I am not interested in going to a dive shop.

I wish to buy a used, inexpensive one.

I am ok with having to put seals in it.

I do not understand the sizing. I have read several manufacturers. Then, I see people selling theirs much, much taller and bigger than I, but say they are comfortable in something two sizes smaller than the charts recommend.

How do I figure this out? I am very short (5'7") and very fat right now (270).

I know it doesn't sound very helpful to your situation, but I...

Went to my local scuba shop where I had done most of my certs and had bought most of my gear, AND who I was going to get my drysuit cert through, and tried a few on. They happened to have 3 used suits at the time and one of them thankfully fit correctly.

Do you already have drysuit training or do you intend to get some?

I did my open sea dive in Whittier Alaska, in December.  I borrowed a dry suit.  Whoever designed the purge valve to be right over your sternum must have been one perverted sob.  

To have 34 degree water coming in over your heart isn't the best feeling in the world.

You had a massive leak.

If you’re short and fat, you are going to have a difficult time finding a suit that fits. I’m short and round myself and I had to have a custom DUI FLX Exteme made. My third drysuit and the best fitting one. Also cost $4100. But I’m serious about my diving and go year round.

Go on Scubaboard and look at the used drysuits. See if there is anything that might be in your range.

You might end up having to get a custom new one. Seaskin from the UK sells suits online and they are inexpensive for custom, new suits. Lots of info on them on SB.

And yes, what about drysuit class? And yes, you need it.

Thank you for all your input.

I still don't know what general size a person with a 54" chest would need at 5'7". I'm thinking 3x and research how they are assembled. Maybe I can heat tape my way into something sort of comfortable.

I will get all the training I need to be as safe as a solo diver in a swimming pool needs. Last thing I want is to have an uncontrolled inverted ascent and have someone accuse me of doing handstands in their jacuzzi (shrugs)

What you may run into is that if something fits your torso, arms and legs could be too long. That was my problem. And if there is extra length, that can trap air. You don’t want to be dealing with that.

What are you going to use it for?
Swimming in a jacuzzi and going to Antarctica are really different  needs.

Respectfully, I know little about dry suits, but do know that taking a class is of utmost importance.

You would be surprised. I’m used to the SB crew who think you can teach yourself with maybe the help of an experienced drysuit diver for a huddy.

Makes perfect sense.

I've been looking at repair videos, wondering if I can just whack those off and replace them. (Shrugs)

Edit: I've been looking at trilaminate.

I've repaired waterproof garb and ensembles for hazardous environments. I am thinking this is not that far from that. Plus, if I get in trouble, I can terminate by standing up...

Getting in the lakes around east TN and pools and maybe some man made water features. Not actual recreational scuba, but definitely not commercial, either.

Honestly, mental masturbation. I ain't gonna do anything, I just need a new thing to think about. (Shrugs)

Edit:
No tech diving, nothing below 30 feet, no mixed gases, just trying to put a barrier between me and that nasty ass water.

Linnea mills was surrounded by experts.

Some times, you buy the ticket and you takes your chances

There are plenty of how-tos on SB and people willing to answer questions. Large number of folks who DIY.

And yes, I know who Linnea Mills is.

I’ve got a couple of DUI trilaminate dry suits. The one I bought for my wife might work for you. She used it exactly twice before she got pregnant. It’s still in its original box. It might need new seals. The DUI drysuits have a collapsing torso which makes them easier to adjust for height. I don’t    Need them anymore, so you could have either one stupid cheap.

I'm a newb over there, no way I ask questions. Just reading and taking notes.

The mills thing was not directed at you, btw.

Just trying to avoid a larger argument and focus on suit sizing, might help actual divers. From a lot of reading, a well fit drysuit would make a lot of edge case dives way more enjoyable, but I see a lot of people worried they will make a poor and expensive choice, and then die in one.

I kind of look at it from the opposite. I see how to recover from floaty legs, and I watched a guy fill his suit up under water. Just looks like something that needs to be worked out in a confined body of water before going somewhere.

