anatomy of the GUE Valve Drill

[Garf]

This is a post on our blog at Team foxturd, but I thought it might be of interest to someone here, so here you go...

This article outlines the process and reasoning behind the DIR valve drill, as understood by myself. firstly, a caveat. This is my interpretation of the valve drill, and my thought process behind it. If you want to learn how to do it officially, then you need to take a GUE course, or speak to a GUE instructor.

Process summary

The basic valve drill involves closing and opening all three posts on a twin set starting with the right post, then the isolator, then the left post.

Process Details

1. Signal to your team you are going to perform a valve drill
2. Wait until your team is in place and then continue
3. Purge Backup regulator
4. Shut down the right hand post whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team
5. when the post is shut down, breathe down the regulator until it "locks".
6. Remove the regulator and replace with your backup regulator
7. clip off your primary regulator on the right chest D ring
8. Open the Right post
9. Unclip the primary regulator and purge it
10. Remove the backup regulator from your mouth and replace with the primary regulator
11. Shut down the Isolator whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team
12. When the Valve is closed, Re-open the isolator
13. Move your torch to your right hand
14. Shut down the left hand post whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team
15. When the post is closed, purge the backup regulator until it "locks"
16. Open the left post and purge to confirm it is working
17. Move the torch to your left hand.
18. Check the position of your right hand post
19. Check the position of your isolator
20. Move the torch to your right hand and check the position of your left post
21. Signal that your drill is complete

Looks like a lot of steps, but it really should not take you any more than a minute or so to go through the drill in a nice slow fashion, and I've seen people do it a great deal quicker than this. The trick is to go through the drill slowly and carefully again and again until the movements become muscle memory rather than conscious action. At that point, you can begin to speed up the drill until it becomes both smooth and fast.

Anatomy of the process

Now that we understand the steps we have to take in order to complete the drill, let's look at each step in a little more detail and explain some of the reasoning behind it.

1. Signal to your team you are going to perform a valve drill

OK, so we are diving in a two or a three. We signal to the rest of the team that we are going to do a drill. This means a clear point at all the other team members indicating "You!" and "You", then pointing at your mask indicating "watch me", and then a turning motion with both hands indicating valve drill, hence "You! Watch Me!" "Do a Valve Drill!". this is critical as the rest of the team need to know what is going on so that they are ready if there is a problem. A problem could be you shutting down both posts and leaving yourself out of gas, or something going wrong with your kit. In either situation they need to be ready to step in, and critically, they need to be doing nothing else but watch so that they are not doing any other drills at this time.

2. Wait until your team is in place and then continue

If you are swimming in a line, you need to give your team time to get into a triangle formation all pointing inwards so that they can see you, and see your valves. This is important so that they are in the correct position to donate a long hose if they need to, and so that they can follow your movements on your valves. so have patience and let them get ready before you get going. Once you are all in position, you maintain eye contact with your team. This is done to ensure that firstly, you are keeping your head up during the drill and not getting absorbed in what you are doing, to keep your head up so that you maintain trim, and also so that you maintain situation awareness in case another member of the team has a problem themselves. you are only doing a drill, and need to keep an eye on your team at all times, including when you are doing drills.

4. Shut down the right hand post whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team

The signal for manipulating a valve is a clear "Attention!" signal, which consists of a controlled side to side motion with your torch beam. this must be a controlled and relatively slow motion, very different from a "I need assistance URGENT" signal which is a very quick motion with the torch. The signal is continued until the valve is closed. The signal should be given so that all other team mates can see it, and if you are diving in a team of three it is important that you do not get caught in the trap of only signalling to one person.

5. When the post is shut down, breathe down the regulator until it "locks".

This one creates a little discussion, but there are a couple of reasons why we breathe down the regulator. Firstly, it is a check that we have shut down the correct post and indeed are breathing the correct regulator. Most important, it depressurises the regulator. If A post or hose has a small leak, then turning off the post might leave the hose bubbling for some time. The hose needs to be depressurised in order to stop the bubbles. If the bubbles stop after you depressurise the hose, you have found the leak. It will also allow a team member, in a real situation, to reseat the first stage if necessary. finally, it is continual training against panic when you suck on a regulator and nothing happens. It becomes instinctive after several hundred drills - regulator locks, take it out and replace with a backup. this seems obvious, but what you are removing is the initial "Oh shit!" when the regulator locks.

6. Remove the regulator and replace with your backup regulator

The critical word here is "Remove". we do not spit out the regulator and replace it. We remove it with our hand and KEEP it in our hand until we are breathing successfully from another reg. This is so that we do not have to suddenly search for it if the regulator we wish to breathe off fails. It also means we do not have a regulator dangling around. there is a principle in DIR that a regulator is either in our hand, in our mouth, or clipped off. We never leave a regulator hanging as then we do not know exactly where it is. so, in this step, we remove our regulator with our right and then, whilst holding on to that regulator, we place the backup regulator in our mouths.

