Scuba Tech Tips: Redundant Air Supply - S04E10

hey divers Ali Pierce again Ali Pierce scuba another tech tip this particular tech tip is one that one of my viewers suggested and I already appreciate that by the way keep those comments coming in I try my best to answer them on the very beginning when we started these tech tips a couple years ago I answered every one if I don't give you a quick reply right away please don't get upset it's just something like 15 or 20 a day but I had to give a pretty thorough answer so anyway don't get upset if I don't answer every one but I appreciate the comments first of all your comments are valuable to me I actually learned from this I'm gonna join because I'm learning from this yes and secondly so often your comments lead to the next tech tip because if you're interested in a particular aspect of scuba diving guess what watching other divers are too so I will be a tech tip based on your suggestion and this is an example right here redundant air supply exam redundant air supply where scuba divers we don't use four syllable words or it is sometimes book redundant air supply redundant air supply means as his name implies if you understand the meaning of redundant extra or spare or emergency in case you mess up that's what that means here's supply so this is different from safe second safe second octopus is a completely different thing you see a safe second octopus does not have a redundant air supply well not necessarily it may have but not necessarily most standard octopus receive second sounds use the same air from your tank that you're using okay and that's rumour j'en see purposes only specifically in case your buddy another diver is out there has a problem then he comes over in t-shirt safe second your octopus and with using the both of you are now using the air supply that's in your tank as you make a safe ascent to the surface that's one issue entirely this is different redundant air supply as its name implies means extra air extra air so what's who's this for this is for you dummy you ran out of there haha maybe your buddy is too far away or I don't know what the circumstances might be but for whatever it could be alone for whatever reason is you are all of a sudden find yourself low on air let's call it our there and don't point reaching for an octopus your octopus because if your tank is empty your octopus is amplitude we need to explain that no good so this is redundant air supply extra air supply how do you do that in that particular emergency well it's time your Rydia stuff is going to cost money and it's a darned nuisance for maintenance and cost and carrying extra stuff around so my first comment that I would like to make is don't run out of air everybody every diver has an SPG submersible pressure gate if you have a narrow integrated computer your computer is going to beep and flash at you it's going to say dummy dummy dummy dummy and then on the screen will say go up stupid whoop stupid Webb stupid of course it does depend on you looking at it this is your pressure gauge which is getting down here to the red then it's running out of air you have to look at it and then you see if you don't look at your pressure gauge you better buy one of these all right but normal divers or safe divers aware divers sounds that for good word looking out there SPG the air supply regularly a little different than running out of gas on a car which you all know is a real nuisance you're on a gas in the car you pull off the side of the road no long walk ahead of you do I need to explain once again of running under there while scuba diving is different than running at a gas right you can't pull over now okay so in the unlikely event that you are out of there you are out of there and have no other ready source of air that's where redundant air supply comes in I don't want to take just a moment talk about a couple of options related to redundant air supply one of the most common options that I hear people ask about in spare air that's a brand name and again I don't my mentioning spare air that brand name because it's the only brand name for this particular supply just know there's not a whole bunch of different distributors I don't mind picking the only one out explaining in spare air has been around for a long time very very well made very dependable very reliable easy to use relatively inexpensive three or four hundred dollars would get you a good spare air system what is it mile Sparrow system looks like this see it's cold spare spare air okay and when you take it out of the box what you find that you find in the box is very simply a little scuba tank that's pretty slick a little scuba tank yep you see you take this cap off I have a scuba mouthpiece and the whole device fits into a little pack this can attach to your belt it can attach to the side of your tank your main your main tank band can go through it whatever is easy for you to get chips and it stays in it until heaven forbid that day when when if I may you messed up and all of a sudden you find this you're out of there and your buddy is somewhere but not close enough to be of any value and you're getting low on air and of course a my gosh what am I going to do well that's why you might pop the spare so you reach down you grab this device simple thing on the work freaking button breathe no no valve to turn on nothing to do is pretty much every it's always ready to go just it easy now at the end of that particular