breathing off of wing bladder

[jsteedley]

I have Never tried it and thank God never needed to....... Does anyone have any info about being able to breathe off of your wing bladder in an out of air situation. If it is possible, how long could you recycle your air? CCR folks may know info on this??

[sea2summit]

2 things working against you there.
1. Falling PPO2, depth would dictate how long the PPO2 would remain at a sufficient level to keep you going.
2. Buildup of CO2, I would assume you'd pass out from hypoxia before the CO2 would knock you out but I don't know 100%.

Acceptable PPO2 is like 0.16ish and acceptable PP CO2 is less than 0.05ish but its effects may be a little slower.

I've never done it but I've heard of CCR guys sitting on their couch supervised with no scrubber in breathing it until they have undeniable CO2 hit's so they know the feel. Guess you could do it but you'd probably be just as dumb for doing it off your wing as they are from doing it on their unit. Wouldn't be a good test anyway because it's not at depth and you don't know the volume which would be in the wing during a dive.

It's there but unless you're in the cavern zone it probably wont get you out.

[Slüdge]

It's there but unless you're in the cavern zone it probably wont get you out.

That's what I'm thinking. Maybe a minute at most.

[jsteedley]

It's there but unless you're in the cavern zone it probably wont get you out.

if that is the case, i assume the hypoxia would be an easier way of going, than the flat out drowning??

[w ripley]

If you are out of air (dil + O2 + bailout), then you have no choice but to make use of anything available, like your wing. It won't get you very far, but a couple of breaths might make the difference in either a cave or lake/ocean dive, or for just getting your buddy's attention.

Obviously, it's a good idea to disinfect your wings when you clean your RB loop, as lots of nasty stuff can grow in there if you don't. Unscrewing your dump valve makes this a whole lot easier for both washing and drying.

Might also be a good idea to start thinking about your buoyancy if you're breathing down your wing.

You also have your argon bottle, which can be filled with air or a nitrox mix for this very reason. You can always disconnect your drysuit and plug into your CLs which can buy you additional time.

Hope you never need it - just remember it's there.

Bill

[Gary]

I cleaned up my wings and tried it on a dive once. It was very inefficient. I don't know that I could travel that way and save any gas. I found it much more efficient to control my breathing: deep sustained breath, pause on the hold, full efficient exhale - combined with watching and planning the passage ahead.

Don't underestimate the importance of exhaling fully on each breath. If you don't exhale each cycle you are loosing the use of a large percentage of your lung volume. (It can cause bouyancy issues though.)

[sea2summit]

If you are out of air (dil + O2 + bailout), then you have no choice but to make use of anything available, like your wing.

I'm assuming he's OC considering courses of action in a catastrophic/multiple failure situation.

If your CCR and get all the way down to breathing your wing you might want to turn around and head deeper into the cave to change your luck:smt102

[deepairmike]

If you start when you still have a few hundred psi rebreath into wings for 4-5 breaths then exhale and get fresh gas and repeat. This would give you 4 times as long on the same amount of gas. I have done this in open water and it does work.

[w ripley]

I'm assuming he's OC considering courses of action in a catastrophic/multiple failure situation.

If your CCR and get all the way down to breathing your wing you might want to turn around and head deeper into the cave to change your luck:smt102

Understand. However, when on OC or CC you do need to recognize what assets you have available to you in a crisis situation. Having a regulator in your mouth that no longer delivers air can cause panic very quickly. Being able to use the mouthpiece on your wings inflator hose to reduce that state might just give you the edge you need to get out alive. It's certainly better than not trying, IMO.

Bill

[RN]

I have Never tried it and thank God never needed to....... Does anyone have any info about being able to breathe off of your wing bladder in an out of air situation. If it is possible, how long could you recycle your air? CCR folks may know info on this??

I don't know how many breaths it will get me, but if I'm ever completely out of air, I will go to my wing. I'd rather pass out from CO2 buildup and drown than drown while conscious. It's a decision I made a while back.

[FLDVR]

Just to chime in on this one. Heres one point to consider.
Your wing is full of mold and what not, when you suck it in you can set yourself
up for a nasty lung infection as a worst case scenario (salt maybe worst than air).

Of course for an emergency then anything would be acceptable.