7. Clip off your primary regulator on the right chest D ring

In the last step, we were left in the position of breathing off our left post, and holding the primary regulator in our right hand. Now, we clip off the regulator onto our right chest D ring. This keeps it neatly stowed away whilst we continue our drills and continues with the ethos that we always know where the regulator is. we clip it to the right chest R ring as opposed to the left because we have a policy of not clipping anything across the body. this again is muscle memory. We do not get into habits of clipping across the body because sooner or later we would clip something across the `long hose and trap it.

8. Open the Right post

So, with the primary clipped off and breathing off the backup, we now reach back and open up the right post, remembering to keep our eyes at all times on our team. We open the post until it is fully open.

9. Unclip the primary regulator and purge it

We now unclip the primary regulator from the right chest D ring and give it a purge. This is to ensure we have turned on the correct regulator and that we are going to get gas from it when we attempt a breathe, which we are shortly to do. Note that we keep hold of the regulator during the purge process and continue to keep hold of it to the next step.

10. Remove the backup regulator from your mouth and replace with the primary regulator

As with the earlier step, we remove the backup rather than spitting it out. We now have the backup regulator in our left hand, and the primary regulator in our right hand, so we replace the primary regulator in our mouth and begin to breathe from it. We can now let go of the backup regulator.

11. Shut down the Isolator whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team

We now close down the isolator valve, and as with the earlier steps, we continue to keep our eyes on our team, and clearly signal with the torch in our left hand. We continue to close down the valve until it is fully closed.

12. When the Valve is closed, Re-open the isolator

We do not have a regulator to breathe down with the isolator, so once we have fully closed it, we fully re-open it again. Simple.

13. Move your torch to your right hand

Having finished with the right post and isolator, the next post we are going to deal with is the left post. However, we have an issue here because we hold the torch in a Goodman handle in our left hand. Now this is where some smartarse will say “ahh but I can still manipulate the valve with my left hand”, but what that person would also do is send erratic light signals all over the place as they do so, which could easily be misinterpreted as a problem. So, we don’t do that. What we do is switch the torch to our right hand by sliding it out of the Goodman handle, and grasping the torch in our right hand by the barrel of the light head. This means we can hold the torch and continue to give signals with it, and frees up our left hand to manipulate the left post.

14. Shut down the left hand post whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team

Remembering to keep our eyes on our team, and continually giving a clear side to side attention signal, we now reach back with our left hand and shut down the left post until it is fully closed.

15. When the post is closed, purge the backup regulator until it "locks"

Now that the post is closed, we reach to our backup regulator with our left hand, and purge it until it empties. This will depressurise the hose for exactly the reasons we described earlier. Once the regulator has stopped bubbling, we know we have shut down the correct post.

16. Open the left post

We can now open the left hand post. We open the valve fully, and then give the backup regulator a purge to ensure it is functioning correctly again.

17. Move the torch to your left hand

We now slide our left hand back into the Goodman handle of the torch.

18-20 – The flow check

We have essentially finished the valve drill now, but we need to just do a flow check to ensure all posts are back in their correct positions. This is a general DIR policy. Whenever anyone, including yourself, has been manipulating the valves, we do a flow check at the end to ensure all the valves are where they are supposed to be. In the case of the valve drill, all posts should be back in the open position. So we reach back with our right hand and check that the right hand post and the isolator is open. We take the torch in our right hand and check the left hand post is open, and then finally place our left hand back in the Goodman handle and we have completed the flow check.

21. Signal that your drill is complete

As the drill is now complete, we give a signal to the rest of the team that we have completed it and are ready to move on to the next person’s drill, or continue with the dive. There are different ways we do this, but the way our team does this is to give a circle with the torch indicating “OK”. The other team members return the signal. This gives the other team members the information that you are happy, but also you are getting a confirmation from them that they are satisfied that you have put all of your valves back where they are supposed to be. If you had made a mistake and left a post closed at any point, they could intercept you at this point and rectify the situation for you.

And that is my anatomy of the GUE valve drill.

I would conclude by stating that this is a DRILL. It is intended to build muscle memory. If the bubbles come from the left hand side, would I go for the right post first. No, of course not.

[Howard Payne]

Put like that is sounds easy - so how come we make it look so complicated
Are we charging for this sh*t?
Over to Woz for comments about a predilection for hand to gland combat eh?

[pieater]

Originally Posted by Boring admin message

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Garf again.

Ace post.

[milldog]

I understand that you shut the right post down first as this is regarded as the primary post and most likely to fail.

