What to Look for When Buying A Wetsuit | Scuba Advice

buying your own wetsuit enters you into a brand new world of different neoprene internal linings well this one has riff suppose and boys good thing tell but wetsuit technology has come a very long way since they very first appeared and in case you haven't already noticed not all wetsuits are the same so scuba diving wetsuits for example are different from surfing wetsuits surfing wetsuits are nice and stretchy so they can move around and you can do their surfing thing but they compress really easily so when you're scuba diving then not just go for a scuba diving wetsuit you'll stay much warmer scuba diving wetsuits are made for scuba diving scuba diving wetsuits are made to keep you warm under pressure so they resist compression compared to other wetsuits a wetsuit is useless at keeping you warm if the insulation is all crushed at depth and that's exactly where it's the coldest so wetsuit manufacturers release an entire range of suits as well that vary wildly in price but why and that's what we're gonna be covering in today's video so let's take a look at what to look for when buying a wetsuit wetsuits range from about half a mil to 8 mil thick you don't tend to get much thicker because 8 mil is already almost half an inch thick all over you and you're getting a bit excessive there the three standard thicknesses are three mil five mil and seven mil three mil is kind of your tropical water standard it's thin and flexible and not too buoyant if you want some protection from kind of long dives in warm water or if you feel the chill then yeah 3 mil is the way to go 5 mil is your Goldilocks it's thick enough to keep you warm but not too thick to be overly floaty or cumbersome you'll find the widest range of wetsuits in the 5 mil range 5 mil has the most practical range of operating temperatures and by simply adding hoods layers and gloves you can drastically increase your wall most divers end up with at least one five mil suit in their kit Locker seven mil is for cold water diving but many divers skip over the seven mil suit for a dry suit they're just too much overlap in the temperature ranges of a seven mil and a dry suit and dry suits just keep you that much warmer if you're really not into dry suits and you really do want to semi dry or just a thick old wet suit then yes seven mil will be the warmest that you can get without just layering up they'll have the best seals to keep you to keep water from moving around inside the suit and they often come with a hood as well so they're best for cold water diving the neoprene itself is a physical barrier to trap heat and isolates you from the water but it still gets into the suit but that's fine that's supposed to happen and now the internal lining steps up so the outside of a suit is usually a traditional lining that basically keeps you from ripping the neoprene that's all it's really meant to do just let the suit stretch a bit but not rip neoprene itself is actually quite delicate and the first generations of wet suit it was quite easy to rip but internal lining is very different and ranges from nothing at all to plush linings no lining at all is called open cell and is both the best and the worst at the same time open so neoprene sticks to skin like glue it's great at trapping water so it doesn't move around your suit so you stay really nice and warm however it is a workout just to get into an open-cell wetsuit and it is so delicate as well you can put a finger through it if you're not that careful you can often get standard lining on the inside of a suit too which helps you get in and out of the suit but it doesn't really do a great deal to keep you warm so you only tend to see in Cheaper suits and on the extremities of fancier suits said fancy suits tend to have plush linings on the core and what this does is it traps water so the cold water doesn't flush around the suit it also dries fast between dives if you hang it inside out which makes your next dive much nicer so it's definitely worth investing in a suit with a fancy lining on the inside of every full-length wetsuit you'll see a bunch of labels telling you not to iron your wetsuit and what it's made out of but you should also see a letter on one of those pages exposure suit up graded by C e thermal protection Class A through D shorties and wetsuit pieces don't always have ratings and if you're outside of the EU you may not have any sort of rating so don't be put off if your suit doesn't have anything so a is the best grade and is fairly rare for wetsuits to be honest more a ranked suits are dry suits but you can find a rare few wet suits with an a-rank so a ranked suits can be used in water temperature ranges down to 7 degrees Celsius of course jaw dive duration and other factors apply so don't just grab an a-class suit and jump into seven degree water and just think that you'll be fine for the whole dive but if you found an a-class suits in your price range go for it B Class suits are around 10 to 18 degrees Celsius seas are around the 16 to 24 and DS are only really recommended for temperatures above 22 degrees Celsius