Diving With Or Without A Weight Belt?

[scubnewb]

I have seen some people who do not use any sort of weightbelt and just use the intergrated weights in thier BCD and I have seen some who use just a weightbelt and I have seen some who use weights in the BCD and also use a weightbelt. Just wondering what people are using and why and what other options are out there as well. Just looking to learn more about weighting in general...

[Dusty2]

I'm sure you will get a hundred different opinions on this but here is mine. I no longer dive a bcd but I still used this when I did, I wear both
I carry allot of weight and I know everyone sez I could drop some but facts is facts and I have tried many times to drop some with bad results so I dive what I dive and that's the way it is.

So I split my weights between the pockets on my harness and a DUI weight and trim since I carry more than either can handle alone. My reason is partially the a fore mentioned but also be cause I feel it gives me allot more options should I need to drop weight for some reason. For one thing the dive right pockets I have on my harness are a pita to pull the weights out of so I leave that for a last resort if needed. The weight and trim is a piece of cake to dump for me or a rescuer. Just grab the handles and pull and they will fall away cleanly. It's a bit of a pain to restring the ripcord but I have never needed to so that's a non issue. The release on the DUI is the cleanest I have seen on any belt or BC. The diverite pockets are a royal pain and If I were to do it again I would get the OMS pockets instead. anyway having multiple pockets makes since to me because if I lose one pocket I am not headed for the surface like a rocket and a rescuer could pull any one to get me up if needed. without total loss of control.

That's my 2 PSI

[vs920]

I was told by an instructor that your buoyancy is your lungs and tank right above your lungs; that being said, he said it didn’t make sense to have weights on my waist because they were out of position to compensate for my lungs and tank inline on your upper body. So recently I’ve been diving with my weight just in my BC, I can see the logic especially if you’re diving a BP/W setup with a SS back plate. It’s kind of a pain right now because I’m switching to two different sized tanks between dives and having to figure out my weighting. But I’m getting there and I like the weight off of my hips.

[LCF]

What you do with your weights needs to accomplish a few simple things.

First, and most important, you have to have enough weight, and not too much. In Puget Sound, with the insulation we need, one sometimes needs more weight than the integrated pockets in a BC will safely carry. (Sometimes you can stuff more into them, but the retaining mechanism is not designed to withstand that -- that's one of the ways people lose weight pouches.)

Second, many people want to have at least SOME weight that can be ditched. Although situations where one would want to ditch at depth are hard to envision, needing or wanting to dump some weight at the surface is conceivable. Integrated weights and weight belts, and the pouches in weight harnesses, all fill that bill; weight in trim or camband pockets, or integrated into backplates or STAs, does not.

Third, you would like to arrange your weights so that you can float in a horizontal position without having to kick constantly to maintain it. This is where what you are doing with the REST of your rig becomes quite important. If you are a tall person using a very short, negative tank (like an HP80), you may have a problem with floaty feet. In that case, moving , weight as far down your body as you can will help. That's when you look at your BC and figure out whether the integrated weight pockets are higher or lower on your torso than a weight belt will sit, and consider whether a weight harness like the DUI one will allow you to drop the weights a little further.

More people end up diving feet low all the time, because the weights in a belt or in integrated weight pockets are TOO low on the body, and those people need to move weight UP. That's one of the big selling points of backplate systems in the PNW!

Other considerations are whether you are okay with hanging all the weight of your rig off your shoulders, or prefer to carry some on your hips (if you have them), and whether you are good at getting integrated weight pouches into a BC that's sitting on the bench on a boat (a skill I never mastered without swearing). And the final piece is whether your particular body will support a weight belt, because men in particular often don't have a very good place for one to rest, and they don't find them comfortable.

I fall into the weight belt group, and my husband uses a DUI weight & trim. Neither of us dives a weight-integrated BC.

[Dusty2]

Ah, Lynn you hit the head right on the nail! You gotts to have a waist to wear a weight belt!

[lamont]

I was told by an instructor that your buoyancy is your lungs and tank right above your lungs; that being said, he said it didn’t make sense to have weights on my waist because they were out of position to compensate for my lungs and tank inline on your upper body. So recently I’ve been diving with my weight just in my BC, I can see the logic especially if you’re diving a BP/W setup with a SS back plate. It’s kind of a pain right now because I’m switching to two different sized tanks between dives and having to figure out my weighting. But I’m getting there and I like the weight off of my hips.

+1 on getting your weight nearer to your center of gravity which is somewhere around your mid-chest nearer to your lungs.

The weighting config most divers start out with has light tanks closer to their head with 30# of lead or so near their hips (and sometimes ankle weights for some godforsaken reason) all acting to torque their legs down.

The distribution of weight can be changed by:

- using a steel backplate which moves some weight up near the center of gravity.

- using a weighted single tank adapter which has 5# of lead in the same position (this is sort of a more secure way of doing tank weights)

- using a steel tank rather than an aluminum tank, and often moving the tank up higher (a lot of Al80s i see hang down really low, which is probably trying to move the positive buoyancy of the Al80 lower -- you can instead move the negative buoyancy of a steel tank higher -- up until you start to hit your head).

This also eliminates some ditchable, which may be a good thing since you should not be ditching 30# of weight at depth and doing a ballistic ascent and should only need to ditch roughly the swing weight of your gas (about 5-10# in a recreational diver) to maintain positive buoyancy at the surface -- so more than 10# of ditchable should not be required (unless you are overweighted -- but you should fix the root problem there).

