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Rebreather Cleaning
always a problem

When it comes to washing and cleaning up rebreathers after a days diving, it can be a problem especially on some rebreathers. Those like mine with extra parts added on are no longer standard and dont fit into the original containers anymore. Provided you are lucky enough to have got one with your rebreather in the first place.

Which brings me to the question, how good is your house keeping?

I dont know how the rest of you store rebreathers between dives but I had a problem with washing my rebreather properly and found salt still around after I had cleaned it,
or thought I had. ;-))

As we all know pressure parts need to be cleaned under pressure and my conventional dive bin was not the right shape for this purpose and after modification my Dreager bin was not either. As when I store the rig I leave the tanks mounted on the shell and filling is done after the days diving with a fill whip from a HP Boss 26mpa tank, and Medical O2 for filling the o2 tank. The reason for doing this is that it is safer to just add 30bar of o2 than it is to completely fill the tank as you all know o2 heats up much faster than air when filling. So the smaller the pressure differential the safer the fill and less heat. Anyway I wont go into gas mixing as rebreather divers, I assume we are all familiar with this anyway.
To get around this problem I had a large polyethylene bin made to house the rebreather when fully assembled. A lid was also made with a 75mm (3 inch) overlap and the whole thing was made from 7mm sheet (9/32") polyethylene.

I use this when on the boat also as even though it looks big it servers as a work bench, kit up bench and storage for the rest of my dive gear. One of my biggest fears when on a dive vessel, is that someone might accidentally drop some gear on my rig or crush a hose etc.
Once out of the water the rig goes straight into the bin until everyone is organized and there is some spare deck space. This serves a twin purpose as the sun here is so hot that if gear is left in the sun for longer than 10 minutes the salt water dries into the fabric forming salt crystals. These cut the fabric internally and shorten the life of.

By placing the rig in the bin stops the fabric drying out and it all stays damp.

Once home the bin is drained and filled with fresh water and the whole rebreather/BC is completely submerged and left to soak for up to 2 hours depending on how long it takes to wash-up the boat and other gear. Sometimes I leave it to soak overnight to get rid of all the salt, this makes a big difference. All that is left to do then is dismantle the rig wash out the bags, and hang everything up to dry.
I find this idea works well for me and eliminates the salts from the rig as well as being a multi purpose ditch and done bench and the lid serves as an ideal dismantling container. I store my rebreather dismantled always as this tends to eliminate flats spots and compression of the orings etc.

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