As the ice melts, a diver's mind turns to the need for the annual inspection of their dive tanks and maintenance on the dive gear.
Tanks need to be inspected annually in order to be certified to be refilled at dive shops, and they're hydrostatically tested every five years. Luckily this was not a hydro year and all I got dinged for was the annual and the annual O2 cleaning of the tanks that allows for them to be filled with Nitrox mixes, mixes that have a higher oxygen percentage than standard air.
O2 cleaning removes any impurities or hydrocarbons from the tank and makes sure only oxygen rated parts are used. Hydrocarbons and 100% oxygen do not mix - or rather they do mix, and very violently.
After passing inspection and being cleaned, the tanks were given a new sticker and they're good to go.
Also, my regulators had their annual maintenance and the annual wear parts replacement. Regulators do have parts that wear out,and replacing the high-wear parts on an annual basis can prevent a nasty surprise when you're 100 feet below the surfaceand your regulator decides to keep flowing after you'd prefer it had stopped. Regular maintenance helps prevent nasty surprises. One surprise found was a small tear in the rubber mouthpiece of the regulator that I had not seen. It was replaced with a fresh piece before any serious failure could occur, and all is well. This is life support equipment after all. Take care of it, and it will take care of you.
Picking up my gear I found a problem. The Phantom hi-pressure hose, the hose that connects from the left tank valve to the pressure gauge developed a leak and had to be replaced. This hose, made of braided Kevlar rather than rubber is nice because its a lot more flexible than the ol' rubber hose and makes for a very flexible pressure gauge that's easy to get to and swing around the arm and stage tanks for easy reading. This is the first Phantom hose I've had that has failed, if this happens again, I'm going back to the standard rubber hose as those have never failed me.
With the hose broken, the hose gave an evil hiss of escaping air and when closing the valve from the tank, the air would leave through the hose and the pressure gauge it was attached too then looked like this:
Now, a high pressure hose leak is not something to panic about if you're underwater as the air escapes quite slowly through it and you have tons of time to deal with the issue, unlike a low pressure hose where it comes gushing out when it bursts, and even when an LP hose goes, you still shouldn't panic but instead work your options namely calling the dive and making a slow ascent if you're on a single tank, or closing the valve to that tank if you're on doubles and calling the dive accordingly. Still, it's not something you want to deal with before you even get in the water, so it needed to be replaced.
After replacement, it would hold pressure and the gauge gave a much happier reading:
Regular preventative maintenance for life support equipment, whether its dive gear or guns or anything else your life may depend on makes a lot of sense.
Don't wait until you need it to think that you really should have had been maintaining it properly.
Oh, and for those who are curious, here's a humorous video demonstrating the difference in failures of a high-pressure and a low-pressure SCUBA hose underwater.
After all, as the text accompanying the video says:
"If you want to kill a scuba diver, should you cut the high pressure hose, or the regulator hose?
You don't want a scuba accident to go wrong - this video will show you the best hose to cut!":
2 comments:
I guess that means I should go and clean my guns tonight, too.
Yes, preventative maintenance is a good thing. Especially so when you see how much dirt and dust even a well-cared for gun picks up while its being carried regularly.
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