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I agree that the best way to avoid this problem is to keep the suit form being
holed, how you do this is open to debate. I you overalls at times when wreck
diving and can tell that the drag caused by them will make the drag from
bondage wings and all else look like a joke.

Now if a suit is flooded, what can be done? This is a pure survival problem.

I see this problem as two parts:

1) getting to the long deco sites if a flood happened at depth/back of the
cave
2) Surviving the deco stops with a flooded suit

For the first you might want to look at the Industrial protection products
that are used for worker protection. These are used mostly for workers in high
temp environments fire fighters, foundry workers, etc. The most common is are
vests with pockets that hold either cooling jell packs or warm vests that are
warmed by an 12 volt electric battery for 30-45 minutes then are unplugged and
will last for 2-3 hours on land (1/2-1 hr in the water?).  An alternative is
to place reusable heat packs, like are used by hunters, in the cooling vests.
That way if a flood did happen you could mix the heat packs and get enough
heat to get you to the deco stops. A supplier of these vests is BULLARD GmbH,
In Germany (0731) 7053-0, in the US (606) 234-6611. Cost is $200-300 US.

At the deco station - You could take the route of the commercial divers.
Assuming that you are within 20-50 meters of your surface support (any longer
and the hose becomes unmanageable) you could plug in a hot water hose and fill
the suit. This could be done by a modification of the p-valve or inflator. You
would fully flood the suit and keeping a uniform temp in the suit would be
hard, (commercial divers tend to turn the heat on and off as required and they
still will tell you that their feet are cold and tops are hot). Getting out of
the water would be hard as you would have to drain the suit first. Also, your
buoyancy will be changed by the warm water in the suit, how much I don't know.

You will also have to use an insulated hose or most of the heat you make on
the surface will be lost by the time it gets to the divers. Needles to say,
trials in an open water lake are required to perfect any system like this.

I hope this helps and sparks some ideas from the board.

Pete Johnson
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