and this is why you can have a 5 mil suits range from really really cheap to really really expensive and that's because the fancy suits have a whole range of features that insulate you better but if you're not going anywhere too cold then you don't have to go crazy on suits you can kind of pick and choose the kind of the thermal performance class that meets your criteria seals make a big difference to the warmth of a wetsuit because they are the bounces that control the amount of water that gets into the wetsuit so wetsuit seals can be found at the wrist cuffs the ankles the neck and kind of under the zipper as well so the most basic type of seal is simple rolled neoprene it's just folded over itself and then stitched and that's about it it doesn't really act to stop any water but it does create a tighter section around your arm or leg that makes it harder to get in it's basically a velvet rope that you can walk around and get into the club but that's about it slows you down but you can still get in glide skin another similar smooth skin or whatever the wetsuit manufacturers call it is a good way to keep water from flushing in and out of your suit because it creates a seal against your skin and itself that's water struggles to get past so that's the decent bouncer that's actually checking for IDs if you find glide skin it'll be against your arm or your leg for a few inches or something which is kind of the standard sometimes you see it facing outwards so that seals against gloves that you're wearing over the top and you can always roll it in on itself if you're not wearing the gloves to create seal against your arm you can also see a Canadian seal which is a ring of glide skin or similar inside the forearm or lower leg these are pretty good too and they don't feel tight or invasive at all around your arms or legs around the neck you'll often find glide skin and sometimes you have a little zipper as well so you can tighten and loosen that neck seal to your preference and check underneath the zipper as well at least you want to see a flap of neoprene that stops the cold water from just flowing through the zipper but you can find some suits that have dedicated seals and even hold gussets to stop the water from flushing in the neoprene your suit is made from makes a big difference you can feel a good wetsuit when you touch it compared to a cheap suits cheaper suits tend to be made from petroleum based which is okay but the they're not great for you nor the environments new neoprene blends are coming out that are much better for the environment and they're actually made from limestone somehow I don't really understand the science but try to look for non petroleum suits that have past PAH and reach testings for the best near preens and give it a feel as well cheaper neoprene feels coarse and stiff fancy neoprene lining will feel smooth and thick if you kind of stretch it as well it will have a good amount of flex if you can afford it then go for a better suit that brags about its flexibility it will make donning and doffing much much easier and won't restrict you in the water when you need to reach for something many suits will be made from two or three different thicknesses of neoprene and you'll often see that in its name if something is called d54 mill or the five-four-three wetsuit then it will have panels of 5 mil neoprene over your chest your back and probably your thighs as well the key heat loss areas this is there to keep you warm but behind your knees and under your armpit you'll have thinner material so that you can move around the same goes for hurting gloves you often have the thickest materials over your head and the back of your hand but thin material around your face and around your palms as well around your neck to improve movement all suits will have stitched seams holding their panels together but some stitches are better than others as a general rule of thumb the few of the seams the stretchy of the suit neoprene stretches but the scenes don't so if you have a suit that is just lots of little panels and stitching in between then it probably won't stretch as much as a suit with big open panels also look for where the seams actually are if they cross high movement areas and sensitive areas then feel if you think that there rub overtime we tend to find three types of stitches on wetsuits overlock flat lock and blind stitch over lock is a pretty cheap and easy stitch but it creates a bit of a ridge that can rub so don't trim well we don't tend to see it that much on wet seats to be honest anymore flat lock you'll find on warmer water suits because it's nice and flat against your skin but it goes through the neoprene so water can seep through blind stitch only goes halfway through before coming back on itself and you often find double blind stitch as well so on sort of basically one on each side but no single pin hole goes all the way through the neoprene which is a good way for staying warm because the water can't get through blind stitch can rub sometimes unfortunately so you can often find seams are glued or taped as well so they're soft against your skin but that