Henry

Not an expert but not at the bottom of the gene pool either.

[amphipod06]

Approximately 5 breaths (YMMV) assuming your wing has 21%, you exhale the first breath with 16-17% oxygen (that is why CPR works, or so I am told....) so depending on what you use to inflate your wing with and your exhaled O2 % you may be able to make it for a short distance in a cave (assuming a cave diver) or to the surface (we can fix bends, can't fix drowning).. it would be a cool experiment to analyze wing contents after each breath...

Dive safe,

Celia

PS My reference for the 5 breaths... my CCR instructor, I neglected to write down the actual reference for the statement but I am sure it's available somewhere like Rubicon Repository (shameless plug!)... I'll post it when I find it...

[amphipod06]

Just to chime in on this one. Heres one point to consider.
Your wing is full of mold and what not, when you suck it in you can set yourself
up for a nasty lung infection as a worst case scenario (salt maybe worst than air).

Of course for an emergency then anything would be acceptable.

Henry

Not an expert but not at the bottom of the gene pool either.

Yep, we can fix pulmonary infections relatively easy, can't fix dead, however... ;-)

Dive safe,

Celia

[sea2summit]

Approximately 5 breaths (YMMV) assuming your wing has 21%, you exhale the first breath with 16-17% oxygen

Yes you use 5% by volume taking the O2 and leaving CO2. However 5 breaths? Is that into a volume equal to your lungs or a #60 wing inflated to capacity. I'd imagine you could get more than 5 out of it, especially at depth.

[Squirrel Girl]

PS My reference for the 5 breaths... my CCR instructor, I neglected to write down the actual reference for the statement but I am sure it's available somewhere like Rubicon Repository (shameless plug!)... I'll post it when I find it...
I manually inflated my wing today, and it was, amazingly, about 5 big puffs until it seemed well inflated. That was on the surface, at water's edge.

[skip]

I've drowned before. woke up on the hard hot concrete spitting up water that burned like the dickens with some guy pressing on my chest like he was trying to push me to china. I liked the drowning part, hated the cpr.

happened in a public swimming pool, didn't know which way was up, ran out of air, took a "breath" and the cool water flowing into my lungs was really quite pleasant. just before I passed out I remember thinking, "I CAN breathe underwater!" Probably two breaths, one in, exhale water, second in, and all went a nice velvety blue-black.

I choose drowning.

by the way, I spent 6 weeks in the hospital with pneumonia and that almost killed me too!

-skip

[amphipod06]

Yes you use 5% by volume taking the O2 and leaving CO2. However 5 breaths? Is that into a volume equal to your lungs or a #60 wing inflated to capacity. I'd imagine you could get more than 5 out of it, especially at depth.
Like I said, YMMV, depends on a lot of things I suppose, I'll take the chance with the CO2 buildup, remember you are rebreathing the gas, not exhaling it into the water. It is likely better than 5 breaths if you are diving >21%...

Found reference from a study conducted with the coasties: http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/4889 Interesting read.

Dive safe,

Celia

PS Drowning, nice? Methinks not, "do not go quietly into that good night!!"

[Slüdge]

Your wing is full of mold and what not

Am I the only person that cleans his gear? :smt102

[sea2summit]

Like I said, YMMV

Had to look it up:clapper now I get it

[w ripley]

Am I the only person that cleans his gear? :smt102

No, it's just hitting a few more that it's something important to do.

[amphipod06]

No, it's just hitting a few more that it's something important to do.

LOL... I learned about the rebreathing the BC bladder during an OW class a billion years ago, allows you to make an OOAA in a more controlled and safe way..... since then, the BC/wing gets cleaned periodically, so no Russell, you are not the only one....

I rediscovered it during my CCR Q-course, so now instead of just rinsing with water I also use the same stuff I use for my CL's every so often...

Dive safe,

Celia

[Randy Thornton]

I can see taking a breath or two off of a wing in an emergency, but trying to breath back into the wing to use it like a counterlung on a CCR would be very inefficient and probably of little use IMHO. The CO2 buildup would happen much quicker than on a CCR due to the small diameter of the hose and the increased WOB (work of breathing). I think you would be better off just taking a breath from it and not trying to breath it back in. WOB on CCRs makes a huge difference in CO2 production and I can't imagine trying to breath back an forth on a small inflator hose!

