Separate Octo Or Inflator Octo

[AMASKU8200]

Recently I Was Diving With A New Reg Set And I Was Real Glad That I Had A Separate Octo. My Primary Developed A Glitch And Began To Get Real Hard To Breath. We Were Only Half Way Through The Dive And I Had Plenty Of Air But It Just Kept Getting Harder To Breath. I Switched To My Octo And Finished The Dive. If I Had Not Had A Separate Octo This Would Not Have Been Possible. During The Surface Interval The Dive Instructor Adjusted The Feed And Its Worked Great Since. This Is My Main Reason That I Don't Like Intragreated Octos.

[texdiveguy]

Welcome to the board and to scuba diving!!

I never have been a fan of octo/inflator combo's for a number of reasons. When I used to dive a traditional recreational scuba reg. set-up I used a standard octo also.

Have fun and be safe!

[DivingCRNA]

Originally Posted by AMASKU8200

Recently I Was Diving With A New Reg Set And I Was Real Glad That I Had A Separate Octo. My Primary Developed A Glitch And Began To Get Real Hard To Breath. We Were Only Half Way Through The Dive And I Had Plenty Of Air But It Just Kept Getting Harder To Breath. I Switched To My Octo And Finished The Dive. If I Had Not Had A Separate Octo This Would Not Have Been Possible. During The Surface Interval The Dive Instructor Adjusted The Feed And Its Worked Great Since. This Is My Main Reason That I Don't Like Intragreated Octos.

I have an inflator octo. It is not on my gear though. I took cavern, and there are a lot of air sharing drills and the octo inflator sucks to share air with for very long. Mainly because you cannot really turn your head at all. I am back to a regular octo. Wanna buy my inflator octo?

[Puffer Fish]

I have both..use the inflator on shallow dives...octo on deeper ones (I know...switching gear). That means, at times I have three second stages...just in case we have a party OOA situation.

[SarahBella]

I have only seen the integrated Octo in action a couple of times...its looks nice because the rig has one less hose to worry about, but I don't like the idea of having to pass the primary to the person in need. If I had one I would probably still dive with a backup secondary-I did all my training that way and would feel like I was missing something if it was not there.

[moosicman]

during a dive for my cert. one of the other students bought an octo/inflator as his beginning set up after we had been, thus far, trained with a separate octo and reg set up. so during some of the skills it became awfully difficult for him to breath out of the SNORKEL that he thought was his octo/inflator. he would grab for the octo and get the snorkel in the heat of the moment and not realize it. wasn't a problem as he didn't inhale, figured out his mistake, and fixed it, but it made me nervous, so i'm not a fan of the octo/inflators. they cost more anyway, right?...we did have a big laugh with him, saying that he was by far the better scuba diver of us all because he could breath on a snorkel from 35 feet.

[rfreddo]

Originally Posted by AMASKU8200

If I Had Not Had A Separate Octo This Would Not Have Been Possible.

Why? Either way, you are breathing off your backup, and making a decision to continue the dive with one less level of redundancy. My personal choice, and probably my budy's as well, would be to end the dive at that point, but that's just my conservative nature.

If the concern is that the ability to vent, freedom of motion, breathability, etc. are somehow hindered by the use of combo vs. independent octo, I can say from my own experience with my Octo-Z that I can ascend, descend or just swim around pretty darn close to as easily with my combo in my mouth as I can with my primary. As far as breathabilty, I've breathed off my combo at 95' without noticeable degredation in breathability, and find it better in most cases that the rental octos I've used in the past.

Just my 2 cents, but there seems to be a lot of bad publicity on the combos based on conjecture rather than experience. I respond to these threads often, and always end with something along the lines of "when you're OOA, feel free to pass me up if you don't like my configuration." Tongue in cheek of course, but I think it's a valid point.

[Steve Scuba]

Originally Posted by rfreddo

[ I respond to these threads often, and always end with something along the lines of "when you're OOA, feel free to pass me up if you don't like my configuration." Tongue in cheek of course, but I think it's a valid point.

LOL. Very good point rfreddo. That's really what it comes down to: personal choice.

[RonFrank]

The octo inflater donates like a long hose, and that I like in that I dive both. My travel setup has an inflater, my cold setup has a backup.

The octo inflater IMO has one downside, and that is that it creates a bit more task loading if you do have to breath off it. IOW's, one has to be ready to dump air while breathing off this, and sharing air.

Those scenarios rarely occur, but what is more import is that you are prepared to deal with an OOA situation with your particular equipment configuration vs. what that configuration is. Likewise your buddy needs to be aware of what you are using.

[BSea]

Originally Posted by rfreddo

Why? Either way, you are breathing off your backup, and making a decision to continue the dive with one less level of redundancy. My personal choice, and probably my budy's as well, would be to end the dive at that point, but that's just my conservative nature.

If the concern is that the ability to vent, freedom of motion, breathability, etc. are somehow hindered by the use of combo vs. independent octo, I can say from my own experience with my Octo-Z that I can ascend, descend or just swim around pretty darn close to as easily with my combo in my mouth as I can with my primary. As far as breathabilty, I've breathed off my combo at 95' without noticeable degredation in breathability, and find it better in most cases that the rental octos I've used in the past.

Just my 2 cents, but there seems to be a lot of bad publicity on the combos based on conjecture rather than experience. I respond to these threads often, and always end with something along the lines of "when you're OOA, feel free to pass me up if you don't like my configuration." Tongue in cheek of course, but I think it's a valid point.

I have to agree with rfreddo here. if you wanted to continue the dive, you could almost as easily have done that with the octo/inflator. I too would have ended the dive if my primary went out. But that's me. I'm not saying you did anything wrong.

I have used octo/inflators, and still use 1 for trips. I like the 1 less hose thing. But for normal diving, or more advanced diving, I use a traditional octo.