diver you should do this anyway and every day there's no point carrying those singin has nowhere so before every dive you should actually check the pressure there's ways to do that there's a simple little pin indicator you can also get a gauge for this to be sure it's filled and this essentially is a small skip a day 3,000 psi just like your standard aluminum 80 it comes with a simple adapter that you can use to fill right off of your own ad give you foot tank if it's full or you can take it to your dash store and they'll fill it they have an adaptive fill as well that's just life you can purge it but you don't really need to just really just put in your mouth what can be simpler huh sounds almost perfect doesn't it no hasn't it I'm not perfect the problem is that only three cubic feet so ho much wrong with that three cubed piece better than nothing you're right it is better enough but not much let's assume for a moment that you're diving in 25 or 30 feet of water you run out of there what's your options as you know from your Avery from training you actually have several options the best option is to go to the surface 25 or 30 feet the 35 feet of water you can look up safely make an ascent there's always a bit of air left your regulator just keeps trying to bring it in and out as you make it in the center of the service you'll be there in 15-20 seconds over with okay it's when you get deeper these this redundant air supply becomes more and more important so let's take another scenario let's assume you're at a hundred feet let's assume you're diving in the Great Lakes on a shipwreck 100 feet deep a little bit Derek little bit cold maybe you're in a shipwreck or something and you haven't been paying really close attention we already know that because you're out of air right huh you're not exactly sure where the ascent line is and all of a sudden you're out of there so what do you do well it's the same scenario really you want to you want to get to the surface the problem is it from a hundred feet it's going to take about two minutes to get to the surface and the sparrow gives you about a minute of air at 100 feet so if you take this device out and sticking your mouth first of all you they get calmed down you're not going to race for the surface where you're going to breathe for a second down it's half gone three cubic feet with only laughs with less than a minute at 100 feet so the dipper called you with this particular system is its size it's also its biggest benefit right the size is the biggest advantage of the sparrow system also the biggest disadvantage is extremely small so you don't have enough air to really be of any benefit if you're deeper than 40 50 feet of water that's my biggest beef with the sparrow system diving under the ice no an iteration shipwrecks no now for those types of diving activities or other devices that you can use but we're talking just about a redundant air supply something you need in a real emergency think about it very very curved and one way to help you think about it very carefully is to look at the alternative the alternative is what's called a pony bottle a pony system perhaps now you have probably heard that term some of your dive buddies may have a pony system I'm not advocating pony assistance I'm simply pointing out options okay what's a pony system well my system beeper fuses another scuba system just another tank or a regulator on it hangs on your side and if the first one has a problem like running out of air that he be a problem right now you switch to the second one so cities it's another scuba system well you know it's a lot of money a lot of weight a lot of extra maintenance and so on you don't really want to have complete second scuba system show a pony system pony right small horse is a smaller scuba system something like this this is a very common a very popular pony system now this particular Deponia system is is excellent in many regards first of all notice it's a small tank this is nowhere near the size of an 80 this in fact this tank is 19 cubic feet spare air was three cubic feet right this particular pony bottle of common size very common sizes 19 cubic feet I will point out that these bottles do come at different sizes you can get a small one six cubic feet twice as much as the spare the next size is 13 cubic feet the next size is 19 cubic feet and then there's a 30 cubic foot pony bottle and there's a 40 cubic foot Pony bottle now you get the 40 give your feet my opinion first of all that's half a scuba tank you don't need that much redundant air hole half a scuba tank number one secondly a lot more expensive quite a bit heavier and bulkier a 40 cubic foot pony bottle is the same length as your 80 you're gonna hold this thing on there in Canada so and our experience which is pretty extensive and our experience this size the 19 cubic foot pony bottle is just exactly the right compromise between too small and too big 19 cubic feet what does that mean in terms of air well 19 it's called a 20 to make it a 20 cubic feet what that means is that at a hundred feet go back to that scenario you have not roughly five minutes of air if you stay at 100 feet you have roughly five minutes of air gonna go to stated you're going to come up so you actually have more than out you hit between 5 and 10 minutes of air what I'll answer usable isn't it if you're on the scenario like I said earlier and the Great Lakes cold water a little bit dark now you're going to