[daz]

Imported post

Quote[/b] (Steve L. @ Jan. 09 2004,20:19)]Daz was sporting a electrally heated thermal undersuit powered by 300 AA batteries concealed under his drysuit. Lacking any kind of heat loss, he became very unpopular with those members of his diving group clad only in semi-dry`s. (Yes they do exsist at this time of the year). This was compounded when he willfully prevented them from leaving the water by insisting on conducting endless mask clearing, reg. swapping, & bouyancy demo-ing exercises.

Bloody miserable bastards the lot I was with,  they called my parentage into dispute not to mention a few choice suggestions about what I might get upto on my own.

Not to mention a number of new signs they kept making at me...

I really enjoyed it actually, probably because I stayed pleasantly warm throughout.

mmmm...  Best bargain buy and DIY project to date.

Daz

P.S  The cruiser is pretty cool, despite them blocking off one of the entrances after a few people did a full swim through  

 

[daz]

Imported post

Umm,  right firstly the swim through,  well it was a bit of a struggle when I did it with twins on,  there is a bit of a dog leg corridor to get around,  in all fairness it is by no means the Stanagarth,   it is a tad confined inside.

The heated suit was a bargain buy from Robin hood watersports, thinsulate undersuit with a heated vest built in £50...  No batteries or switch though.  So I purchased a job lot of AA cell rechargables and made up 4x 12v packs.  2 packs will last for about 70 minutes and I hooked a push switch up so I can turn it on and off through the drysuit.

Each battery pack is about the size of a packet of **** (This has impacted the number of cigerettes I can carry but I get by  

)

The heated vest arrangement is basically the same as the heated vests you can buy from specialists who sell heated motorbike clothing.  

Daz

 

[daz]

Imported post

Quote[/b] (dcrampt @ Jan. 12 2004,23:32)]We have a guy in my local dive club who has a heated under suit. He has a small battery pack and a house light switch, with the white case, to turn the thing on. Its hillarious watching him rubbing his suit to turn the thing on, then looking puzzled when it does not warm up, and then being unable to tell if its switched on or not as the large switch box is inside his drysuit.

Oh yes the joy of home builds.  

The switch I currently use is smaller than a box of matches with a push button switch on it.  The switch runs down one arm and I can operate it with the other hand by pushing the switch through the suit near my wrist.

Kind of difficult to explain but the switch feels different when it is pushed to turn on and pushed to turn off.  It can take a few minutes before any difference is noticed though.

However the first switch I used was built into a box half the batteries fitted in.  Unfortunately if the suit was a bit shrink wrapped it depressed the switch and turned it off, and then I could not turn it on because of the shrink wrapping.

However on the plus side I did discover, that with the switch mounted on the battery compartment and with enough air in my suit I could turn the suit on and off by performing pelvic thrusts  

   Unfortunately it caused some concern with buddies so I moved the switch.

Daz