I also wonder how many people dislike them who also can't consistently trim without a bunch of weight adjustment?

Sometimes heavier fins help with lighter feet.

And yes, you should do a pool session as part of drysuit class. I’ve been diving a drysuit since I first got certified. I did OW and drysuit at the same time. You are definitely a lot more comfortable on 50-60 degree dives than going wet.

They'll (PADI?) let you do them both together? That's smart, I think. I have read that some issues come from people who are used to wetsuit diving, so starting out on a drysuit would make it more natural. Maybe vaguely like learning on a stick then getting in an automatic?

Message sent. Thank you for thinking of me

I did all my recreational classes except for ice diving with SDI.

Note on the DUI suits: they have a specific women’s cut. So it might fit have some odd fit issues.

...

how many accepted accreditation bodies are there, anyway?

Is it like bomb disposal where there are only two, or is it like CPR where there are fifty and the hospital you are applying to work for may be more strict than if it is needed on a construction site?


Perfect! My moobs are exquisite. Have no idea how to factor them into my neutral trim though...

If you count globally there's quite a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diver_certification_organizations

In the USA the big ones I've seen / used are PADI, SDI / TDI, and NAUI, but there are others out there. My OW, AOW, Nitrox, and Drysuit certs were a mix of agencies. I haven't personally met anyone who cared enough about what agency your trainer used that they would turn you away, but plenty of instructors do have personal opinions of the organizational structure and training guidance put out by the various orgs. As with the training in many hobbies I think your individual instructor's experience and your relationship with them is probably more important than what agency they're affiliated with.

I was actually thinking more of hips. LOL.

I actually dislike PADI with a passion, but that’s just me and what I’ve seen with local instructors/DMs at the quarry I dive a lot at.

Sounds like you need to be like me, and find a friend who's as fat as you are that has a spare suit he wants to unload.

Thanks. I didn't want to get trapped in a useless certification. (I've had that happen in other topical areas).
... there isn't one that say, a Federal agency, or state regulatory agency denies, by any chance, is there. Example: I want to do public safety diving (I don't today). But most states do not recognize the HighOrder Oceanic Institute of Divering and Butt Stuff (HOOIDBS) Advanced Confined Water Mixed Gas (beer burp/nacho/air trimix) cert. Or, a more real example, which I am actually researching, if you want to dive in state parks or regulated waterways, the fish cops check your licenses for all kinds of stuff. Is there a 'diving permit' or to the converse, is there a cert they don't recognize?
I realize I am shitting up my own thread in a tech sub, I apologize, but I don't know what I don't know, and I am not at the point I am ready to sit for a class to have them answer them yet (they didn't care about my questions when I did the resort class 25 years ago. (Lots of weight, enjoy the feesh meester, don worry))





Oh yeah, no hips. I think. I can fix that like I did level A haz mat suits though.

It's ok if you don't like them. You definitely have earned your opinion. I have been consulting with a couple of Navy divers. They seem to have, without knowing each other, and being in different segments of the industry, the same opinion of all civilian dive certifications outside of a couple of niche companies. (I'm not planning on hard hat diving).

I dunno. My use case is super limited, and honestly not really 'diving' at all where you hang out and enjoy the experience.



Si senor. I have already put the word out among the teletubby community. They have all stolen theirs, falling from the tailgates of various government plated trucks over the years. I am inland, and the dive community here is relatively small, and the climate doesn't really call for a drysuit.

On the other hand, there is a ton of pro kayaking. I am not relatively far from Olympic rivers. I understand that their drysuits are not the same as immersible/diving ones. (shrugs).

I have a half dozen friends that do scuba, and they are already rummaging their lockers for stuff for me. Got two people with swimming pools that say I can practice there as long as none of the equipment can mess their liners/shells up. Figured it would be like photography where I used to get very expensive equipment cheap all the time on craigslist, but, I can't figure out what size suit I need. The ones that match my belly/tits are for seven foot tall people...

For kayaking, I was very freaked out about dumping $1500 into something that might not fit.  Calling the manufacturers is totally not weird.

How do you pee in one?  Make a stinky mess, unlike a wetsuit.

