Dry suit failure

My last Peacock dive brought (yet) another dry suit leak, this time around the inflator valve. Figured out later out the Schrader valve was loose and unscrewed from the valve body. I don't how it happened and why it was not bubbling with air. Anyhow, that got me thinking about other potential dry suit failures and how to address them during the dive.

I dive trilam suits with silicone seals. If any of my seals failed, the rings would keep the sleeve or neck opening pretty wide open. I guess I could squeeze a sleeve somehow to minimize the leak on the way out but the neck would stay open and collect more water with any forward motion. Being on the scooter would make it much worse. And trilam has no inherent insulation or buoyancy.

My questions: has anybody experienced a catastrophic dry suit failure during the dive (something like a ripped neck seal or the likes)? If so, how difficult was it to manage? I would appreciate hypothetical scenarios as well, but mainly would like to hear from people who actually went through it, with tips and ideas how to manage.

Thanks!

Years ago I had a neoprene drysuit split a seam. Aside from the abrupt change in temperature, there was no major change in buoyancy until I tried to exit onto the boat. My legs were puffed out and looking like the Michelin man plus figure that I had to exit with substantially more weight. I ended up intentionally ripping the rest of the suit to drain the water and go up the ladder. Any dive I survived is a good dive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LMN

My questions: has anybody experienced a catastrophic dry suit failure during the dive (something like a ripped neck seal or the likes)? If so, how difficult was it to manage?

---

My dry suit flood was in north Alabama, considerably colder than Florida, and in late October (even colder yet). The cave was technically a sump, in that part was underwater, and part above water. I got out of the water to explore, and the place where the torso meets the top of the legs tore open. While it was pretty cold, I managed to get within 50' of the entrance. The problem was, there is a sandbar there, and I couldn't stand up to cross it. I crawled over the sandbar, then the water got about 18" deep. I couldn't reach the bottom, or drag the suit full of water any farther. I thought I was going to drown in 18" of water! I finally pulled out my knife and cut a slit in the suit and drained most of the water out. When I got out of the suit, my wet under garments were causing evaporational cooling. I stripped naked, and ran barefoot to my vehicle. I had dry clothes there, so I was OK then. I still shivered for awhile, until my vehicle warmed up. FWIW, I never want to have to deal with something like that ever again!!

I have a waterproof D7 with ring seals. This summer I did some ocean wreck dives where they hotdropped us over a wreck and then they'd pick us up after drift deco. I don't know exactly how it happened, but I must have popped the ring out of the neck seal ring groove while either suiting up or when giant striding on the drop. After splashing, I could immediately feel water on my chest and go down into my boots. My first thought was that I didn't zip the suit all the way, so I immediately checked and the zipper was good. On the descent I did a quick assesment on whether I would be ok or should call the dive. I had thick layers and the water temp was in the high 70s, so I determined I would be ok to at least touch the deck.


We got to the deck, and buddy and me did some quick sanity checks and I could keep trim and I was plenty warm, so we continued the dive. We swam around, then started ascent and shot a bag. I had about 30 minutes of deco, and as deco progressed I found it was a lot of work to stay horizontal, so finished deco in a vertical position. I had plenty of bouyancy and I only started to get cold towards the end of deco, but had it not been warm ocean water I would have called the dive from the start.


Climbing back onto the boat was fun, and I ended up having to do a really weak inverted pushup-looking maneuver on one of the benches to get enough water out of the suit so I could walk around. Only after taking the suit off did I realize that it was the ring that had popped out. There was no damage to seal, ring or ring groove. I had a warm dry dive in the morning on the same boat, so the ring popped out sometime between dives. That evening I used the ring tool to put the same seal and ring back on and I've had no issues since (~20 dives).