Tech divers will start to switch entirely to non-ditchable weight (steel tanks, steel backplate and a v-weight running the center of the doubles), but the trade-off there is that they expect to manage their gas and never have a true OOA where they can't get any gas from their buddy and plan around that (since they're very dead if that happens while they're under an overhead).

For a typical jacket BC or back-inflate, I'm not sure exactly how to accomplish the same weighting changes, but clearly tank choice still applies, and you can look for other ways to move lead from your waist up nearer to your chest, including tank weights (although make sure they are very secure -- you don't want them ever falling off on a dive).

[Beefcake]

My answer leads to a challenge that I'm facing. I started with a weight belt, but my belly / waist are bigger than my butt, so It fell down a lot. I added shoulder straps to the belt, but they made it exremely hard to ditch if necessary (buckles were under BCD). I later switched to a Black Diamond BCD and had everything in the integrated pockets and tank band pockets, but I didn't end up liking this BCD (trapped air). I switched to a BPW (which I love), and have added a DUI harness for my weights.

Here's my problem: I have two BPW setups, but I really like the one with a "comfort harness" which doesn't have an easy way to attach weight pockets. If I put all of my weight into the DUI harness (30# when using AL tanks; slightly less with my lp95's), it causes problems for boat dives on private boats. On small boats, it is often easier (or necessary) to remove your rig before boarding the boat, and as soon as I remove the BPW I'm extremely negatively-buoyant because of the DUI harness.

I have played around snorkeling / freediving in my full exposure suit, and I think an 18# belt had me comfortably positive (yes, it takes a lot of friggin' neoprene to cover my manly body...). Based on this, I think I need to add STA weights and cam-band trim pockets to the BPW in order to carry less than 18# in my DUI; I just haven't figured out the exact amount needed in my DUI pockets to have enough ditchable to be able to be positive in an OOA emergency (God forbid!) but still allow me to be as positive as possible when I remove my BPW to board the boat from the water.

[CaptnJack]

If you are diving a steel BP/W + weightbelt you should never be extremely negative when you take off the plate. If you are, you're overweighted. The reason being that the BP/W plus even an AL80 is never positive. (-5lbs for the plate counteracts the +4lbs of an empty AL80). With any kind of steel tank, the BP/W + tank unit will be even more negative.

So if the BP/W + any tank is never positive, your weightbelt should never be heavier than the bouyancy of your suit. Hence if you are extremely negative when you take off the Bp/W and are wearing just the belt you have more lead on than you should. If you need help doing a weight check there are people regularly diving Muk on mondays and Cove2 on wednesdays who can help you get it fine tuned.

(For the record I dive a BP/W with some weight either on my doubles as a V-weight, or some on the cam bands of my single tank, and some on a weight belt. I have not used any sort of BC weight pocket in 8 years. The last ones I had I found insecure. I don't like trusting my life to velcro.)

[Jeff Pack]

I started with a weight integrated BCD, but I switched to a BP/W and DUI weight and trim, mostly to get weight off of my lower back.

With my steel 95's, a stainless BP, I still carry an additional 4pds of trim weight on my BP.

I find the seperates easier to get on and off, and with the W&T, can drop 1/2 my carry weight, instead of all of it as you would with a weight belt.

[lamont]

Here's my problem: I have two BPW setups, but I really like the one with a "comfort harness" which doesn't have an easy way to attach weight pockets. If I put all of my weight into the DUI harness (30# when using AL tanks; slightly less with my lp95's), it causes problems for boat dives on private boats. On small boats, it is often easier (or necessary) to remove your rig before boarding the boat, and as soon as I remove the BPW I'm extremely negatively-buoyant because of the DUI harness.

I'm not familiar with the DUI harness, but you should be able to find weight systems that attach to the waist strap of the harness and will ditch with the rest of your gear as one unit.

[Beefcake]

Here's my problem: I have two BPW setups, but I really like the one with a "comfort harness" which doesn't have an easy way to attach weight pockets. If I put all of my weight into the DUI harness (30# when using AL tanks; slightly less with my lp95's), it causes problems for boat dives on private boats. On small boats, it is often easier (or necessary) to remove your rig before boarding the boat, and as soon as I remove the BPW I'm extremely negatively-buoyant because of the DUI harness.

I'm not familiar with the DUI harness, but you should be able to find weight systems that attach to the waist strap of the harness and will ditch with the rest of your gear as one unit.

I have ditchable pockets for my Halcyon harness, but they won't fit on my OMS IQ Pack harness, so I use the DUI Weight and Trim harness for the ditchable weight pockets.

I didn't mean to hijack this thread, and I appreciate the responses.

[scubnewb]

No worries on the HJ.... all information is good information... wait that cant be right, can it?

Here's my problem: I have two BPW setups, but I really like the one with a "comfort harness" which doesn't have an easy way to attach weight pockets. If I put all of my weight into the DUI harness (30# when using AL tanks; slightly less with my lp95's), it causes problems for boat dives on private boats. On small boats, it is often easier (or necessary) to remove your rig before boarding the boat, and as soon as I remove the BPW I'm extremely negatively-buoyant because of the DUI harness.

I'm not familiar with the DUI harness, but you should be able to find weight systems that attach to the waist strap of the harness and will ditch with the rest of your gear as one unit.

I have ditchable pockets for my Halcyon harness, but they won't fit on my OMS IQ Pack harness, so I use the DUI Weight and Trim harness for the ditchable weight pockets.

I didn't mean to hijack this thread, and I appreciate the responses.