Bitz Scuba Diving Equipment Guide

Whilst it is very unlikely that you will experience a failure, there are nine potential failure modes which can occur behind your head when using a manifold. Those which you can see (regulator second stage/inflator etc) are easy, you simply turn off the relevant side, but if you can't see it, it can be far less intuitive.

Whilst an isolation manifold is safer than the equivalent twin set configurations, it is only safer because of the options available and relies on you both knowing what to do and being capable of doing so. Identify the source of a problem needs to be practised so that finding a failure and resolving it or minimising its impact is "instinctive". The nine failure modes can be split into three general symptoms and three courses of action. It is quite possible that you may never experience a failure but it is far better to be safe than sorry.

Symptom	No	Cause
Bubbles Heard from Right Hand Pillar	1.	Bubbles coming from right hand first stage and fixable eg hose partly unscrewed or first stage having been knocked loose.
	2.	Bubbles coming from right hand first stage and not fixable eg split hose or failing first stage.
	3.	the right hand side of manifold or pillar valve eg extruded main tank or manifold o-ring
	4.	Failure of a hose on the "left" hand first stage blowing bubbles to the right hand side.

Lots of Bubbles from Unknown Source	5.	Any failure which leaves you unable to identify the source.Failure of

Bubbles Heard from Left Hand Pillar	6.	Bubbles coming from left hand first stage and fixable eg hose partly unscrewed or first stage having been knocked Loose.
	7.	Bubbles coming from left hand first stage and not fixable eg split hose or failing first stage.
	8.	Failure of the left hand side manifold or pillar valve eg extruded main tank or manifold o-ring
	9.	Failure of a hose on the "right" hand first stage blowing bubbles to the right hand side.

There is a flow chart on the following page, you may find it helpful to download it and copy it onto an A3 page. Dealing with a failure is very intuitive and not nearly as difficult as it may initially seem, so don't be frightened, five to ten minutes and the logic should be very apparent since they all follow a similar pattern.

The easiest way is just to sit down with your equipment behind you and run through "what if". The complexity is more the number of different failures not what you'd do to sort them.

Go to "Isolation Manifold Failure Flow Chart"