also helps to seal any pin holes through the neoprene to taping seams is better for comfort as some glued seams can become rough when they actually the glue dries so check them out before a long dive just kind of feel for it and feel if it's just cause gluing also helps prevent cut threads from unraveling so it's good to look for glued outer seams on gloves especially it's important that your suit fits not only so that you'd look good on the dive boat but so that your suit actually does its job if your suit is too tight then you're just gonna cut off blood flow which is dangerous to loose and the water will just flush in and out of your suit and you might as well have left it behind wetsuits work by letting a small amount of water in and then keeping it against your skin so it warms up if that warm water just flushes out and replaced again and again with cold water then you're just gonna get cold really really fast you want snug seals around your neck your wrists and your ankles so that water can't just flush in and out if other parts of the suit are a little bit baggy it's not the end of the world once you get your wetsuit and actually try on you should be able to kneel down and the back of your neck without too much resistance if you can then it's big enough if you feel resistance then it's a little bit too small too big and you'll just feel yourself moving around inside the suit too much neoprene isn't your only choice when it comes to cold water exposure protection of course you have dry suits but you also have alternative materials to neoprene materials like lava core thermocline and shark skin are all fabric materials that do a similar job to neoprene and keep you warm in the water these materials tend to be three layer fabrics with a flexible outer layer like neoprene a middle layer that prevents water from permeating through like neoprene and an internal plush layer that acts like an internal layer of a wetsuit and traps water from moving around much like wetsuits so this material tends to be hypoallergenic as well for those that usually react to neoprene and best of all they are neutrally buoyant because they don't use any trapped gas bubbles to insulate you they don't change buoyancy as you ascend and descends you don't have to adjust your weight belt the downside is is that they only really equate to a two or maybe a three mil wetsuit as far as warmth so the best kept for warmer waters unfortunately so not your autumnal diving and now for a quick lesson in a wetsuit lingo so that you can understand the terms that you may come across so semi dry or semi-dry ER is a wetsuit that has some features of a dry suit so you stage rifle a lot of the dive but when actually water does make its way in it still keeps you warm like a wet suit they tend to have the best warmth ratings but they're usually seven mils steamer a steamer is just a full length wetsuit some just call it a steamer I don't really know why some call it a full length wetsuit but yeah it's just a full length shorty shorty is for tropical diving and it's just a full length wetsuit with the sleeves cut off that's that's about it really so farmer Jones you don't tend to see many farmer John's anymore but they're a two part suit with a long pan or salla pets and a jacket that's worn over the top usually with a beaver tail beaver tail is a crop strap for your jacket wetsuit it loops between your legs and it clips to your to the front so the jacket doesn't ride up systems for colder water some suits are actually available as a two-part system where you get a suit and then a shorty that's meant to be oversized that goes over the top as well so you've got twice as much thickness over your core you don't tend to see too many of these either anymore they tend to just be kind of restricted to like dive school suits and that's about it really so let us know in the comments below what you look for in a wetsuit and which suit that you would buy if money was no object let's talk skin type rubber suits in the comments below got to hit that demographic yeah thanks for watching and safe diving seals make a big deal the free standard threat that's hard to say is going to be focused on single cylinder divers because I'm presuming that's what most of you watching oh and then right at the end I'm going to be talking about the different disciplines and how that can affect your BCD choice because your choices expand when you start to switch up from single cylinders so let's take a look at what you should look for when buying a BCD

Channel: Simply Scuba

Views: 8,846

Rating: 4.9757576 out of 5

Keywords: simplyscuba, simply scuba, Simply, Scuba, #simplyscuba, scuba diving, scuba, diving, #scubadiving, gadgets, tech, unboxing, unbox, products, product review, scuba review, #productreview, the simply group, 29/01/2020, What, To, Look, For, When, Buying, A Wetsuit, Wetsuit, Advice, Scuba Advice, What to Look for When Buying A Wetsuit | Scuba Advice, what's the best wetsuit to buy?, wetsuit advice, Mark Newman, scuba diving (interest), scuba diving - topic

Id: 8oH5XinU83k

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 29 2020