FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

             We get many questions and queries – here are our answers to most of them:
Q: I think I could fit a stock suit. Why is a custom fit so important?

When you combine the characteristics of a good neoprene drysuit with a custom fit, you have the best of all worlds. By
getting yourself measured up by a High Tide dealer, you will be able to try on actual Rocklug boots to make sure you get the
correct size for your foot. When your suit is started, we will cut your neck and wrist seals to fit you perfectly, make sure the
leg, arm, and torso length are correct, adjust the chest, waist and hips to fit you properly. Your fleece jumpsuit will also be
cut just for you. When your suit arrives and you try it on, you will realize how much more streamlined and comfortable it is
than a stock suit. You will feel the difference!
A correctly fitting drysuit system will last longer too, since there will not be stress at seams or panels that accompany an ill
fitting stock suit.

Q: Does High Tide offer “shell” type dry suits?

Since our specialty is providing cold water protection for diving across the northern latitudes of the continent, we greatly
prefer neoprene based dry suits and only manufacture those. There are three basic reasons we dive neoprene dry suits
rather than shell:
1) WARMTH. Neoprene is warmer than shell type suits because insulating air is encapsulated in the neoprene itself and
cannot gravitate upwards to the highest portion of the suit. This keeps your lower torso and legs warmer. A shell suit user
will discover that the air provided by the loft of his thick “snowmobile’ like jumpsuit quickly leaves the lower extremities and
concentrates in the upper chest/neck regions (air always goes up!). With the “loft” gone from the lower parts of his body,
the shell suit user will feel chilled below his chest, especially on long or deep dives.
2) SAFETY: If you’ve ever had a neoprene dry suit flood then you know that the suit still retains buoyancy and thermal
warmth, even if it is like a baggy wetsuit. We’ve had lots of testimonials from divers with badly leaking neoprene dry suits
who continued their dives without too much discomfort, often remarking how warm they were! A shell suit, on the other
hand, loses all buoyancy if there is a bad tear or zipper blowout since a shell suit has no floatation characteristics in the thin,
bladder-like material. And if flooded, a shell becomes freezing cold with virtually no thermal warmth. Imagine facing a series
of long decompression stops in a flooded shell suit!
Also, neoprene suits are safer to dive since they have small volumes of interior air. This is important should a diver happen
to get his feet above his head, so that the air rising to the boots does not exert so much pressure as to blow the boots off! A
shell type of suit carries a large air bubble inside (that air that was squeezed out of the jumpsuit and rose to the top of the
suit) and if that air happens to get into the boots, then the result can be exceedingly dramatic and no fun at all!
3) FIT AND DRAG: The vast majority of shell type dry suits are sold as stock, off-the-shelf units. These types of suits are
cut very, very baggy since the material does not stretch and suits have to fit a wide variety of body shapes. This extra
material causes unsightly wrinkles underwater and produces a lot of drag, thus making the diver work harder to swim and
therefore use up his air faster. Often the stock suits do not really fit that well and a diver may find himself with a suit that he
ends up upgrading soon thereafter, while taking a financial beating as he tries to sell the original suit. Better to get a custom
neoprene suit to start with – you will swim faster, improve your air consumption rate and be warmer.

Q: I keep hearing that neoprene suits require more weight to submerge than shell type suits.
Is this true?

Yes. And No. It depends on how cold the water is.
In temperate waters of, let’s say, California, a diver wearing a shell suit will not require much of an undergarment to stay
warm, so he typically dives a thinner jumpsuit and does not need as much lead to get down.
The diver using a 7.0 mm neoprene drysuit in those waters obviously cannot make his suit thinner, so will not be able to
reduce the amount of lead to get down and he will wear a few pounds more. (He will also be warmer – maybe too warm!)
So under that scenario the axiom holds true – a shell diver uses less weight to get down.
Things change when the same two divers travel to British Columbia, Canada, to dive some wrecks. The shell suit diver
quickly discovers the water temperature of 45 degrees rapidly chills him, especially his feet and lower parts of his body. So
he keeps adding layers of fleece or a thicker jumpsuit until he finally gets fairly warm. But now he has had to add another
eight to ten pounds to his weight system.
Meanwhile, the neoprene guy may add a layer of ultra thin polypro underwear (and perhaps a fleece layering vest), but he
requires nowhere near the extra layers that the shell guy has employed, so he only has to add three or four pounds to his
weight system.
In these colder northern waters, the neoprene diver actually uses less weight and he is a lot warmer too. So the axiom
reverses itself.

One of the neat things about High Tide drysuit systems is that they are based on thinner, 5.0 mm neoprene so they can
comfortably be used in temperate waters (without the fleece jumpsuit) and with comparable weighting as the shell suits. Yet
by adding the included fleece jumpsuit and layering vest the High Tide suits are absolutely the warmest suits you can get for
trips to cold Canada or the Great Lakes. One type of suit for both water temperatures!
All things being equal, in temperate waters we find that High Tide neoprene suit wearers use just about exactly the same
amount of weight as the shell suit people and in northern waters can use a couple of pounds less. And they always report
being warmer.

Q: Does High Tide make suits with self-donning zippers?

