How to Perfect your Weighting for Scuba Diving! (1st Basic Principle of Scuba Diving)

How to Perfect your Weighting for Scuba Diving! Weighting is the 1st basic principle of scuba diving! In this episode Lyell explains the "why and how" to go about getting your weighting perfected so you can be on your way to becoming an efficient scuba diver! Learn about Archimedes' Principle and the different things that can affect your buoyancy and how to accurately calculate just how much additional weight you need to have fun while scuba diving.

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[bignickdigga]

Log, Log, Log! Document the weight you use for different dives. Fresh vs Salt, 3mm vs 7mm. Even cold vs warm. It's a ready reference for the next time you dive in the same condition.

[chadhartley]

I recently got my Confined certification and only have 6 dives logged. I watched this to gain more knowledge. Thank you for a great video.

[mitchhushak]

I'm glad you touched on the fact that breathing out a tank makes it more positive, regardless of material. I've had divers argue with me that the advantage of steel tanks is that they never go positive, and therefore you will never become floaty at the end of the dive. Trying to explain to them - it is not the absolute buoyancy of the tank that matters, it's the difference in buoyancy characteristics from full to empty - is usually hopeless.

[parrdog]

one other negative consequence of too much weight is the more air in your BCD the more the expansion and compression of that space which makes it harder to be neutral as you move up it expands and makes you want to go faster up and as you go down it compresses and makes you want to go down.

[jtflypegasus]

I must say coming this kind of teaching from a PADI is refreshing and maybe surprising as well. Good teaching of Archimedes' buoyancy principle.

[hocksee]

I find when we go on diving trips in the tropicals (In my case Philippines ), the DM ignores weight check most of the time. We rush to jump in the water, descend immediately rushing. Sometime I had ear issues because of that and was forced to ascend many times during the dive. I struggle later with my buoyancy and the DM starts to add more weight or remove some weights during the dive, or sometime shift my tank up or down. I learned from watching you and other youtube channels to check my weights before any dive and I insist on it now. I know now where to place my weights and how much do I need. I also find that during PADI training they don't tell us much about buoancy and weights and that should be addressed. I'm still working on my frog kick now and things are getting better with every additional dive. I now could stay 55 minutes during dives thanks to all your tips about breathing, trim, and weights. That worked well for me. Thks again.

[pbillings]

The point of the "normal" breath is to compensate for the ~5 lbs of non-reserve air in a full AL80 tank. In that scenario, your breath volume would ideally be about 2.3 liters, perfectly offsetting that weight of 2.3 kilos or 5 lbs. Other size tanks, though, won't be as well "matched", not to mention that few people know how much 2.3 liters is! A less variable approach is to pause at the END of a normal exhale (don't force it out) while carrying a FULL tank and weight yourself to be eye level. This gives perfect buoyancy at that moment in time without having to know/guess "how much breath". You then simply realize you're going to be 5 lbs lighter after you've breathed the non-reserve air (again, assuming an AL80 tank), so just add another 5 lbs to what you already found; you'll then be perfectly neutral at the END of the dive -- the goal of all of this. If using an HP100 tank, for example, you would add about 7 lbs (100 cubic ft of air weighs 7.7 lbs, but you're going to leave about 1 lb as reserve.) Does this leave you "light" if you have to use that reserve? No, because you can breath out past the end of a normal exhale to compensate for 1 lb if needed. (Also make sure you flood your wetsuit by letting water in at the neck so trapped air doesn't increase the weight you need for the test.)

Finally, the other good approach is to check when your tank is at reserve levels. After your safety stop, just purge the tank down to reserve pressure. (Do NOT do this in really cold water, though, the 1st stage may freeze up!). Probably discuss with your buddy before the dive as well! The difficulty is it's hard to add/subtract weights, so the easiest thing is to just evaluate whether you sink if you let air out of your BC (at the end of an exhalation). If so, then subtract a couple pounds of lead (1 kilo) for the next dive and reassess later. If your BC is empty (no air comes out when venting) and you're not sinking, then you're golden. Write that in your log book for future reference!

[keeponwishin]

I did my first ocean dive last fall in the beautiful waters off of Cayman Brac. I was going from cold freshwater quarry dives wearing a 5-7mm wetsuit to warm saltwater dives wearing a rashguard. The divemasters there intentionally took us to the more shallow sites on the first few dives so we could dial in our weighting before tossing us out over the walls. I underweighted myself on the first dive, not taking into consideration the air used up in my tank, and I embarrassingly spent most of my safety stop upside down. Second dive was much better, although I ended up being slightly overweight at the beginning of the dive, but I figure that’s better than unwillingly blowing through my safety stop.

[bernardflannery]

Hi, Im repeating OWDIVER course in summer. Cheers man this really really encouraged me, I paid and struggled with buoyancy B4 for years, but now, I see nuetral buoyancy and efficiency in the distance.

[mrodri]

Always useful to look at these kind of lectures to refresh your memory

[diverdave]

way back in 1979 my YMCA Scuba instructor took the needed time to teach us this and had us practice it a lot ! Sadly ... these day all you have to do is a little pool work and a written test with a check out dive to get certified ! That's why I always dive Solo

[theessexhunter]

Add a 1kg weight @ the lower part of an ally tank as 1 kg past the pivot point of the tank strap will keep the tank trim as you use the air.

[pbillings]

You made a good list of negatives about being overweight. One more that's especially important for new divers developing their skills is that buoyancy changes are more drastic with a given depth change. In other words, things get out of hand FASTER when overweighted. The more overweighted someone is, the less time they have to even recognize there's a problem and further to take corrective action before it's too late to avoid the train ride to the surface.

[thegentlemananomaly]

Excellent ! this was not covered very well in my original certification

[richarddechau]

This is just what I have been looking for. Thank You. I do tons of snorkeling during scallop season. When things are fantastic I use a hookah system. Typically we are working 4 to 7 foot of water. This is when we want to stay at 2.5' to 5.5' under the surface and just move and pick up our dinner.

[rickfowler]

This video is VERY well done! Excellent job!

[searching]

Thank you . I just started using a dry suit, so now I'm dialing that weight in.

[ahmedsamy]

I realize that jacket style bcd needs a little squeezing and applying preassure by hand to fully empty it that caused me to have some air in it making me + buoyant and I used to use more weight to compensate that effect while I actually wasn’t in need

[lackofprivacyandinvasionof]

Hey there, I appreciate your videos! You explain everything extremely brilliant. Please keep on making these video’s

[Uhi-puhi]

regarding being overweight there is one more reason for why it is bad - it simply can be dangerous. If you need almost full BCD to compensate for your lead on 5 meters (which I saw once) you may not be able to compensate for the weight at all at greater depths, lets say 30-40 meters - simply because wetsuit will be so compressed at the depth that you'd need additional air in your BCD, but having it fully inflated at shallow depths there might be no more lift capacity left in your BCD, making you negative at depth even with fully inflated BCD