Diaper or p-valve.

You need to have inflator valve/dump valve for diving drysuit. Even at 30ft under the pressure would be painful and make it difficult to move. A kayaking drysuit would not work.

So
If I added the valves to an above-waterline drysuit, it would be usable underwater??

I don’t know. That’s a question you need to see if that’s been answered on SB. I don’t know if a surface drysuit has a waterproof zipper like a diving drysuit does.

I already have.

It is 100% not possible according to the forums. Only thing I read that I would even put in the consideration column is that they believed the above waterline versions could not handle much hydrostatic pressure and then begin to fail at a shallow depth.

The other 99% were saying, even after being told it would be added, that it couldn't work without the valves and the rest saying you would be squished to death; the dreaded Suit Squeeze.

.... That's something else that is bugging the shit out of me.

I am horrifically bad at math.

I get the concept of adding air to provide a surface layer inside the suit to preserve the loft of the thermal layers, and to reduce hot spot rubbing.

I do not get the concept of being vacuum sealed to death at depth, crushed by a suit that isn't inflatable. Water pressure cannot change, it is what it is. How is adding a slight bit of breathing air going to reduce that? To the opposite, how is 3-4mm of trilam going to have the ability to crush you before failing?

Especially considering hot water suits for hard hat divers, or just going naked. (I said what I said.) I assume the fact that wetsuits are designed to keep a layer of water inside the suit, that they are not beholden to the same math. (shrugs)

This would be an epic first post over there, huh. SHOW ME YOUR MATHS!! lol.

sorry I missed this.

My research says that... for boys they have an adhesive condom attached to piping that somehow vents it outside. For girls... I really am not sure. I saw the word funnel and wenus being used. Also saw some discussion about zippers strategically placed, but I can't understand how that would work. Perhaps like the entry of a bell jar? lol i don't know

We were originally going to do the PADI certify dives in drysuits but the lakes froze over too soon.  Thank God!  Did them in Cozumel instead.  Owned several wetsuits from windsurfing but never a dry suit.

She-P for the gals. I have one. Full landscaping. Lots of glue. Some male suits have relief zippers but that’s for use out of the water.

went and googled it (started to get you to put up a pic lol)

Looks very close to the device they used on my wife when she was in the coma. It required vacuum, and even with contorting, was still very hit or miss. Guess it is landscaped whether you decide or not when it comes time to remove that thing!!

There's no such thing as "SCUBA Police" (much to the enjoyment of many in the hobby, probably to the death of a few who could have used some more guidance, and to the great consternation of quite a number of Karens, much like any inherently risky activity). Generally dive site operators just want to be able to tell their insurance companies that you showed a cert card before you went off and did something stupid that killed you. It shifts responsibility - you claimed to be trained and therefore should have known better. They also don't like being in the news or fishing out dead bodies, obviously.

Some public safety diving teams and such will have their own internal policy of who to use for the public safety related diving portion of training and for ongoing training, but I doubt it matters who you got your initial OW certification or drysuit certification through. There's actually a trade organization called the World Recreational SCUBA Training Council www.wrstc.com that helps coordinate minimum training standards across the industry.

The instructors I've learned under refer to PADI as "Put Another Dollar In". Take from that what you will. I didn't personally have any problem with their program as a student, I think their gripes were more on the organization / instructor relationship side.

Water pressure does increase as you descend. You have all the weight of the water above you pushing down on you. You get an extra atmosphere of pressure on you every ~33 ft you go down (depends on fresh / salt water, temperature, etc). Since air is compressible the further down we go the smaller the same pocket of air gets. This is why we have to add additional air on the way down to maintain the same volume of air in our BCD / drysuit in order to have the same buoyancy (buoyancy is determined by your mass vs the mass of the water you're displacing - if your mass is less you float, if it is more you sink, and we control this by adjusting the amount of water we displace thanks to the air pocket we expand or contract by adding / removing air).

