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You obviously picked up the bag of cat litter instead of scrubber when you last filled your cannister. Mathematically, 4 hours short of 10 is 6. But, if you got 8 hours out of your scrubber, that's about the limit for the scrubber. What is the mesh size of the scrubber? Eight or nine hours and its over. It is false economy to try to squeeze scrubber to the limit. Dump it at eight or take tylenol #3's and dump it at twelve. Better yet, get a purple O-ring. Rod On Thu, 31 Oct 1996, Mike Severns wrote: > Not to take everyone's attention away from scooters and sharks, but... > > The other day I breathed my sofnolime scrubber blue. (It was really quit > attractive when I poured it out of the canister.) It occurred four hours > short (8hrs.) of the life of the last canister fill (10hrs.). > > With the last canister fill I was relatively inactive and shallow, 80ft., > preferring to pay more attention to the rig than to what was going on > around me. > > Immediately after refilling the scrubber I began to pick up the pace by > diving deeper, 140ft., and staying through longer deco's. I also began to > follow sharks around and generally get involved with the marine life, > something I find unique to rebreather diving. > > On the last dive, 4 hrs earlier than my previous scrubber change and 2 > hours earlier than I had planned to change it, I developed a slight > headache at 130ft. while hovering in blue water watching for a whaleshark > (sans scooter). The headache was similar to those persistent headaches you > get from skip breathing and I took this as a hint to get someplace safer > just in case. I went OC to about 30ft., then decided to play it out on CC > to see if any more symptoms would manifest themselves. None did. I then > swam hard for a minute in a straight line paying very close attention to > any change in me or the air I was breathing, OC reg in hand. Nothing else. > > I stayed CC and surfaced to get picked up. Later when checking the > canister I discovered the color change. > > My tentative conclusions are: 1. There are subtle symptoms associated with > hypercapnia if you are paying attention and not absorbed elsewhere (Rich > concurred, others disagree) 2. Moving shallow removed noticeable > symptoms possibly because going on OC gave the scrubber time to absorb the > CO2 in the loop. Also there would be less CO2 moving across the scrubber > (reduced PPCO2) and thus the partially exhausted scrubber was able to keep > up. > > My conclusion is: in an emergency, it may be possible to use OC to get to > shallow water and rest the scrubber, then go back on CC to take advantage > of the enriched air offered by a high set point (1.2 on my rig) for > decompression. Of course you would probably be better off skipping the > deep stop in favor of surviving the dive. > > Comments anyone? > > Mike > > > > > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@terra.net'. > Send subscription/archive requests to `techdiver-request@terra.net'. >
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