Northwest Dive Club

I picked up a used suit for my son recently, and while it fits him pretty well, it's clearly cut for someone who is broader through the chest and shoulders than a 12 year old kid. The result is that the dump valve is more on his bicep than up in the outside of the shoulder where it should be, leading to some awesome underwater contortions on his part in order to get it to dump.

It's a back zip, and the location of the zipper and all the seams that come together in that area make it so I can't really just move the dump further back.

Which is where we come to my question, who has used a suit with a cuff dump? I'm not thinking I'd remove the shoulder dump, as he'll grow into the suit at some point and the dump will probably wind up in the right spot, just add an additional dump. Anybody have thoughts on actual cuff dumps like the si-tech or apeks ones, vs just getting another shoulder style dump and putting it on his forearm?

Thanks for any insights!

Jake

I had one but moved it to shoulder since my bungee mounted (compass, computer, slate ) were restricting it a bit, also caught a few times when getting in/out of harness webbing. With dry glove systems, can get to be a bit much in that area too (awkward to flex wrist with both).

I have had a standard size SiTech cuff dump for years. Small learning curve. Since the cuff can be moved a significant amount in a vertical plane you can change the dump characteristics a lot. Put it way over your head, which is far easier than the shoulder dump 'limbo' and it dumps easily.
Keep the adjustment all the way open, normal for shoulder dumps, and it's easy to raise your hand too high and end up dumping accidentally. So, I often run mine cranked down just a bit. It dumps OK anyway over my head.
It can get in the way and hang up more ,as well as take up forearm real estate, that may be important to some people. I miss that, but not enough to go back. I mounted my compass on a retractor. Works better anyway.

My husband installed a cuff dump. Which is actually just a low-profile pee valve that he modified. And he frequently tells me how much he loves it. His drysuit forced him to go into a really awkward position to vent air, and it really does help.

I love the wrist valve on my Apollo drysuit. It is low-profile, robust and simple to clean if need be. Buoyancy adjustment: dumps by raising forearm so easily fine-tuned.

I had a wrist valve on my old Andy drysuit, and I actually preferred it to the shoulder valve. Seems like anytime I turn sideways to take a photo, like on a wall, my shoulder valve has to be closed or it dumps. With the wrist valve, wasnt an issue. I would probably do it again on my next suit.

My wife commented on your thread above, this is what I used and I LOVE it (only difference is I cut an extra hole in the cuff for this and left the existing shoulder dump valve in place). It's life changing (more expensive than a traditional cuff dump but super low profile and more redundancy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TFUq8pge2Q&t=510s

Also - I have the relatively expensive ($100ish delivered) 33mm "punch" that puts the perfectly sized hole in the drysuit if you want to borrow it sometime, it's not required for the mod but it gives you some extra piece of mind when putting a relatively large hole in a drysuit.

Otherwise, you can buy the 33mm punch here:
https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/127/2517

Here is the link to the Pee Valve:
https://www.diverightinscuba.com/trigon-p-valve.html

Here is the link to the Cuff Dump:
https://www.diverightinscuba.com/cuff-dump-valve.html