shipwreck and also oh I forgot that Jack my head while you're reached for your superior you take it out and that was close and you get relaxed okay and then you look up look for your buddy nobody around so you make a safe ascent to the surface which from 100 feet takes at least two minutes and you get that you still have air left over not much by air left over most important your okay so this is to put the right side wait cost able to carry it around and everything just about the right size so this is one that we often use and see and it's probably if ever it is a very common option how does this attach to your tank well it's very easy this particular model and there are other models has a specialist in steel clamp and you can see and here the slot so this actually goes down between behind your tank band sort of hangs on the side of your scuba tank let's step to long thanks like that's how your scuba tank doesn't get in your way at all this is back there and that your tank band snaps around to tidiness held there firm there's a little rubber feet to keep her from shifting around and it's on there firmly and it has a tank back just like the tank man that's using your pointer consider now there's something and then for option-click you get this field Richard dive store when you get your own tank you'll be checking to make sure it's full it's pretty straightforward and it has a regulator on it yeah this is this looks like a regulator something's missing there's no yoke screws well this particular design which we just started shelling to three years ago that we used to have a normal regulator on there that's normal with our yoke screwing somebody you see was quite long the bit bulky and would catch on things so we found this design it's actually two and again I'll mention the brand name because nobody else has this that I'm aware this is from access scuba excess excess and I'll see the name you anywhere but X s scuba and you can see it in there online on the Catlett just excellent very common look that's the whole first stage look at that very common for us big it's a dim get attachment so your your pony bottle have a dim valve and it screws in okay small compact active thing and we have installed or xs/s installed a pressure gauge again is already better than the spare you look yep I'm pull it air let's go I'm full of it at some point it doesn't anyway and it also has the nice long hose a little longer than usual for a couple of reasons first of all is coming from further back you might be able to find it and and what we usually suggest our divers do it on one like that happen we use you suggest our divers at the hangars down as a second octopus helps so you'll have your safe stuff a number it should be and that's for your die buddy if he needs air this one is for you so it hangs down here where you can see it know exactly where it is you can get it up quickly into your mouth when you need it okay and it's bright yellow so you can find it as well this has a special clip on it from excess so all you have to do is just pull on it I'm going to show you how that works you just pull on this comes off sticking them off and I can go online on it I'm assuming it Chris Trent Devon yeah okay just like you're stupid a cheer all set the oil you take a scoop of tag on you got your pony your pony bottle with redundant air supply hanging inside that's what we should yes which we wrecked it's not too heavy maintenance is no more than a spare anything else what about cost well it is more costly than a spare air system like this should be about four hundred four hundred and fifty dollars approximately depends on your dive store and where you are and so on the tank is not expensive one hundred and fifty dollars the spare air system is soft it's about two maybe 250 maybe 300 dollars so it's not that is not that much money when you consider that a decent regular these days regulator alone well it's safe second engages into four or five six hundred dollar range to pay three or four hundred dollars for a whole complete system tank a tank mount regulator first and second stage engaged preaching so if you are thinking about it getting a redundant air supply if something's been on your mind firstly let me habit of checking your SPG secondly if you have a good reason for having a getting a read on the air supply there are different options available and I suggest that you take a look at them and select one that is easily serviceable pick brand name gives you a reasonable amount of air easier to mash easy maintenance easy to fill all of those easy things and just just might be the answer for you a redundant here's the black extra air in case you mess up I like that that's pretty good that should be a new cache line okay guys any questions or comments you give me a holler there are other systems available but this is just the simplest the most compact that we have seen I hope you enjoyed that and got a couple of ideas in there give me all or sometimes I mean email talk to you real soon alley pierce tech tips

Channel: Alec Peirce Scuba

Views: 65,443

Rating: 4.8615232 out of 5

Keywords: underwater, scuba, diving, spare-air, xsscuba, xs scuba, pony tank, scuba 2000, alec, peirce, pierce, tech, tip, vintage, sea, hunt, remembered, skin, dive, spare, air, pony, bottle, system, safe, safety, cubic, feet, 19, cu/ft, out, of, redundant, supply, surface, regulator

Id: dGBfiO-PPO8

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2016