

While there are a number of internet sites where you can simply punch the numbers into boxes and get an answer, I find it useful to be able to do the calculations yourself. Once you have these numbers, you can start your calculations. Then make note of the air consumed in those 5 minutes, to also have an idea of your air consumption while working under strain.

Ideally, include a dive where you were really strained due to currents, or swim for 5 minutes at maximum effort during a dive. For each of these dives, note down the depth, time, gas used, and cylinder size. Do some measuring Elisei Shaferįirst, do a number of dives at different depths and conditions. When we know our SAC, we can make estimations as to how much air we will likely use during a dive to any given depth, allowing us to factor air consumption into our dive planning.Ĭalculating your SAC isn’t that difficult, and is part of most solo diving and technical diving courses. So simply looking at our manometer doesn’t tell us the whole story, as we can consume more air during a 30-minute dive to 35 meters than we do during a 1-hour dive to 8 meters. As we all know, air consumption increases with depth due to the pressure increases the density but reduces the volume of the air we breathe (as per Boyle’s Law). Surface Air Consumption is an expression of your air consumption during dive, with the depth of the dive taken out of the equation. After that, I learned my SAC’s Bjorn Stefanson Luckily, I had my buddy close by, and I was able to use his octopus while we finished our safety stop and surfaced. So as we were suspended on a safety stop line inside the cave, my manometer mercilessly ticked away towards zero. The one time was during a dive in Egypt, where we needed to exit through a small cave.īut I had misjudged condition on the dive going further into the cave than I should have before turning around. OK, it has actually only happened once where it was critical, but I have had a few close shaves in addition to this. It’s happened to me more times than I’d like to admit running low on air during a dive. If you’ve moved beyond the basics of Scuba diving, and have started planning your own, independent dives, you should know you Surface Air Consumption, or SAC.
