Northwest Dive Club

I just took my first drysuit, a White's Fusion, for a quick spin to try and figure out weighting. I had a hard time keeping my feet down, even with F1s and 2lb ankle weights. I did the tuck-and-roll each time, but I had the suit as empty as I could get it and there wasn't any air in my feet that I could move around.

When I was rinsing my gear, I found that my boots, White's Evo 3, were floating. As an experiment, i started stuffing weight in them to see when they would sink. They each took 2lbs of lead to drop. Has anyone else had this problem, or any advice on trimming it? I have my drysuit class on Tuesday with Bob and I'm sure he can help me out, but wanted to spend more time diving than dinking with ballast.

Thanks!

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Thats crazy considering the fins and the 2# ankle weights should have been plenty to keep your legs down. There are gator options that I have seen people use, but to be honest they generally end up tossing them after a while once they get their bubble figured out.
Question is: how much air are you putting in the drysuit? Maybe just only add enough air to relieve the squeeze and use your BCD for trim for now. Slowly progress to using the suit for buoyancy control. Also as you are ascending to your safety stop assure that you are burping often. It does not take long to have that small amount of air expand to where it will start causing all kinda of issues.

There will be many other opinions other than this, but this is all I can think of now. Many will say that if you are diving dry you should only use the suit for buoancy, but I noticed newer divers have an easier time with emptying air from a buoancy control device than their drysuits to start.

I actually hadn't even added air to the suit. We guessed at what we'd need, filled a mesh bag with more, and swam out to about 10' to adjust trim with tanks that were about 750psi. Both my bcd and suit were as empty as I could get them, and my dump valve was all the way open. We didn't want to go any deeper since both of us only have experience with wet suits. (if there's a better way without a dock or boat and someone on it handing you weight, I'm all ears)

Granted, I'm pretty new to diving, and my bouyancy control still sucks at times, but this event was driving me crazy. It wasn't 100% consistent, but about 3/4 of the times I just relaxed to see how my weight and trim was, up went my feet. We called it when my tank was down to 200psi, even though I hadn't figured it out yet. Of course, toward the end my constant litany of swearing through my reg probably didn't help.

Oh, one last test I did in my rinse bucket was to shove the boot in the fin, submerge them, and see if they'd float or sink. They actually hovered just below the waterline, but my bucket isn't deep enough for a good test. But, i know they didn't sink straight off.

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Maybe shift your tank down a little lower when you attach it to your BC. that might distribute weight more toward your lower half.

I'll try that.

One random thought, would a small airbubble in my neoprene sock that came with the suit be enough to cause that? It's part of the undergarment, but I could wear winter socks instead.

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Like Spatty says, try a bit of tank shifting to start. Are you feet floaty or butt?

Feet. I'll definitely try moving the tank on my next dive.

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Looking at little partial peices in isolation is like playing wack-a-mole. So don't worry about trying to fix this yourself, just work it out with Bob. That's what you're paying him for.

There are three major pieces of buoyancy/weight distribution, which play roles in your stability in three dimensions.

The first is body posture. If you drop your head, you will tend to go head down. If you bend your knees too much, so your heels get close to your butt, you may tend to go head-down. These are independent of other things that may be going on with your weighting and air distribution. To know what you need to do about weighting, you need to get in a good, horizontal position, with your arms comfortably out in front of you, and your body long and flat from the shoulders to the knees. The knees should be gently bent, and the precise angle of bend will depend on your static balance.

The second piece is the distribution of buoyancy and of weight. Ideally, you would like the center of gravity of everything that wants to sink, linked up with the center of lift of everything that wants to float. In fact, if you don't have those lined up, your body will try to rotate until that happens. If you are tending to go feet up, the center of lift is lower on your body than the center of gravity. This can happen from air in the legs and feet, or from a tank that's too high, or too much trim weight high on your body.

The third piece is the distribution of air between your suit and your BC. The suit allows a lot of freedom to park air in various places -- you can park it across your shoulders, or even in your arms. The BC contains the air to a much smaller area, but sometimes you can park quite a bit across the upper arc of a wing, if you have that sort of BC. When you have much air in the suit, though, you have what's called "dynamic instability", because if you change position in the water, your balance will change as the air shifts.

Most of the time, we carry enough weight in our cold water to allow quite a bit of creativity in moving things around to get them balanced. But Richard is right; you need an educated observer to figure out exactly what your problem IS, and that's exactly what Bob will start his workshop doing!

