Posted by R Bear on April 09, 2001 at 13:24:41:
In Reply to: Questioning DIR's reason to donate the primary second ... posted by Eins on April 07, 2001 at 21:28:27:
I have had several reg failures while diving. There were several different causes for these failures, but they all resulted in medium to heavy free flows. That is an important point as that means they were all gas-a-wasting situations instead of no-gas-to-be-had situations. In every case I turned off the valve to the reg that was leaking. In every case, that means that if someone would have wanted air from a reg that was not in my mouth, they would have found the reg to be completely useless. On the other hand, if someone had asked for air I would have given them my primary (which is always the plan) and then I would have turned the other reg back on... freeflowing be damned. I could have easily held my breath for the small amount of time it took to turn on the shut off reg, but the person needing air might not have any time to spare.
The most recent time I had this happen to me I was actually asked to share air. This did not come as an emergency because we had planed it that way. My wife was diving a single Al 80 and I was diving half full double 104s (so I had about 120). This was an open water dive and the plan was that I would share with her once she got down to 1000 PSI but we would both exit under our own steam after that. My redundant 2nd developed a leak where it screws into the LP hose just as Kim got down to 1000 PSI. She asked to share. I showed her my problem and called the dive. I turned the redundant 2nd back on once on the exit swim just so I could check my SPG, but the hose was leaking so bad that the SPG wouldn't spin up, so I just turned it right back off.
Every one of my problems was not in evidence at the pre-dive reg check, but rather developed at some point during the dive. This last event could have been foreseen, but the other events just fall under the heading of bad luck.
Hope this helps
Ron