Overview of Scuba Dry Suits
Posted: Tuesday, August 11, 2009
by Amalia Perez
http://scubadrysuits.blogspot.com/
As you may know, water takes away your body heat 25 times faster than air, so it is most important to choose the appropriate thermal protection when diving. Several dives in a wet suit in colder water than 65F/20C will diminish your abilities and efficiency seriously. Under that temperatures, a scuba dry suit is essential.
Their main function of dry scuba suits is to keep the diver dry and warm: the suit has several seals that prevent the water from coming in. It is common for divers to wear undergarments under the scuba dry suit because they create layers of air inside the suit that improve thermal insulation. Depending on how warm you need to be your underwear will be lighter or heavier. We must also consider when making the choice of underwear, the type and intensity of the activity we are planning to do and our body size.
Scuba dry suits have a buoyancy control system incorporated to help you maintain neutral buoyancy. This is achieved through valves: an inflator valve (usually in the middle of your chest) and an exhaust valve (usually in the outside of your left bicep). On top of this, you must always wear a buoyancy compensator as a back up to guarantee you a surface flotation device (in the rare case that the one on the suit would not work). It is very difficult to control both systems at the same time and to do so could distract you from the basic security measures, so do never use them together!
There are basically two types of scuba dry suits:
- Membrane suit: a material called trilaminate. This material is very thin (1mm) so it requires more protective thermal underwear than a neoprene one.
- Neoprene. The material is very thick (7/8mm) which allows lighter on non underwear. In deep dives, neoprene can be compressed to 2mm, loosing part of its insulation properties. However, it is possible to buy pre-compressed neoprene to avoid this inconvenience. The foam neoprene type is the cheapest and can be used in waters that are not too deep and not too cold.
- There are other types like vulcanized rubber o urethane coated fabrics, but they are not so common and can be more expensive.
This Article has been viewed 269 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Great article. Well done.Thanks for the info. I have always wanted to do diving - maybe I'll give it a shot sooner or later.Anyway, Welcome to SearchWarp.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.