Rebreather
Cleaning
always
a problem
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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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