Just my $.02

Regards,
Randy

[packman]

I would imagine that if you are reduced to breathing off your wing, the **** has truly hit the fan and you would be seeking any air source you can find. In this scenario, would WOB even play a role in your thinking? IMHO, you would mostly likely be happy that you've held off panic well enough to remember that you do have breathable air in your wing (who cares if it's moldy at this point)...at least until you pass out from using up all the O2.

[Randy Thornton]

I would imagine that if you are reduced to breathing off your wing, the **** has truly hit the fan and you would be seeking any air source you can find. In this scenario, would WOB even play a role in your thinking? IMHO, you would mostly likely be happy that you've held off panic well enough to remember that you do have breathable air in your wing (who cares if it's moldy at this point)...at least until you pass out from using up all the O2.

I agree, you would most certainly be glad to to have any gas source that was available including your wing bladder.

My only point is that I feel fairly confident that you would be better off breathing it like open circuit instead of trying to recirculate it like CCR. If you tried to recirculate your breath through an inflator hose, I suspect that the WOB issues combined with the lack of a CO2 scrubber would elevate your CO2 level so quickly that I think you would be worse off than just taking a breath or two or three and seeing how far you can get. A CO2 hit would almost instantly mean the end of any swimming or breath holding.

[underwaterjedi]

Ok so this is strictly hypothetical, but assuming you have to exit a cave, you have all horizontal passage, (no, or very minimal change in depth) what would be the difference between breathing off a wing and holding your breath and skip breathing on exit. This is all assuming of coarse that you are a couple hundred feet from a stage or an exit. If it came to it, and I really hope it never does, I think I'd rather take my chances breaking the golden rule and holding my breath for some long skip breaths before trying to mess around with breathing off a wing. Assuming you are not ascending the risk of an embolism wouldn't be so great. Of course you never want it to come to this, but between drowning and holding your breath, I think its a fair choice.

Jose

[Danseur]

Ok so this is strictly hypothetical, but assuming you have to exit a cave, you have all horizontal passage, (no, or very minimal change in depth) what would be the difference between breathing off a wing and holding your breath and skip breathing on exit. This is all assuming of coarse that you are a couple hundred feet from a stage or an exit. If it came to it, and I really hope it never does, I think I'd rather take my chances breaking the golden rule and holding my breath for some long skip breaths before trying to mess around with breathing off a wing. Assuming you are not ascending the risk of an embolism wouldn't be so great. Of course you never want it to come to this, but between drowning and holding your breath, I think its a fair choice.

Jose

Look, if I run out of gas (which would require apocolypse levels of bad things happening... being that I don't break rules and am mega conservative with gas plans) I'll be doing BOTH, like 100' per breath and recycling that in the wing.

Let's all make sure that all of us are never faced with this decision. Plan your dive, dive your plan, guidlines, conservative gas management.... we all know the rules, but clearly I digress and the rest is meant for another thread...

[amphipod06]

I agree, you would most certainly be glad to to have any gas source that was available including your wing bladder.

My only point is that I feel fairly confident that you would be better off breathing it like open circuit instead of trying to recirculate it like CCR. If you tried to recirculate your breath through an inflator hose, I suspect that the WOB issues combined with the lack of a CO2 scrubber would elevate your CO2 level so quickly that I think you would be worse off than just taking a breath or two or three and seeing how far you can get. A CO2 hit would almost instantly mean the end of any swimming or breath holding.

Randy,

It's all academic at this point. Hopefully you'll never have to, but like I mentioned originally, 5 breaths is about what you get. We are not talking about doing this for a long time. Take a peek at the Rubicon paper, it is interesting and it was actually tested.

Dive safe,

Celia

PS I'd rather die trying than not because I was afraid of a CO2 hit....

[OFG-1]

OK, I have been in a position where I DID have to breath off a BC. I was entangled in some line without a knife, and the 4 or 5 breaths I got out of my horsecollar gave my partner enough time to get to me and cut me out. I was in open water diving on an oil platform, and it was just luck that he saw my problem. BTW, we were NOT diving thirds, we were breathing until it starting getting hard, and then surfacing. Shortly after this, I bought a Fenzy.