Learning to correctly assemble your SCUBA gear is definitely a life-saving lesson. You need to be absolutely sure that your SCUBA is working correctly before you dive!

It’s all very well discovering a fault while diving in the relative safety of a swimming pool, you can safely and quickly surface, but discovering the same fault at 30 metres could be severely life limiting.

A visual check of the your SCUBA components is an obvious start; Does everything look OK? Are any of the hoses worn or loose? Are there any cuts, tears or abrasions in your BCD? Is your cylinder in good order?

Now check the pillar valve on your cylinder, is the rubber O-ring in place? If it isn’t your SCUBA gear will leak air noisily at an alarming rate! Is the O-ring clean and in good condition? Would now be the time to remind you that it was a fault in a simple rubber O-ring that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster?

Fit your regulator set onto the cylinder pillar valve, align it carefully and don’t over-tighten the fitting… you need to be able to get it off again!

Now press the front of your contents gauge against the side of your cylinder or other solid surface and turn on the air. Open the cylinder valve all the way to the stop and then turn it back one quarter of a turn. In case you’re wondering, holding the glass front of your contents gauge against a solid surface protects you from injury should a fault have developed in the gauge causing the glass to fly out as you apply compressed air.

Now… Shhh… Listen carefully? Is anything leaking? Hopefully not, but if it is then you need to find out what and fix it before you go a step further.

Pick up your demand valve and release some air through it by pressing the purge button, the air should flow freely. Now smell the escaping air, is it clean? It shouldn’t smell of anything. This is a good time to discover that a faulty compressor has filled your cylinder with contaminated air!

Check that both your DV and Octopus are working correctly. Watch your contents gauge as you breath in and out through both valves, the gauge should remain steady, if it drops rapidly or fluctuates as you breath then something is wrong.

Now turn off the air supply and check the contents gauge, the pressure should remain stable, if it drops away then your SCUBA gear is leaking somewhere.

Press the purge valve on your DV to exhaust all the pressurised air from the system, the contents gauge should fall to zero if all is well. At this point try breathing through both your DV and the Octopus, you shouldn’t be able to suck any air through either, if you can then the valve is faulty.

Now turn on the air again, remember to follow the same safety procedure as before.

This time inflate you BCD. Does it inflate smoothly? Can you hear any air escaping? Once it’s fully inflated leave it for a minute or so and make sure it stays inflated, if not then find the leak… Release the air from your BCD before climbing into it.

I’m assuming at this stage that you’ve fitted your BCD onto your cylinder and the band is tight and secure? You don’t want your cylinder falling out of the band while you’re diving (trust me… it’s more than annoying…). Getting the cylinder is exactly the right place takes time and experience, it’s not life threateningly crucial but it can be annoying if your cylinder is too high or too low, it affects your attitude in the water and can restrict your head movement making it hard to look directly forward when swimming horizontally.

Now have your buddy hoist your SCUBA onto your back. Exactly how you do this depends on your SCUBA gear, needless to say it’s a cumbersome and mostly inelegant procedure for anyone new to SCUBA… only time and practice will improve matters.

Now you’re ready to carry out your buddy check…

A SCUBA Diving fitness test? Well how hard could it be? I run miles every week, circuit train and even do a bit of Pilates now and again, this was going to be a doddle… I hoped!

Swim 12 lengths of the pool… 4 lengths breast stroke, 4 lengths front crawl, 4 lengths backstroke… easy… why am I so knackered after doing it then?

I reckon it’s the change of discipline, no matter how good you are at running you still have to work hard to get your swimming right if you don’t do it regularly.

Recover 3 objects from the bottom of the pool… Now I just felt like someones pet dog! My instructor hurls a rubber brick into the pool… I dive down and fetch it… She throws it back in again… Anyway, all done, easy if you’re happy underwater.

Tread water for one minute… Suddenly I was right back in my school days, treading water in Brierley Hill Swimming Baths doing my Gold Survival Award!!

That’s it. It’s not really a hard test and if you’re serious about learning to SCUBA dive then it’s important that you’re fit enough to pass it. It’s not a macho thing, it’s about being fit enough to save your own life or someone else’s in an emergency situation.

Scuba Diving Lessons

So I’ve chosen my club and got ready for my first SCUBA diving lessons.

It’s important that your learning environment holds as few challenges as possible, learning to dive in open water could present many unnecessary dangers and so most SCUBA diving lessons are carried out in a nice, warm swimming pool!

This is the order of my 10 week course of scuba diving lessons and what skills we were being taught at each one:

Week 1:
Fitness test.

Week 2:
Simple finning and snorkeling skills.

Week 3:
Assembling your SCUBA gear and breathing underwater.

Week 4:
Buddy checks, mask clearing, demand valve clearing and buoyancy control.

Week 5:
Deep water entry and exit, more mask clearing, DV clearing and buoyancy control. Finning with blacked out mask to simulate very poor visibility.

Week 6:
Practice mask, DV clearing etc. while wearing hood and gloves. Remove SCUBA gear and refit. Manual inflation of buoyancy control jacket.

Week 7:
Air sharing with buddy while stationary, air sharing with buddy whilst finning.

Week 8:
Simulated rescue of unconscious diver.

Week 9:
Mock assessment of skills.

Week 10:
Final pool assessment.

Each pool session is followed by a lecture based on the content of the SAA elementary divers manual. These lectures are designed to prepare students for the SAA elementary divers exam.

I decided to learn to dive in one rash moment standing at the side of Dosthill Quarry in Tamworth! I’d been assisting a friend prepare for their first open water dive and so had a instant crash course in diving equipment, and that’s what did it…

You see I’m a sucker for technical stuff, gadgets, engineering and the like, and SCUBA kit is real nest of hoses, valves and compressed air, lots to interest a technical mind.

I think I was very fortunate to have been influenced by some experienced divers in my choice of exactly how to go about learning to dive. I think that many people first experience diving whilst on holiday when they take a try-dive with a local dive school and then do an open-water sea dive at the end of a weeks learning in a swimming pool. I had the benefit of more experienced divers pointing out to me just how risky that first experience could really be.

The skills learnt in diving are largely about staying alive in an environment that is seriously hazardous to health, and by the far the most important things to learn are what to do if things go wrong. Knowing what to do when things go wrong is one thing, having the prescense of mind to remember what to do in the heat of the moment is quite another. That requires more than just knowledge and skill, it also requires confidence and experience.

I quickly realised that I was hardly likely to build up much confidence and experience during a one week crash course followed by an ocean dive. Even though I’m absolutely sure that the dive instructor would keep things safe and manageable it makes more sense to me that I learn over a long period and experience more time in the water in a safe environment.

With a bit of research I quickly discovered clubs in 3 dive organisations in my area:

PADI – Professional Association of Diving Instructors

BSAC – British Sub Aqua Club

SAA – Sub Aqua Association

Each of these has their own dive courses and standards, it’s worth checking them all out to see which suits you best. Personally I was looking for a dive club that was local and affordable.

I settled on an SAA club called Stourport Divers in Worcestershire, it was local, the fees are very reasonable and I was able to borrow equipment from the club to go through my elementary diver training. Being able to borrow equipment is a huge bonus because the kit is fairly expensive and you can’t be sure at the outset whether diving will be your thing or not. Buying a load of expensive kit and then deciding you don’t fancy it after all is always going to be a pain on the pocket!

So thats it, I was ready to begin learning to dive!