We do not. In our opinion, one of the disadvantages of neoprene is that it is not a good material to use for self-donning
suits. To design a suit for an across-the-front zipper, one must add about 8 to 9 inches to the torso length of the suit to allow
one shoulder of the suit to be pulled up and over the diver’s head as he gets into it. In shell suits, this extra torso material can
be easily folded at the waist and held in place with straps for a (relatively) smooth fit. Neoprene does not fold, but gathers in
a tube around the midsection, making the diver look like he is wearing a tire around his stomach. While we have made some
experimental suits that featured a self-donning zipper, we were not happy with the results and now just concentrate on back
zip suits.
We understand that a few people do dive alone and may require a self-donning zipper and for those people we recommend
DUI or USIA shell suits as examples of well proven technology and design. For the rest of you, we recommend a back
zipper style of suit since you should be diving with a buddy anyway, and back zippers last much, much longer than front
zippers (front zippers wear out quickly at the shoulder or the crotch – they don’t like being bent tightly and fail prematurely).

Q: Can I get latex neck or wrist seals?

Latex seals offer pretty much “bone dry” sealing and have the advantage in stock suits of being “cut-to-size“. Those
advantages are offset by a short lifespan (ozone attacks the latex and they usually last only one or two seasons before
expensive replacement is necessary), being un-repairable in the field (if you poke a hole in one, you cannot glue it, it must be
replaced), and by being cold (latex has zero insulation so you feel a cold “ring” around your neck and wrists).
Neoprene seals are soft and warm and last many years without degradation from ozone. And if you poke a hole in one it
can be field repaired with a can of wetsuit glue and you can be back in the water in an hour. The neck seals are much more
comfortable than latex since they are warmer and do not feel so much like they are choking you. Having said that, neoprene
seals are not as watertight as latex, they commonly will weep a little bit of water and give you “ring around the neck” or “ring
around the wrists”. However, weepage is generally slight and unnoticeable and even if a diver experiences a little leakage he
will feel warmer than if he was using the non-insulating latex seals.
To answer your question: High Tide does not offer latex neck or latex wrist seals - we think the new, soft and stretchy
neoprene seals are far superior to latex and absolutely last much longer.

Q: I thought all neoprene was alike. What are the differences?

Almost all neoprene manufacturers offer at least half a dozen grades of neoprene. Some foam is made with so much “filler”
that is comes into the country classified as “blended foam” and does not even qualify with US Customs as neoprene! Such
inexpensive foam is used for wraps for horses and athletes but is not suitable for water or diving use.   Some water sports
grade neoprene is designed with a zero depth rating (for surfers, water skiing, etc.). Some is designed for sport diving (with
a typical depth rating of 100 feet). Some is meant for commercial diving and, with extra ingredients added to the basic
neoprene (such as butyl – a strengthening agent), can withstand repeated pressure to 165 feet.          Compressed neoprene
(also marketed as micro-cell neoprene) is foam that starts out life at one thickness (and with additives to improve its
compression strength) and is compressed under pressure to a slightly thinner ending thickness. Only the strongest, most
robust air cells survive this process, thus compressed foam usually carries a depth rating of at least 230 feet and can easily
last a thousand dives with little crushing or wrinkling. Hyper-compressed foam can go to 400 feet without damage from
pressure!
There is no free lunch here. Inexpensive foam is not suitable for diving or it will rapidly crush and wrinkle, losing its thermal
insulation properties. Most wetsuits and accessories on the market are made from the so called “sport” foam, rated for
moderate depths of 100 feet. If you dive sport products for long, or take them deep, they will lose thickness and warmth
rapidly and permanently. Commercial rated foam is the best for most people, it is a little bit stiffer than sport grade foam but
lasts about three times as long under the same conditions. Trouble is, in our price conscious society, almost no one makes
suits from commercial neoprene anymore due to the expense. By the way, compressed foam is too dense to make good
wetsuits, it doesn’t stretch enough, but it is excellent dry suit material.
That, in a nutshell, is more information than you’d ever want about neoprene!

Q: What is the difference between compressed neoprene and crushed neoprene?

Only two companies (that we know of) use true crushed neoprene. Crushed neoprene, as its name implies, is neoprene in
which all of the air bubbles have been squashed flat as a bug and the air escapes. This leaves a very thin, (1 mm or so)
dense layer of neoprene which no longer has any air bubbles.   This thin material is then used for traditional type shell suits.
DUI pioneered this technique and makes a very successful shell suit from this material as it has some stretch which most shell
suit materials do not have.   However, since the air is gone, crushed neoprene has no thermal warmth or floatation properties
if flooded. It is just another shell material, although arguably one of the best for that purpose.
Compressed neoprene, while thinner and denser than regular neoprene, retains plenty of air bubbles for warmth and
floatation – and much better stretch than crushed neoprene.
We have sold many, many High Tide suits to former owners of crushed neoprene suits and we repeatedly get rave reviews
and comments from these owners about how much warmer and more comfortable they are in their High Tides.
In semi-warm waters (like southern Cal) a crushed neoprene is probably the way to go so you don‘t overheat. But in colder
northern waters like the Great Lakes or Puget Sound, you will be far happier in a compressed neoprene suit. Those millions
of trapped air bubble will definitely keep you warmer.

If you have any more questions about our dry suits, please contact us at info@hightidedrysuits.com. Thank you.

High Tide Dry Suits, Inc.