Balanced Vs Unbalanced Regulators | Deep Dive

hi everybody welcome to the deep dive in this episode we're going to be taking a look at the balancing of regulators so when you're buying regulators you'll often see if a regulator is balanced in some kind of way but if you don't really know what that means then it's not really useful to know really and then you get some that are called over balance and unbalanced so let's dive in and learn about balancing regulators the most basic type of regulator is called unbalance but there are unfortunately a couple of different meanings for the term balanced but the first meaning is usually focused on your depth so regulators take the high pressure from inside of your tank and they regulate it down to a more reasonable interstage pressure that goes inside your hoses now there are a few ways to do this uh but it's usually controlled by a spring just like this one which kind of pushes against the tank pressure to hold a valve closed the pressure will then push against that spring and will open the valve but when a certain amount of pressure actually gets through to the other side of the valve it actually helps the spring out to close that valve as you take a breath some of that pressure or the interstage pressure gets taken away so the tank pressure can now open the valve again and the cycle continues every time you take a breath now this is all very well and good but as you go deeper down and the water pressure around you starts to increase um it actually um sort of actually the the changes to the sort of pressure difference between that chamber and your tank starts to increase so the spring will actually let less and less pressure through the valve before closing so if you're diving deeper it will actually let less and less gas through but unbalanced can also mean that your regulator gets harder to breathe from the lower your tank pressure too as your tank pressure drops you have less pressure pushing against that spring to open that valve so it actually gets harder to open the valve the way to get around this is by clever gas routing inside of the regulator around the valve but this requires of course clever and precise machining and design which comes at a cost unbalanced regulators are usually the cheapest because they're the simplest they'll do fine for pretty chilled shallow dives the only place where they tend to struggle is in deeper more demanding circumstances where two divers need a lot of gas simultaneously a lot of divers they'll use an unbalanced regulator for non-life support tanks like kind of suit inflation tanks and bailout tanks balanced in most descriptions means that the first stage uses the surrounding water pressure to actually help the spring out so it can deliver an even amount of gas no matter what your depth is these are the most common style and they're very practical when most manufacturers get to this stage and describe their regulator as balanced it usually means it has both of those mechanisms of balancing so it should deliver a level amount of gas no matter your depth and no matter your tank pressure only starting to waver as you really start to get down to the very last few bar or psi of pressure but for most of your dive it will just be a very steady and reliable amount of gas over balanced is just one step further from that instead of delivering a constant amount of pressure at all times over balanced regulators will actually increase the amount of gas that a first stage can deliver the deeper down you go the benefit of this is that when you're deep down every single lungful of gas requires more gas to fill it fully and if you have two divers in an incident breathing heavily you'll get through a surprising amount of gas over-balanced regulators rule out any chance of ever being short of gas by being able to deliver more gas than you could just possibly need these are usually the most expensive regulators obviously they have the most design and the most technology to go into them but they will be constant and reliable so hopefully that explained the balancing of regulators you can sometimes see second stages described as balanced or not uh this just means pretty much the same thing and you'll just get a stable amount of gas the deeper down you go and uh as the interstage pressure starts to change but what do you guys think about it is it worth upgrading all the way up to over balancing or in your view is balanced or even unbalanced good enough for you i mean i've dived unbalanced regulators before and sure they're they're not the best but they still do the job let's discuss below thank you for watching and of course safe diving you

Channel: Simply Scuba

Views: 2,962

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: simplyscuba, simply scuba, Simply, Scuba, Internet Fusion Group, Scuba Diving, Scuba Advice, Advice Videos, 15/11/2020, Balanced, Vs, Unbalanced, Regulators, Deep, Dive, Balanced Vs Unbalanced Regulators | Deep Dive, Deep Dive, Regulator Advice, What's the difference, Balance Regulator, Unblanced Regulator, scuba diving, scuba diving - topic

Id: SW4Rh4kNYM0

Length: 5min 16sec (316 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020