Folks

a sincere help request to complete a Farrworld exam if you please!

Q: to reach an underground dive site I am req'd to transport cylinders down a vertical pitch: how many cylinder attachments points should be adopted and where?

common sense says a minimum of 2 but any help to answer the question is appreciated or at least direction to a resource where I can find accurate info is also welcome.

regards, Matt S 

In the good old daysTM when I was kind enough to carry bottles for divers, we'd attach to the harness that the bottle was clamped into and to the valve, to keep it upright whilst being raised/lowered.

This is how we transported cylinders down Greftsprekka:



Francis

Clip a figure of eight on the bight into the karabiner attached to your cylinder, then clove hitch the rope around the cylinder neck. If a tackle sac is being used, this should be attached to the rope independently of the cylinder.

Simon.

This might sound like a flippant answer (it's not meant to be) - but - you have read the CDG manual, haven't you?

Pitlamp said:

This might sound like a flippant answer (it's not meant to be) - but - you have read the CDG manual, haven't you?

Click to expand...

Not owning a copy of the latest CDG manual I have now placed an order on the CDG site - a prudent addition to my personal caving library

VERY late last night after posting my question I uncovered an old 1990 Ed CDG manual which I'd forgotten I had - ref vertical transport it quotes the following:

".....where poss cylinders should be lowered in a good quality tackle bag with the haul line attached to both bag & cylinder. Cylinders to be secured to a krab by a short haul loop of thin nylon beneath the valve and secured by a larks tail knot...."

cleary this secures the cylinder to the rope should the bottom of the tackle bag break through.

If this is also the current accepted method I will commit this to the paper, thanks all - Matt

You can see on the picture Francis posted the same general idea. The cylinder is clipped to my harness using the bands and there is an additional tape fastened to the pillar valve and clipped to my central maillon for security. Note that I am NOT using the gear loop of the harness (which I don't consider as load bearing for something as critical as this), but the crab is clipped directly into the wiast band of my harness.

The point that Graham makes is important. If you are hauling a cylinder it's very important that it is held in a vertical position. There is much less chance of the pillar valve bashing into something if the cylinder swings about. Obviously if you haul the cylinder in a bag it will be fairly vertical anyway. I don't like using bags for cylinders, since it tends to bugger the bags. However a cylinder rigged for American side mount tends to have the band a bit low, so I wouldn't really like to rely on that as a back-up.

Mark

There was the day in Slovenia (it was still Yugoslavia then) when the valve caught while a bottle was going up a pitch & turned on. The blanking off cap was blown out across the chamber, two of us at the bottom ran across the chamber & threw ourselves flat on the sand, believing it had blown apart - too late if it had but that's what you do - & the guy on the ledge guiding it up was a gibbering wreck. Still, he did manage to turn it off & all we lost was some air.

Most exciting.

You think that was bad Graham? Someone once threw a tank at me down the second pitch in Large Pot; You've never seen anyone running down a passage so fast in your life!

Incidentally the other day I noticed a short video on Youtube where some folks were chopping pillar valves off full tanks (obviously in very controlled conditions!).  It's quite sobering to see - and definitely a case of "Don't try this at home folks".

Worst I know of, Pitlamp, was when Brian Judd dropped a bottle down a pitch in Pol na gCeim and it landed next to Tim Fogg. I saw the bottle just after the came out (for some reason the dive was aborted) and the pillar valve had been bent. it didn't break, though.

My preferred method is to attach the cylinder by the krab on the jubillee clip to a figure 8 and then form a loop in the standing end of the rope, twisted over the tap so that the bit you pull on is trapped under the rope from the krab.  This holds the cylinder vertically, tap upwards and we use the same method to haul cylinders horizontally along the tight bit in Wigmore from the top of Black Pudding Pot.  This works well for ASM rigged tanks.

If the cylinder was in a bag I wouldn't secure it to the bag, just make sure that it wouldn't fall out.