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It has more to do with the moisturein the fill air and the maintenance
of the regs I think

Kent Lind wrote:
> 
> Wendell:
> 
> Obviously saltwater freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water.  That's
> why the put salt on the roads.
> 
> There's a place in Juneau where the highway runs on a narrow roadbed with a
> lake on one side and the ocean channel on the other side.  Most of the
> winter the lake is frozen solid while the channel is open water and free of
> ice.
> 
> In addition to that, when seawater does freeze, it is a more slushy and
> crumbly ice, not the sharp hard glassy stuff you get with freshwater.
> 
> The question though, is what causes a regulator to freeze? Is it the
> seawater that washes into the balance chamber of the regulator that freezes
> and causes failure?  Or is it moisture in your breathing gas that condenses
> and freezes to cause failure?
> 
> I suppose that either could cause a reg to fail.  I've never torn apart a
> frozen reg to see what went wrong.  However I suspect that ice forming
> inside the air pathways of the regulator from moist air is the more common
> failure.  In which case the medium you're diving in would not be a factor.
> 
> On the other hand, you guys in the Great Lakes sure seem to have a lot more
> problem with freezing than we do here in Alaska.  I used to dive MK20s all
> winter in mid-30s degree water and never have any failures.  And I know
> people who sport dive for king crab in the winter with all kinds of old clap
> trap gear without problem.  Horrifying stuff like old Dacor regs.  I
> recently switched to Apeks DS4 firsts because they were cheaper and more
> reliable and I've never had one of those fail either.  But I hear about you
> guys in the Great Lakes having regs fail all the time.  So maybe regs do
> freeze faster in freshwater.
> 
> Kent Lind
> Juneau, Alaska
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Wendell Grogan [mailto:wgrogan@dc*.ne*]
> > Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 6:04 PM
> > To: techdiver@aquanaut.com
> > Subject: reg freezes
> >
> >
> > OK, new subject.  We are starting the exploration of a 160-180 ft deep
> > reservoir that may or may not have remnants of a town at depth.
> > The question that came to mind when my thermometer was reading 36F was
> > if there was a big difference in the tendency for a reg to freeze in
> > salt versus fresh.  I think there is an obvious answer to this, but
> > honestly, I was hoping someone could tell me without my having to figure
> > this out on my own.
> > Thanks.
> > Wendell G
> > --
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> >
> 
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