Except for adding a quick double check when donning my suit that the ring didn't pop out when stowing the suit, I'm not sure how to avoid it. I've only heard of one other person having a similar problem, and this would have only been a minor nuisance on a cave dive since there's not the "gotta go" entry method I experienced when diving wrecks off Pompano. I'm glad I didn't have to do it, but I was fully prepared to punch holes in the suit legs or boots to get onto the boat. It was a bit of a workout climbing out of the ocean with that much extra water weight.

Recently I dove a sandy spring, and my buddy commented the following day that they had cleaned sand out of their dump valve to avoid any leaks on our dive at Peacock. I rebuild regulators and repair drysuits, but I?d never actually taken the dump valve off, and I had assumed it required a special tool. Under their guidance, I found how easy it was to pop the valve off.

Problem was when I put it back on. We got in the water and at the sign in Orange Grove, I felt a trickle down my arm. I assumed that the dump valve wasn?t tight, so I reached over, gave a solid spin?sure enough, I got it to move more. How much more? Enough to crack the plastic threads and suddenly I was holding the valve in my hand.

1? wide hole in the suit and water started leaking in. Took longer than I expected to flood completely, and buoyancy was ok but I had my wing full to the limit. I had been using the heavy SS plate and I?ve switched to a lighter plate to give myself margin in the future. I was chilly, but it wasn?t terrible.

After getting unzipped I laid upside down on the stairs to get all the water out. I thought my suit fit pretty well but it was a deluge. Getting sandwiches at the Luraville Country Store, divers came in all bug eyed talking about how the flow had picked up so much. Some said the water went up 3 full steps at the Peacock side.

I?ve also decided to carry a small baggie of Woolite in an undergarment pocket. Pop in case of a flood and you can get your undergarments clean while you suffer.

My friend had a zipper failure behind a sump that was just above freezing. There's an article about it in the NSS News January 2019.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by lbattle

My friend had a zipper failure behind a sump that was just above freezing. There's an article about it in the NSS News January 2019.

---

Main Drain?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FW

Main Drain?

---

Yes

Main Drain.... good times! Yeah, that was a fun dive.

Had a dump valve failure wreck diving in Lake Huron. To the bottom was around 160ish and I was ascending toward the deck when dump valve wouldn't vent. Let BC air out but at about 120 feet was about to accelerate and shoot up missile style. Survival instinct kicked in and I grabbed the neck seal with thick dry gloves and yanked open to release air. 40ish degree water intruded but was able to stabilize at around 100 feet. Could have been a very bad day.

Had about 40 minutes deco obligation and didn't want to keep opening neck seal. Trying to fix the stuck dump valve, managed to yank it from the drysuit. More water penetrated but surprisingly wasn't too bad due to pressure at depth. Pressing on the hole on the left arm with my right hand, was able to keep water penetration under control and finish deco using right hand as dump valve. Luckily current wasn't strong so could stay near the anchor line and focus on ascent. My guess is that bulky undergarment somehow got the valve stuck.

Thanks for your answers. So it seems that besides getting cold and having a hard time getting out of the water, a flooded suit doesn’t really affect the diving portion, assuming your wing has enough lift to adjust buoyancy. Good to know, I thought it would be quite an event, up there with gas loss or scooter failure.

My first time diving dry was at Gilboa Quarry. I did not zip up the inner zipper. (Blonde) After about 20 minutes and feeling water sloshing in my feet I realized what I had forgotten to do. By the time I got to the exit it took took several people to help me out of the water I looked like the Michelin Man


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LMN

Thanks for your answers. So it seems that besides getting cold and having a hard time getting out of the water, a flooded suit doesn’t really affect the diving portion, assuming your wing has enough lift to adjust buoyancy. Good to know, I thought it would be quite an event, up there with gas loss or scooter failure.

---

Depending on the failure and how much water you take on - speaking specifically to a shell suit - it can throw your trim out of whack. I had a 2 inch rip in the leg of my suit when 2,000'ish back in a Texas cave while scootering. I flooded pretty quickly and therefore my legs were definitely negative on exit. That made scootering a bit inefficient to say the least.

