Side mount curiosity

[Arnold Mesiser]

I read that he had used that system and he stopped later on.Do you know why he did not try to utilize the manifold for other dives?

I wonder how difficult it would be to have dual y/h valves with quick connects.Attach a flexible hydraulic hose in between that you could carry strapped to a tank for stuff hitting the fan moments.Don't any one get any ideas ,I am just thinking out loud 8)the more i thought about this later, the bigger cluster f is seemed.

[Mike B.]

The biggest drawback to connecting your sidemount tanks together, as far as I can see, is that it would then be impossible to remove a tank if you needed to. Also it would limit the amount that the tanks would move around, which would make it much more dificult to navigate the tight spaces that the configuration is designed to allow access to.

[BillGraham]

I like the fact that the tanks are not connected, it's safer. The valves are right where you can see and reach them so there's no need for it. As other posters said, you should be able to take the tanks on and off easily, I myself don't want any hoses going behind my head for that reason

[Jay]

I don't see any need to connect SM tanks together. It defeats the purpose. It may be necessary for some very specific applications, but not as a general thing.

[DeWayne]

I don't see any need to connect SM tanks together. It defeats the purpose. It may be necessary for some very specific applications, but not as a general thing.

I am having a hard time attempting to envision where this sort of set up would prove useful. It just seems like it would defeat the whole idea of sm'ing cylinders from the get go.

[Webmaster]

It seems something like that might be useful if you were rigging up a multi tank setup with >2 tanks. Or perhaps if you needed to fit into some tight spots and the water quality was such you didn't want to have to switch regs.

The fiber wrap tanks are more expensive and less durable. But they are very very light for the amount of gas they're rated for. I seem to remember there were some problems that if you scratched the epoxy, water could get into the fiber wrapping at depth and cause it to delaminate.

Haul tanks for any distance through most caves and they start to sound very attractive though.

[Duncan Price]

Some further comments:

The HP cross-connect between tanks was also used on the Wakulla 1 trip. I'm guessing that the hose could be depressurised so that the cylinders could be carried seperately. Sadly Rob is not with us anymore so i can't ask him why it was not used more widely. The '85 Wookey dive was the first trimix cave dive in the UK and a bit of a one-off. Also, things have moved on over how we set up our tanks - in the bad old days of this era the cylinders were worn on a belt around your waist. You threaded all your tanks on to your harness, would then lie on your back to do it up and had to be hauled to a standing position. There's footage of this on Gavin's Wookey DVD from '85. With this sidemount rig removing a cylinder underwater was almost a non-starter unless you put them on separate belts. From about '94 onwards we moved over to the dual point attachment that US sidemounters use and it became possible to don/doff your gear in the water

The Accurex composite tanks that were imported by Bill Stone and got employed on the '85 Wookey dive were used in other sump dives in the UK. Testing of composite tanks is not straightforward. Other UK sump divers have used composites (especially as firefighters use them in breathing sets) - they must be wrapped up with inner tube to protect the composite outer. Otherwise they are easy to carry down dry caves. Buoyancy is not a problem since lead can (and is) cached in caves by sumps - better than carrying the weight in and out.

For spring diving I can't see any advantage for composites.