Drysuite Membrane v compressed neoprean

[scuba steve irl]

Originally Posted by steve6690

you can get a neo suit with front zip too. I think O3 do it on their MTM Ri suit so I don't see why Seaskin couldn't do it ...

loads of suppliers do front zip now

[big_si]

Originally Posted by scuba steve irl

i dive with twins and a crushed neo .

i should have said tha it was a techie and dir prefferance

Yes DIR, not necessarily techie. I think there are plenty of us techies in both camps.

[Scuttler]

I've dived both Membrane and Hyper Compressed Neoprene.

I prefer my neoprene.

I have to wear less under it than I did under a membrane.

I basically have two types of undersuit:

- Peter storm thermal undies (long johns and sweater) that I have from a trip to Lapland
- O3 Point Below Base that came with the suit

For really cold water (below 6 degrees C) I'll be gettting Xerotherm Arctics.

When I dived in Membrane I had three types of undersuit:

- Wooly bear from when I used to Jet Ski
- Jeans and T-shirt or some similar combination
- Weezle Extreme+

The weezle extreme usually retains a lot of air so you need to take this into consideration when ascending especially if your dump valve is slow or fouled by the unersuit.

In my experience whilst Neoprene suffers nicks and gashes more readily they tend not to result in flooding.

Membranes are however less forgiving when they get puntured or torn.

My membrane suit used to flood about once every 5 dives due to latex seals and the fact that my tendons in my wrist stand up quite prominently. Fortunately with the weezle if it floods you'll barely notice.

In two years I've never had a neoprene suit flood.

If the neoprene suit is not hypercompressed then there can be significant bouyancy changes in the last 10m this is the primary reason that DIR and Techie divers prefer to use membrane or have up to now.

The other reason stated is difficulty to reach valves on a twinset. This can be a problem if the suit is not made to measure or if it's not cut quite right. I don't suffer from this problem and you shouldn't if your trim is correct and your flexibility and mobility allows. Some people can't reach their valves at all regardless of type of drysuit and so choose to dive twins sidemounted or inverted.....but I've digressed.

It does boil down to personal choice at the end of the day and there are loads of threads in which this question has been asked.

HTH