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#1600
Importance of Maintenance
lerpy - 9/27/2015 6:08 AM
Category: Equipment
Replies: 3

Just a reminded about gear maintenance and doing thourough checks before jumping in.

I was diving a wreck this past week and it was a good dive other than my mask was flooding a lot, probably had some hair in the skirt. As I started my accent I suddenly had a lot of bubble everywhere. It appeared my secondary reg was freeflowing, but upon inspection it was fine. Soon realized it was my primary producing all the bubbles. I switched over to my secondary and shut down the post feeding my primary, problem solved. Back on the boat a closer inspection found that the regulator was about three threads away from coming detached from the LP hose.

I handled the situation quickly and calmly, however I failed to thoroughly inspect my gear prior to the dive, and to check and maintain in between my dive days. Clearly the hose was lose and I missed it. Mental note to now not only be doing checks before diving, but also taking a bit of time prior to a dive day to make sure all equipment is in good order, hoses are tight etc.
#12120
Eric_R - 9/27/2015 5:06 PM
I’m glad that worked out fine for you. Dive gear is so reliable and it’s easy to overlook something like what you experienced when it’s not very common. Thanks for sharing.
#30
Subscribed
SaipanDeep - 10/01/2015 1:25 PM
Great post! Thanks for reminding us all that the basics still matter. I think it is important to do a pre-dive inspection with the idea actively in mind that each item inspected has a problem until proven otherwise. Glad to hear this near-miss didn’t turn into something more serious.
#2242
Subscribed
MDW - 10/08/2015 8:58 AM
I’ve had that happen to me before, but usually I notice the leak as soon as I pressurize the reg, so it gets fixed before hitting the water.

Also, take it from the guy who just sent out his dry suit for a new zipper just as the water is getting cold enough to need it. I should have just had that thing replaced as soon as I noticed that one bad tooth instead of waiting for the whole thing to blow up on me. In the meantime I have discovered that both my backup drysuit and my backup backup drysuit are not as dry as they should be, so a little proactive maintenance on those would have been a good idea, too.