Wow, that explains alot, actually. All I ever learned on OW was the verticle bobbing at the surface, and I was trying to do horizontal. Thanks for the info...seems sort of obvious once you explained it all.

I figured Bob would help, but I wanted to try and solve any major issues before class. Thanks again!

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I dive a whites fusion, whites rock boots, and scubapro jet fins.

My feet are only floaty if I have a lot of air in my suit, and its towards the end of the dive.

With my new thermal fusion undergarment, I don't even have floaty feet any longer.

spatman wrote:Maybe shift your tank down a little lower when you attach it to your BC. that might distribute weight more toward your lower half.

I was thinking this same thing. what size tank are you using. i have two HP 130's of different sizes and if I forget and position my taller tank wrong on my BC, I end up hating the dive cause it makes me HEAD HEAVY in trim.

I have two HP130s, both the same size. I'm pretty sure, in retrospect, that I'm mounting it too high.

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I have been using a new bcd myself and was having some issues with floaty feet.
i lowered my tank(lp100s) about 2" and it made all the difference.

Also, what sort of weighting do you use? My daughter was having similar troubles and actually having to wear 5 lbs on each ankle, but we lowered her tank and slung her weight harness several inches lower, and now she wears no ankle weight at all. Thanks again, Laura J! So lowering your tank and adjusting your weight apparatus will probably do the trick.

I've got a weight-integrated bc, with ditchable pouches at roughly waist level that can hold 15lbs each (although I've had more in them), and two non-ditch pouches that can hold 5lbs each at about the lower edge of my shoulder blades.

And a hp130 that I mount too high ;-)

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Just for comparison, I carry my weights in my DUI, 4 pds in my trim pockets, and a Faber 95. This is with a Zeagle SS backplate/wing,and my Whites Fusion. The new Thermal Fusion allowed me to drop 6pds from the Mk3 undergarment and vents like a dream compared to the Mk3. If you have funds, I strongly suggest it. I cant say enough great things about it.

My trim is pretty much spot on now, but that was the final result of a "Rent'a'Bob" weekend.

Personally, I am long beyond glad to have said goodbye to a weight integrated BCD. The weight was too high and a son of a bitch to get on.

Anthony turned me onto the Weight and trim, and the BP/W came from drinking yet another flavor of Kool Aid here..

But thats yet a short piece of my journey here on this board and what I've learned here as well.

I got a fusion bullet and the thermal fusion umdergarment as a package deal at the expo. You have any trouble with bunching up the undergarment's dual layers when you pull the suit on? It's worst at my wrists, but I suspect that I just need to figure out my particular technique.

BP/W is on the wish list once my toy fund is restocked.

Looking forward to my "rent-a-Bob" session this week!

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You put the thermal fusion on just like the suit.

Only bunching up I have is around the front pockets, so just reach in, adjust, and away you go.

One aspect of diving dry that I didn't expect - when coming out of the water actually being able to move (compared to a wetsuit) and not having my feet squishing played tricks on my mind. I headed straight for the shower by the water to rise my gear, and thought I had to be careful rinsing my BC or I'd get wet. ...follow quickly by a face-palm.

You can try a pair of Y-shaped "fin keepers" on your boots, which will put a squeeze on and help keep air from accumulating in them. If your boots are already pretty snug, never mind. (My attached suit boots have a lot of extra room in them, so fin keepers definitely help me.)

Fin keepers wont work for the fusion/Whites boots.

viperwsu wrote:I've got a weight-integrated bc, with ditchable pouches at roughly waist level that can hold 15lbs each (although I've had more in them), and two non-ditch pouches that can hold 5lbs each at about the lower edge of my shoulder blades.

And a hp130 that I mount too high ;-)

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What BC do you have? The 10lbs way up high on your shoulder blades is a concern. If possible you might look into putting that in some pockets on the lower cam band (assuming you have 2 cam bands).

It's an Aqualung pro qd with only one cam band. I usually load the ditchable weight pouches with most of the weight, and put the remainder in the higher pouches - 2x3lbs. with my wetsuit.

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I don't really know how to fix this issue, that BC looks like has a ton of lift near the hips and nothing up around the shoulder blades. The fixed weight up high in combination with the steel tank is going to be very difficult to counteract. Really unless you have video to actually show what's going on, this is going to have to wait for your class to see the issues.