I have been using servicing and oxygen cleaning Apeks DS4's as deco regs for the past five years, they are still giving excellent service despite occasional drownings, swopped around underwater a few times - advantage is that they are easy to strip down and clean.
Now I also bought button gauges at the time ! Now I suppose these are Ok for the younger chappies out there but basically I can't read them accurately enough! So then you end up with the standard guages on short hoses. Now when the deco reg floods as in having been changed underwater in an emergency(or training if your French!) and its been pressurised again water get pushed up into the gauge - so you go through a lot of gauges!.... with button gauges totally shagged I put them in the ultrasonic cleaner for a few hours nothing to lose! And low and behold all working fine again. I couldnt do that with the standard gauges - straight in the bin!
Now I have a point. As a tec instructor I have to have gauges on my deco tanks to meet with course standards.
Now my question is WHY do we need them on deco tanks?? Bottom gas YES - but on your deco tanks, which should have been planned with a reserve and then contents checked, analysed etc.
So you lose some gas, what do you do?? Does it make a difference whether you have a gauge on the thing or not - if you been hoofing up the gas, with an Apeks it will get stiffer for the last few breaths when less than the 9.5 bar interstage pressure - OK then time to shut it down and switch to something else! Should be plenty of time. You can always switch to vback gas (we do have a third of that left dont we!) until you can sort out another deco tank if you have one, if not take a team mates, share or stay on back gas.... so where does the gauge come into all of this.
Im not advocating that we all chuck our gauges away immediately but think about it. Coz' I cant read my button gauges doesnt make much of a difference!
