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Reply to: RE>Independents v's Manifolds
Jason sez:
Date: 9/21/95 1:09 AM
To: Gerry Smith (and techdiver)
From: Jason Rogers
Hi All,
I promised myself that I would shut up about this subject but Gerry's
post was an open bottle infront of an alky. He said:
Through a series of errors a friend
completed a deep dive with a empty bottle (closed isolation valve).
*****
When are you guys going to wise up?????????????????????
You Americans preach "holgarth" which is supposed to be simplisity
isn't it? What on earth is simple about attaching a bunch of Orings,
valves and pipes to an otherwise simple couple of cylinders?
Yes I am in a bad mood, so I couldn't bother to be polite. You americans
are just the living end.
Jason =:|
---------------------- reply to Jason -----------------------
OK, OK
I KNEW I wouldn't get away with it, but I tried to use an incident in my
experience (without detail) to make a point about a different question. Whether
or not a reg would permit water to "backflow". Here are the details - with the
names changed...yadda yadda yadda.
"Joe" finished a trimix dive with some mix in his double hp 120's. He next
planned an air dive, so he drained the tanks. Either he - or more probably the
shop - closed the iso. valve prior to pumping, and nobody noticed it. The next
dive was about 170' to the sub-platform off Catalina Island. He turned the dive
when he noticed hie apparent high rate of consumption, got back to the boat and
discovered the closed valve.
He then pumped N2O2 into the rig, which sat there for two weeks. He was with me
on a local wreck when he noticed fluctuations in his spg as he breathed. He
turned that dive, and when everyone got to the boat, we thought he had somehow
embolized because of the red froth around his mouth. Then we saw the red stuff
in his reg and realized it was rust. That afternoon he dumped almost 2 quarts
of seawater from one of the 120s. and found rust caked so bad on the first stage
cone filter that air flow was severely impeded. The tank was rusted beyond
saving.
He learned, I learned and the shop learned from the incident. Mistakes were made
but no one was hurt. Isolation valves were fairly new at that time and lack of
familiarity contributed to the problem. IMHO, a lot of real learning is done
that way whether we like it or not. If you've not made a mistake, you've not
been diving very long.
I've thought long and hard about how such incidents can be avoided. I'm a pilot
so I tried checklists, but found too many variables to make them useful in
diving applications. In the military we learned to check our buddy's equipment,
and that seems useful, but the same problem applies. Training, experience and
common sense are the only real protection we have from procedural errors like
the ones described above.
Jason seems to not like manifolds with isolation valves, or maybe manifolds
altogether, but that's an arguable preference. I don't think equipment is the
key to the problem. We're human, humans screw up. Therefore we'll screw up and
if it happens at an inopertune time we may die. Life is tough.
Gerry Smith
--
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