Dry suit weighting

[beeger]

Some thoughts: After watching and helping a number of people get comfortable with their first drysuit I've learned that getting comfortable with a drysuit primarily entails learning how to really get the air out of the suit while underwater (sometimes very quickly). It is likely that over the course of maybe 10-15 dives that you will find yourself dropping at least a couple pounds of weight for no other reasons than getting more comfortable draining the air in the suit.

There  is a big debate among some people around using the drysuit or BC for buoyancy control under water. Personally I think that using the drysuit as your primary buoyancy device is a bad idea for reasons already covered. There is nothing wrong, however, with maybe adding 1 or 2 lbs on some dives so you can keep a little extra air/argon in your suit, especially when you plan on not working very hard on the dive.

Sorry for the re-posting the content below, but some people emailed me offline a while back and said they found this very helpful. So I thought I would copy it over to this thread (originally found in the "BC vs Drysuit for Inflation").

"With full tank(s) determine the amount of weight you require to sink from the surface on a standard exhalation. This is the amount of weight that should be integral to your rig, distributed in such a manner that will provide for good trim in the water. Then, with almost empty tank(s), (maybe 200-300 psi) determine the amount of weight in addition to the above that you require to hover just beneath the surface (10-15 ft). This is the amount of ditchable weight that must be worn (weight belt, pockets, etc.) in addition to the integral weight. Once you have this down then consider the following factor: depending on the exposure suit being worn and the depths you will be diving to, compensation must be made for the compression of the exposure suit. This is done by figuring out how much buoyancy your *suit* loses, independent of the diver, at depth (remember your physics from OW class). The amount of buoyancy lost will equate to the amount of weight that must be moved from the integral component of your weight to the ditchable component. When diving a shell suit the buoyancy shift of the suit is not really an issue. When diving a foam neoprene wetsuit or drysuit it becomes a big issue. The thicker the suit, the bigger the potential buoyancy loss, the
more weight needs to be moved. Here's what it comes down to: The worst case scenario is that you have a BC and drysuit failure at the beginning of the dive (when your tanks are heaviest) and at max depth (when your exposure suit has compressed the most). Dropping the ditchable weight will reestablish your neutral buoyancy. And this is where ditchable weight systems that allow you to drop part OR all of your weight are really better than those that dump all your weight (like a weight belt). Given the above scenario, the shallower you are, the less weight you would have to drop. Dropping too much would actually make you overly buoyant."