I was taking a side-mount class in JB, I had a trilam DUI suit. I was a newbie drysuit diver. I had too heavy of undergarments on, and the suit was already a bit too small for me. I managed to get into the suit. When I was zipping it for the 2nd Dive, the undergarments were not tucked fully in, and I pulled the zipper over part of the material. i pulled and pulled and then backed off the zipper. was able to get it fully closed (so I thought....)

During the pre-dive discussion, I could feel like water was some-how around my hip area... I thought maybe its just sweat as I was so stinking hot from all the undergarments I had on....Ignoring this we went under, and he had us doing the basic skills for this class.

About 30 min into the dive, i was really feeling cold. I also was starting to have major buoyancy issues. kept having to push off the bottom..... when I was feet down, head up to get off the bottom, i could feel the water sloshing around in my feet. I added a bunch of gas into my suit to help me w/ lift. As I added the water I could hear gurgling inside my suit, as the air was going into the suit.. not good....

Instructor (Edd) was raising his hand like get off the bottom. I did the best hand signal I could for Im cold and suit is leaking...

At the cavern area, after a brief 3 min stop, I had to inflate my wing fully and kick to move towards the shore area. I get there, and was so hard to move around. I had gallons of water in my legs.
During the dive debrief, I started shivering, and Edd is still talking to us.... He is telling us what we didn't do correctly, and then he gets to me, and was saying why I kept pushing off the bottom, what my signals were, and how the first dive was so much better..... I said I believe I flooded my suit... he told me my lips were starting to turn blue....

I had to slowly walk my way up the shore area to get out, and looked like I had huge edema legs. Edd helped me un-zip the zipper and water poured out.... Edd said some-thing funny about the zipper.... to help relief the situation a bit...

I had to lay down in the grass near the picnic tables to get the water draining out of my legs. the zipper ended up being ruined by zipping over the undergarment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v101

About 30 min into the dive, i was really feeling cold. I also was starting to have major buoyancy issues. kept having to push off the bottom..... when I was feet down, head up to get off the bottom, i could feel the water sloshing around in my feet. I added a bunch of gas into my suit to help me w/ lift. As I added the water I could hear gurgling inside my suit, as the air was going into the suit.. not good....

---

So adding air to your feet did or did not help with trim and buoyancy? That’s kinda how I thought I would deal with a major leak around the seals or zipper: just add some air where it can be trapped to provide some buoyancy if very negative. Of course that will mess up your trim and may be difficult to vent on ascent. Last thing I’d want in such a scenario is losing my fins when the suit balloons.

The weight of the water in my legs was pulling me down.... adding air to the suit helped inflate it in my chest and arm area, so it helped a bit, but I looked more like a OW diver diving at a 45 degree angle, feet down head up.... legs were so full of water, and SO heavy..
My fins stayed on, angling my feet helped keep them on.

Why didn’t you add air to your feet? Was it because you couldn’t get head down at all?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v101

The weight of the water in my legs was pulling me down.... adding air to the suit helped inflate it in my chest and arm area, so it helped a bit, but I looked more like a OW diver diving at a 45 degree angle, feet down head up.... legs were so full of water, and SO heavy..
My fins stayed on, angling my feet helped keep them on.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LMN

Why didn’t you add air to your feet? Was it because you couldn’t get head down at all?

---

My guess is he couldn't. Unless one has something like a decent line to hang onto, to get yourself inverted to get air in the leg area, it would be hard. Going to the bottom and holding onto a big rock would work as well.

He said that he was a newbie DS diver.

"Experience is something you get after you needed it."

Buoyancy problems aside, there is another major problem with drysuit failure, especially if the failure happens late in the dive. Being cold during deco and warm during ongassing can up your risk of getting bent significantly. I had a friend who got bent when they blew out their dry suit near the end of a long dive at Ginnie.
On the plus side, this was the justification in used for buying a heated vest...All in the name of safety!