Not protecting and maintaining your gear can get expensive. While dive gear is made tough for an extremely difficult environment, if not well maintained it will cease to function properly. And although it’s extremely rare, equipment failure while diving can lead to dangerous consequences.
Fortunately, there are easy preventions and solutions. But let’s review the enemies first so that we can better understand how they attack and how to combat them.
ENEMY: Corrosion
Corrosion is a process where loose oxygen molecules attach to metal parts in a process known as oxidation. Metal is lost so that critical parts are eaten away and pitted and eventually made useless. Corrosion can attack gear made of stainless steel, aluminum, copper, and chrome-plated brass, and of course steel.
An o-ring seal is particularly vulnerable to corrosion. How an o-ring seals is not just a function of the rubber o-ring but also what it seals against. If that metal surface is pitted by corrosion the seal will be compromised. The pliable delicate o-ring itself will be torn-up by the rough edges.
Springs also fall victim. With every molecule the spring corrodes away it becomes less effective and will eventually fail.
There are many critical moving parts that make your dive gear function. Many of these are machined in metal to very close tolerances. Most obvious is the regulator. Corrosion pits small, smooth and intricately moving parts. Burs can form, scratching and gouging occurs and performance suffers.
The corrosion problem becomes even worse and progresses faster when you have two dissimilar metals in contact with one another. An electro-chemical reaction occurs that accelerates the process.
ENEMY: Salt
Dried salt water forms crystals. If not dissolved and swept away by freshwater, these crystals will morph into tiny sharp points that scratch metal surfaces and tear at delicate soft surfaces.
After ocean diving the buoyancy compensator (BC) will have potentially damaging salt water inside the bladder. Salt crystals can also seize up other BC parts such as exhaust valves and inflators. Connectors will not slip on and off as designed. The moving mechanical valves on dry suits can also be damaged.
ENEMY: Sand
Sand grains imbed themselves in o-rings and soft valve mechanisms dramatically reducing efficiency or causing them to fail all together. Regulators will free-flow and BC valves will become jammed. Quick-connects clogged with sand can become impossible to use.
And like tough salt crystals, these tiny rocks scratch metal, silicone, rubber and plastic parts again reducing effectiveness leading to possible failure.
Even zippers can be affected by sand. Zippers clogged with sand need more force to close. Too much tugging and pulling will rupture the zipper rendering it useless. And of course Velcro covered in sand becomes useless as well.
ENEMY: Rot
Rot comes from bacteria brought on by organic material amongst your dive gear, usually wet dive gear. The organic material is made up of skin and skin oils sloughed from your body, sweat, urine, and microscopic marine creatures you may have unintentionally picked up on your last dive.
Anything that’s rotting smells bad. But it is worse than that. Bacteria can also attack soft parts of gear, especially neoprene dive suits. Bacteria have a bad habit of infiltrating the fabric of wet neoprene and can slowly break it down.
ENEMY: Chlorine
This enemy is likely the least considered. Often divers think those pool sessions for training dives are harmless and rinsing is not needed because the water is “fresh.” Except, freshwater pools high in chlorine can damage your gear, especially the bladder of your BC. Note: Chlorine levels in ordinary tap water are not high enough to damage your gear.
Doing Battle