jsmall wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:53 am
Hi All
I was thinking about leaving the tanks on my kayak this spring and diving with a Hookah setup. I have a couple of questions maybe you can chime in on. Since there is no ambient pressure change on the first stage do you set it higher than 135 or just leave it? I was thinking of using one of my DA Aquamasters for the rig or maybe just a regular old second stage. If I use the Aquamaster is the cap and o-ring enough to work against 140 PSI or should I take an old valve and silver solder the opening?
I was planning on a 19 CF pony on an old finseal BC since I don't have a SPG, and possibly using regular Home Depot air hose with quick disconnect fittings rather than hookah hose. Planned depth is about 50 feet. Anybody see a problem with this. How much extra hose should I have for a 50 foot depth.
The activity would be scalloping, I was wondering if off gassing from the cheap generic air hose would be an issue at depth or would flushing it for about and hour simple green or something like that.
If you use a first stage of some type on the tank left at the surface, and it's set to 135 psi, you end up with about 113 psi over ambient to your second stage at 50'. Might be ok, but if you want the second stage to perform as well as it normally would (on a tank on your back) you could raise the IP on the first stage 20 psi or so. May not be necessary if not working too hard. You could do a quick test on the surface to simulate being at 50' by setting your IP to 110-115 range and seeing how the second breathes.
The cap on your double hose may be ok, but if you can find one of the old Aluminum ones you would definitely be ok. Better yet check the one available at VDH Store.
Not much way to be sure about the safety of that hose. I wouldn't know if rubber is safer than some of the plastic types available. As a kid in the 50's I used plastic garden hose with no regulator. Later I had over 100 working dives in the 80's and early 90's on the end of a 300' rubber lined hose (not diving that deep!) with no ill effects... at least none attributable to the hose. But it may have been made specifically for diving hose. If I was going to take a chance on the cheap hoses I think thoroughly cleaned rubber-lined would be better than the plastic type. Might contact Brownie's Third Lung for info on lighter weight hose.