Another Way to burp
Once you have your suit on. Lift the neck gasket above your mouth , let it seal under your nose. Pull the gasket slightly away from our mouth, then take breaths thru your mouth and exhale thru your nose. Works great!
Suits that are breathable
get air back in after burping… My observation is that after burping (I usually do it on land) the suit sticks to me as there is not much air inside. But, after some paddling, plenty of air gets back inside. I’m skinny, so I got lots of space under the suit.
So, while important to get extra air out, I fell it is not that important to get all the air out - if you have slack, you will get air back in after some time, so getting in the water is not necessarily very helpful if you can get most of the air out on dry land (getting wet before paddle has other benefits, such as reminding you before your life is in danger that you forgot to close your zipper, for instance -;)…
yeah, critical
even if recovering from a swim in moving water, or doing a rescue, even a little air gives too much buoyancy and resistance, and can make walking/working in a rapid harder than it should be. Your pfd gives enough buoyancy.
Thanks for the replies
Well I just checked with Kokatat and its a $155 to get the ankle seals and gortex booties installed were its $40 for just the one ankle seal that is ripped on the suit now. Plus I allready have the gortex socks.
Just wondering how much the suit would leak at the ankles if I used the gortex socks and had them under the ankle seals. Iam not sure how hard it would be to get the socks if even possable over the suit so as to not compromise the latex seal to skin on ankle. Right now the suit is in transit to kokatat for ankle seal replacement. Guess I should have figured this out before I shipped the suit.
So anyone ever use gortex socks on there drysuit that dont have the booties? Do they cause much of a leak at the ankles?
yes, I have
I used to use Gore-tex socks (made by Rocky) over socks and underneath latex ankle gaskets on a Kokatat drysuit. The results were fair. The Gore-tex socks do not conform absolutely to your ankles so there are always pleats in the socks where the gaskets cover them. Water will be wicked up those pleats so you will have some leakage.
stretch armstrong and steroid boy
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Taking off suit with latex ankle gaskets
Have you taken off your drysuit? My first dry gear were Stohlquist dry pants and top. I found taking off the pants with latex ankle gaskets no fun at all - especially if tired from rolling practice etc…
It may appear expensive, but attached Gore-Tex booties are so nice and easy…
Get the booties you will love them
As for the socks it will wick water not a lot but enough for you to be wet.
Get the Booties
– Last Updated: Jan-19-12 9:22 PM EST –
After going the latex gasket route instead of booties, two good male friends have both said they now know what it's like when ladies have their legs waxed.
Honest.
I had the gaskets.
Switched to latex booties. My new drysuit has goretex (actually e-vent, I think) booties.
Get the booties if you can afford them. Worth the extra $100 or so. Use those goretex socks in your leaky hiking shoes.
cheaper solution
Instead of replacing latex gaskets, replace with latex booties. The difference in price is about $10.
The difference in comfort and ease is HUGE!
Personally I don’t think it’s worth the extra money to have goretex booties instead of latex installed. Latex works just as well. And your feet can’t breath in neoprene boots anyways.
Just squat
as tight as you can with legs up against your chest, pull your arms into your sides, wiggle around your shoulders, all to push out air, while holding the neck gasket open with a finger.
I have had the experience of having to push a boat off myself to get out from under it when it had too much air - it is not a comfortable feeling. I was doing safety for a demo day and went to roll before getting out, but didn’t account for how much air had built up in my suit from sitting there in the sun. Get that thing burped.
Gotcha
OK, fatal not fun - I concede it was a dumb idea.
Plus warmth
Having booties seems to do a lot more for your total body warmth than it would seem. YOu don’t realize how crummy ankle gaskets are until you get booties.
As others have said…just squat…
Once you start paddling and generate some heat, the dry suit may inflate a bit again. Just reach under the dry suit collar and relieve the pressure.
Latex socks
I called kokatat and its $105 to have latex booties installed. Were $40 to just replace the one latex ankle seal. I did put the suit on and had no trouble getting on and off by the one good latex ankle seal. Maybe because i have small feet size 7.5 mens.
But it got me thinking I could just put the suit on then get a pair of latex socks and cut them to fit right up to the top of the latex ankle seal and were the socks over the dry suite latex ankle seals. I would think a latex to latex would have a water proof seal. That’s fairly cheap as i found latex socks for about $15 on ebay.
Trying to keep cost down. Only reason I got drysuit is I got killer deal on ebay for $250 for the suit which is in great shape except for one torn ankle seal.
.
If you already have latex socks gluing them in is always an option.
Or, you could glue in gore-tex socks.
Really - it’s worth it.
I installed my own latex booties. It wasn’t really hard once I figured out what to use to hold the shape while glue dried. If they’ll do it for $105 though, I’d go for it. They aren’t charging you enough for labor to make it worth doing yourself if you already paid the postage.
Not sure what you mean by “latex socks”. If you mean to use the booties without actually installing them - that won’t work. Besides - pulling latex on over latex would be a huge bother.
The booties are really worth the extra cost. $350 total cost for a decent drysuit ain’t bad.
And consider the opposite sometimes
Squat and open up the neck gasket to burp the suit on land, yes.
The opposite thing is useful if you feel chilled (and are sitting on land rather than paddling): ADD air to the suit. That’s free and easy supplemental insulation. When you are about to start paddling again, which will warm you up, then burp the suit. You don’t want to be paddling in a suit with excess air.
Best option is to have a sock!
Best option is a sock and not an ankle gasket. The ankle gaskets can be uncomfortable and too tight on the ankle which causes cold feet. Of course wet feet are cold too.
In addition - ankle gaskets are more prone to failure than wrist or neck. NOT because of the gasket but because of how people get out of them. I have a fleet of drysuits and at nearly every event an ankle gasket comes back to me torn. I have been gradually replacing them myself to gore-tex socks for that reason.