Equipment Care and Maintenance 

By: Bob Hicks

We all know the standard procedures for gear care: Rinse or soak in lukewarm water after a dive. Air-dry the gear away from direct heat and sunlight. Store gear loosely in a cool, dry environment. Hang wetsuits and BCDs. Roll dry suits with the zipper open and relaxed. Curl hoses loosely. Remove batteries from lights. Spray silicone lightly on gear, and keep silicone products away from latex rubber to avoid discoloration.

I’m tired after a weekend of diving. It’s too easy to drop wet gear near the door, and rationalize that I’ll rinse it “tomorrow, first thing.” To counter that temptation, I fill a 40-gal garbage container with water before I go diving, and then simply drop the net bag of wet gear into the room-temperature water for an all-night bath. Soaking is better than pressure-rinsing anyway. (The container has a spigot I installed near the bottom, so I can drain it by running a hose under the garage door.) If you’re on a boat where fresh water is rationed, unscrew the valves from your dry suit and soak them alone in a small bowl of water every night.

I’ve added 6 ft. of PVC pipe to an electric boot dryer on the floor, and I hang my rinsed dry suit upside down over those long pipes for a slow, easy dry with lightly circulating air. This avoids the need to turn the dry suit inside out, which over time creates extra strain on the laminations and the zipper.

For years my spare-parts kit was a large, hard-plastic tackle box. Now I divide the contents into two smaller cloth (canvas or parachute-nylon) tool bags. They can be packed more snugly in travel containers, and they provide a preliminary “sort.” Harder tools and repair materials go in one container, and softer or breakable items (straps, lubricants, glue tubes, talc) go in pencil boxes stacked in the other container.

Viking instructions say wax the zipper while it is closed. That makes good sense when you think about it. If you wax an open zipper, particles of wax may stick as a small lump on the rubber sealing strip. That rubber strip should always be smooth and clean.

It’s easier to find pinhole leaks in a latex dry suit if you fill the suit with water, thoroughly dry the outside, then add air pressure. Water will ooze at the leak. Follow the same procedures with a laminated dry suit, but turned inside out with the inflator valve reversed. 

Aluminum cylinders should be stored on their side at 2-300 psi of pressure. Steel cylinders should be stored standing vertical at 50-100 psi. Why? Aluminum oxide corrosion forms a coating that inhibits further corrosion. Stored horizontally, this initial corrosion will spread in a thin veneer over the length of the cylinder, rather than concentrate in one spot at the bottom where a thicker layer might flake into a toxic powder. By contrast, iron oxide will continue to rust deeper into the steel as time passes. By storing the cylinder vertically, residual moisture and corrosion is concentrated at the bottom, where the steel is thickest. 

Internal pressure is like a plug preventing moisture from entering the cylinder. Hence, we store cylinders under pressure. But increased pressure means more molecules of oxygen to react with moisture and metal to cause corrosion. In an aluminum cylinder, the corrosion will stop naturally, so the pressure-plug can be higher, and the extra oxygen molecules are harmless. In a steel cylinder, however, the corrosion will continue throughout the storage period. Hence, the essential element, oxygen, should be minimized. Q.E.D.: Store steel at 50-100 psi standing. Store aluminum at 2-300 psi laying.