keep you going for a bit.

[EDIT: forgot to mention, I had quite a job getting the exhale red pod off, because the kitty litter had expanded due to water saturation, and was pushing up against the pod mesh]

caveseeker7

Andy,

Gordon showed prototypes of the additional on-the-shoulder counterlungs at DEMA last year. They were originally designed to lower WOB in order to get CE certification for the SportKiss.

As you can see in the picture below, they are quite small, not really reaching over the shoulder but rather on top of them, and supposed to be used together with the backmounted ones.

One very nice feature is the water deflector across from the screen that should deflect most of the water into the breathing bag.

I posted 2 more pics in the gallery.

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Stefan



"Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority,
and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media,
which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.!"

Andy M

Looks good do they come in pairs? I guess you only really need one, on the exhale side to act as water trap. i find the WOB just fine as it is without.

Problem with just one O-T-S CL the unit would look a bit strange and asymmetrical, and what if you wanted to fit it to the extra large scrubber.

I can think of all sorts of stuff that could be stacked up on the top of the scrubber, such as VR3 4th cell, e-kiss unit, loop gas heater with battery pack, scrubber illuminator, loop gas ioniser, nicotine injection unit, fragrance injection unit...

caveseeker7

That's the plan afaik.

By the time you add it all up you'll be swinging on the hoses like a monkey ...

__________________
Cheers
Stefan



"Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority,
and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media,
which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.!"

nl_carey

The effects of your loop flood are interesting - during my course I had a loop flood (during bailout practice) having left the DSV out of my mouth in CC mode for about 10 seconds, and had about 200mls or so of water in the exhale bag. No noticable increase in breathing resistance, no difference at all really. The sorb had a little bit of moisture in it, but hadn't increased in size or anything - the big difference between the sides was the colour of the sorb.
The only difference I can come up with is we were using the large granule sofnolime (4-8 IIRC) which may make up the difference. Perhaps the smaller stuff isn't good to use unless you need the extra duration?

Andy M

At the time of the loop flood, (mouthpiece open for about 30-40secs). I was vertical in the water column, so the scrubber would have had water all over it from all sides at the top. Were you horizontal? If so, the water would probably only hit the side of the scrubber nearest your back. Thus WOB would be better because there is still a dryish channel through the exhale scrubber.

I will try large granules with my next order, and do another loop flood (hopefully deliberate!) to see what happens then.

nl_carey

Yeah, I was horizontal, but after looking at it afterwards the idea that the water only when through to my back isn't really the issue. The whole section was soggy, it's just that it didn't matter too much. Gordon has also said he's had/seen floods before that didn't affect things too much, so I think if anything it might be too tightly packed small granule sorb that's the culprit.

nl_carey

Just an update on this Andy... using the smaller sorb for the first time lately on a couple of dives, and after the unit had time to have moisture develop in it (after a 2hr dive and surface interval the first time, and at the end of a 1hr dive the second time) I have noticed serious increases in WOB, enough to make me want to bailout. Tearing down the unit later, it seems the sorb expanded in the scrubber, no doubt the cause of WOB increases. I've had more diving durations and similar exposures with the larger sorb without having this problem before, so I'm willing to make a call that the smaller sorb suffers from this more.
So - I'm not planning to use the smaller sorb again, and if I'm forced to, I'll be sure and leave a bit of extra space for the expansion effects.

robinfante

I use 6-12 mesh pretty much exclusively since training (45 hours ago), and haven't seen an issue with wob going up. I prefer it because I find it much easier to pack (less settling), and it is much less expensive here in the states. I wanted to see if I had just become conditioned to it, so I dove a couple of scrubbers of 4-8, but didn't notice a difference.

I also had a pretty decent flood on a 4-8 scrubber once (first ow dive, what a butthead) I knew how much had gone in, so I stayed on the loop and was just very cautious with it. wob stayed about the same, but it tasted nasty. As others have seen, the exhalation side of the scrubber was wet and clumpy, with a fair amount of water in the cl. The inhalation cl had almost no water in it.

rdriver

Hey,
Has anyone heard anything more about Moisture traps or OTS counter lungs for the SK?
Rob