Now imagine you're going to vacuum seal a raw chicken breast in one of those Food Saver bags. When you first put the chicken breast in the bag it's all floppy and can be moved around the bag quite easily, right? Now vacuum seal it. How hard is it now to move that chicken breast around inside the bag? Pretty hard isn't it? It's not frozen or anything, just air pressure in the room around you holding the bag tight to itself - roughly 14.7psi multiplied by all the square inches of the bag.

Same thing in a drysuit, except you can have multiple atmospheres of pressure holding the food saver bag you climbed into tight to itself. How hard do you think it's going to be to move around inside that bag when it has 50psi holding it tight to you, multiplied across the whole suit? How hard will it be to reach your inflator to add air in order to arrest a descent? How hard will it be to dump your emergency weights to stop an uncontrolled descent? Do you think it will be very comfortable to be the chicken breast? The layer of compressed air between your body and the suit allows it to stay just a bit "puffy" around you so you can comfortably move.

Wetsuits do compress at depth however you have a layer of water between you and the suit and, importantly, wetsuits are made from rubber that is able to stretch when you move your joints. The plastic used in most drysuits doesn't stretch, which is why they're so inflexible when vacuum-molded to your body shape.

Thank you.
I agree with all that you've said, for what it matters. (I wasn't clear about the concept of water pressure; I do understand the pressure is greater at depth; my statement was more to the fact I didn't see it being different on the body in or out of any suit layers).

Yet, that doesn't sound fatal. I have read over and over that it can squeeze you to death. I totally get the concept of dying because you had several things happening, and the rigidity of the drysuit contributed to your panic or inability to physically respond.

I just am having trouble visualizing them to be the $4k deathtraps so many post them to be online.

The air bubble inside the suit compresses or expands based on whether you're descending or ascending. You add/vent gas as necessary, based on the aforementioned direction of travel, to prevent the suit from squeezing you past the point of discomfort and basically preventing you from moving. Some squeeze = good, lot of squeeze = Linnea Mills


One way they can be fatal: I had an unplanned and uncontrolled ascent the third time I ever used mine outside of class. I knew I was getting foot-light but couldn't dump gas (turns out the dump valve was stuck closed, and wouldn't release - it wasn't undergarment sleeves stuck to the backside or me just doing it incorrectly, like I thought).

I signaled my buddy as I began to lose my ability to kick because my feet were filling with air, before either of us could do anything I ended up at just the right angle for ALL the gas in the suit to go to my feet, and then to the surface I went... upside down. My boots blew off my feet (suit has dry socks, which I hate personally) and my fins went with them, therefore I was hanging upside down at the surface. It was basically impossible to get my feet (balloons) lower than my back (strapped with 20 pounds of hard weight on the spine of my harness) so I could right myself and swim back to shore without help from my buddy. There was literally ZERO time for me to try to get vertical/head-up and burp the suit from the neck to prevent it.

At least my fins didn't get lost. LOL Once we fixed the dump valve and re-laced the boots with 550 cord instead of bungee, I didn't have any more issues on the rest of the trip. Also forced myself to dive the squeeze more and spent the very next dive doing nothing but practicing dumping gas from all manner of positions to reassure myself the dump valve really did work and it wouldn't be happening a second time.

All of this is precisely why I did not want to do the 75-90 foot dives we had originally planned for, until I was 100% comfortable with dry gloves and having super thick undergarments on (compared to spending the last 10 years diving a 5mm wetsuit or less).

Why can you, once you hit the surface, then inflate your suit the rest of the way, ignoring your bcd?

At least at that point, you'd be horizontal and angry and not inverted and angry. Once you signalled for help, and worked through your problem, you could then vent and tuck your feet back under.

Good thing you didn't need any stops along the way. I am not planning to see below 30 feet, and not more than an hour, so I don't believe any of that is going to be what gets me.

Nope, bc is for buoyancy, not drysuit. I have only enough air in my drysuit for warmth and to avoid squeeze.

what I'm saying is

you have your feet sticking out of the water, and you can't get them tucked. Why not just go ahead and equalize the pressure in the suit at that point?

I even saw vents for ankles, but I feel like I would bang them into things way too much.