But i have had the valves leak behind my head in the shit and i couldn't tell which valve it was, in that case wouldn't it be better to isolate the manifold first and then the right post and so on.

also with a valve problem signalling to the team and getting them in position would waste time and loss gas, i know this drill has been discussed on the DIRx forum with quiet a few positive suggestions.

do you feel comfortable with the drill or would you learn it just for the course

Graham

Good post

[Janos]

Originally Posted by milldog

But i have had the valves leak behind my head in the shit and i couldn't tell which valve it was, in that case wouldn't it be better to isolate the manifold first and then the right post and so on.

I'm not DIR, but you have to remember the valve drill is just a drill. It's not a simulation of what you would do in real life. If your backup reg started to freeflow then obviously you'd shut that one off first. Similarly if your primary reg fell off because it wasn't done up tight enough then you'd switch to backup whilst isolating your primary.

Janos

[MATTBIN]

Garf
you sure you have that right, I seem to recall when discussed before the Isolator is the first valve you shut, and its stays shut until after you have shut and opend both rh and lh pillar valves, other wise you wont be able to tell if its the pillar valve/reg/hoses or the manifold. If you breathe down both regs and its still blowing you know its the manifold. Or have I mis-understood the drill?

Hell of a post though, you not busy at work

Matt

Edit _ Janos, I though that was the whole point though, you drill it in until it becomes second nature, so when it happens in real life you just go through the motions without any concious thought, that way you dont make a mistake. (in theory of course). Personally I would isolate as a first port of call then work out which valve needed shutting (if possible). I wont mention indies or inverts as this is in the DIR section.

[Clare Gledhill]

Originally Posted by MATTBIN

Garf
you sure you have that right, I seem to recall when discussed before the Isolator is the first valve you shut, and its stays shut until after you have shut and opend both rh and lh pillar valves, other wise you wont be able to tell if its the pillar valve/reg/hoses or the manifold. If you breathe down both regs and its still blowing you know its the manifold. Or have I mis-understood the drill?

Hell of a post though, you not busy at work

He's right.

Good post Garf - sad but very good

Think about it - isolating saves no gas at all. If you left post is bubbling it carries on - ditto with the right. Closing the isolator wastes time.

We don't *need* to save gas remember - we always have enough within the team to get out. But we would rather like to identify the problem and deal with it if possible so, whilst closing the post we think has a problem, we signal the team to come in and help out. Who can see best after all?

Just a different approach to diving really.

[MATTBIN]

Originally Posted by Clare Gledhill

He's right.

Good post Garf - sad but very good

who is, not clear from your post, me or Garf. dont wish to score points just get it straight what you guys think is the right way.

Matt

[Garf]

Hi Graham, some good questions there. I will answer them but remember I am answering from my own perspective, rather than any "official" DIr position. Additionally, there is nothing "wrong" with however a valves drill is done, there are always different ways to remove the skin of a domesticated feline. As always, all I am trying to achieve is to disperse the myth that DIr information is secret handshake stuff, and explain why WE choose to do something in a particular manner.

I understand that you shut the right post down first as this is regarded as the primary post and most likely to fail. But i have had the valves leak behind my head in the shit and i couldn't tell which valve it was, in that case wouldn't it be better to isolate the manifold first and then the right post and so on.

Yes, we shut down the right post as that is the most likely to fail. And agreed sometimes you cannot tell where the bubbles are coming from.

But to some extent we are playing the numbers. We know that gas is leaking from somewhere. If we shut down the isolator and it is the isolator that has failed, then the gas is going to continue to leak out and we have gained nothing. We shut down the right post becuase that IS the most likely to fail and if we shut it down we will limit the amount of lost gas. Its down to a difference in how you approach the problem. The "isolate first" school of thought basically involves reserving half the remaining gas. The DIR school of thought is more to do with diagnosing the problem, and closing the isolator first gives us no feedback about the nature of the problem if the bubbles do not stop. If we agree that the failure can be either one of the posts. It's almost certainly not going to be the left post, as that is sitting around your neck not under stress, and a left post failure is usually obvious from the location of the bubbles. that means its likely to be the isolator or the right post. If the isolator has failed you are going to lose all of your gas anyway. So you might as well go for the one that is most likely to have failed, and already start learninig about where the failurer has occurred.

also with a valve problem signalling to the team and getting them in position would waste time and loss gas, i know this drill has been discussed on the DIRx forum with quiet a few positive suggestions.

Well, I would reiterate this is a drill. In a real siutation, it is handled differently. Scootering around Stoney a couple of weeks ago my backup freeflowed. I signalled to the team and went into the process of resolving the situation. by the time I had shut down the left post both Gareth and Howard had dropped their scooters and got into position ready to assist. the valve drill in DIR, as with all DIR drills, is not something an individual does, as in a TDI valve drill, it is a team drill. All the valve drill does is build muscle memory to enable you to go through the process quickly, calmly and without undue panic or stress. All drills do that, so any drill that helps you build that memory is a good thing, whichever particular flavour of valve drill you adhere to.

[milldog]

cheers mate