High air consumption

Hi all.

Just back from Madeira, where I completed my AOW course with the lovely people at Divepoint Madeira (based the Cartlon Pestana hotel).

I completed the Navigation and Deep Dives and elected to do Wreck (diving on the Pronto), Peak Performance Buoyancy and Photography (I'd wanted to do a Night dive, but it didn't prove possible, and it meant I got a dive in at the Garajau Nature Reserve, meeting their famed Giant Grouper).

Overall, the dives went pretty well, but I consumed air at an alarming rate on most of my dives.

I did my PPB and Deep Dives on day 1 and I guzzled air. On the second day (Wreck and Navigation) things seemed a little better, but on the 3rd morning the dive at Garajau again saw me use a lot of air and return to the surface well before any of the other divers.

The instructors were at a bit of a loss to pinpoint what I was really doing to use so much, as my buoyancy (if not textbook) was not terrible and I found over the 5 dives that I was hardly using my BCD inflater at all. They advised me to try and relax more, but it was a pain for me and fellow divers to have to finish the dives due to me running low on air (even when using a big 15L tank).

I'm keen to continue diving, as my experiences in Madeira just reinforced my enjoyment of it, but I need to do something about my air consumption. Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong, can do to sort it out or experiences from other divers who've resolved this problem?

M.

Don't worry about gas consumption, it WILL improve as you relax and improve as a diver.

Wot E said

Gas consumption will get better as you get more relaxed in the water, however a few general points that help reduce gas consumption

1 - Correct weighting. Make sure you are not carrying any more lead than you have to. Do a weight check with an almost empty cylinder and you should be able to maintain neutral buoyancy at 2m without any gas in the BC/suit just using your lungs.

2 - Following on from 1. Practice your buoyancy. Garf has been posting some excellent buoyancy practice tips. Follow them

3 - Fitness. Personaly fitness makes a big difference to gas consumption. The fitter you are the less CO2 you will generate for a given workload. Less CO2 = better gas consumption

4 - Trim and Finning Techniques. If your trim is good (i/e horizontal) then all your effort goes into moving you through the water rather than assiting you with Buoyancy control. You will find yourself working less underwater and this will reduce gas consumption

5 - The big one. Go diving more.


I hope some of this helps. Little plug time - We teach all of this stuff in the GUE Fundamentals and Primer classes. These are a great way of improving your ability and comfort in the water

Thanks
John

I have to second that comment about Garf's teachings.
Read this post after myself and the missus spent a couple of days with him.
http://www.yorkshire-divers.com/forums/training-forum/167454-days-enlightenment-garf.html[/url]

How high is high? Do you have an idea of you SAC rate?

number and frequency of dives will make the biggest difference.
dive twice a day for 6 months and you will soon be in single figures.
dive twice on annual hols and nothing much will change.

correct weighting,trim,streamlining,finning technique and generally being lazy underwater also helps.
2p

Add good breathing technique to the list.

Never managed single figures but my sac in warm waters the other month was 12, ordinarily it's about 17.

Add take up smocking to the list, but maybe not such a practical suggestion.

smoking will lower your air consumption that much through lung disease it will kill you, plus GUE wont accept you.

I can't see how needlework would help much

I've no idea about SAC - Time to do some research I think.

Thanks for all the responses so far.

M.

And potentially make any dci symptoms worse

As others have said, you air consumption will improve dramatically with experience. If you dive regularly, a couple of years from now you'll be looking at your old logbook with disbelief.
Furthermore, apart from the fact that one usually consumes more air at the start of his/her diving career, there is also the anxiety factor while diving for courses. That also can make you breathe faster than intended and so use up more air.
Everyone goes through this phase.

If you had been on the forum when I started diving my SAC rate was immense. Just had a look at dives we did in Dahab and my SAC was between 9 and 12. Most of it is down to experience, confidence in yourself and buddy, and all the bits John has listed.

Frog kicking helps a lot as you NEED to be neutral therefore you are not constantly finning to keep your position in the water. Though Rainey manages incredible SAC rates (far better than mine)with a flutter kick but I prefer to put that down to the fact I am 6ft 4 and she is 5ft 2. When I started I never thought I would have Egyptian guides telling me they are low on air and need to go up, especially as I couldn't do more than 40minutes on a 200bar 12lt in warm water and 30 minutes in the UK on a 220bar fill.

My best advice is just go diving, use what you need, sod everyone else. If a dive lasts 30 minutes because of air consumption so be it, it will improve naturally over time.

If only it were that simple. Hope you had understanding buddies.

Well given that anyone can thumb a dive for any reason (and being low on air is a pretty good reason) any buddy that complained is probably a bit of twat anyway.......

Screw em, if you are on a holiday dive and after the second day the guides don't realise they need to put a second dm on to finish a dive early then the other divers should complain to the dive operator. Nothing to do with the diver.

If its a UK dive with buddies old or new and they can't accept the fact that their dive might be short then they ain't much of a buddy.

Baz said sod everyone else. If diving with a new buddy and one has a piss poor SAC, some may argue that it's fair and reasonable to expect them to give warning to the other beforehand. Or is diving all about me???