Beginner 7 minutes
Weighting: how much lead, where, and why less is more
The cheapest, most overlooked adjustment in all of scuba gear
Ask an experienced instructor what single change would improve most of their students' diving, and they probably won't mention technique or expensive gear: they'll tell you to take off two or three kilos of lead.
In this article you'll see how to calculate the right amount of weight, how to distribute it to improve your position in the water, what weighting systems exist, and why carrying too much lead triggers a cascade of problems.
Weighting shapes your position, your gas consumption, your effort, and your control during ascent. It's a free adjustment that improves your dive more than most gear purchases would.
How much: the weight check
The standard procedure taught by every training agency is simple. At the surface, in full gear, with your BCD completely empty and holding a normal breath, you should float at roughly eye level. When you exhale, you should start to sink slowly.
That's the starting point. The decisive check, though, is the one almost nobody does: repeating it at the end of the dive, with the tank nearly empty. As you saw in the article on tanks, that's when you're at your most buoyant, and it's also when you do your safety stop.
If, with a low tank, you can't hold five meters without grabbing onto anything or finning downward, you're underweighted. If you need a lot of air in your BCD to stay neutral on the bottom, you're overweighted.
Weighting isn't a fixed personal number. It changes with your exposure suit, with the type and size of your tank, with fresh or salt water, and with any extra gear you're carrying. Writing down the configuration that worked in each situation (suit, tank, water type, lead) saves a lot of time on future trips.
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