wetsuit or drysuit?

[Chris H]

There was a recent thread about a custom wetsuit that had some comments about drysuits as well.  Like others have mentioned, if you intend to dive a lot locally, and like the Great Lakes, Lake Wazee, or any other oligotrophic lake, a drysuit is probably your best bet.  DUI, Diving Concepts an Bare are a few of the popular brands.

Dewit2it described two features of Neoprene drysuits that make them a poor choice.  The fact that they aren't self donning would be enough for me to not consider them, but the other issues are more critical.  As stated, Neoprene compresses with depth/pressure.  As it gets thinner, it loses some of it's insulation properties.  The deeper you go, the more this is an issue and considering the coldest water is usually deeper, this is a bad thing.  The other issue, that is caused by the same compression of the suit is, like Dewit2it stated, he needs a ton of weight to get down.  As you get deeper and the neoprene compresses, the suit looses much of its buoyancy and you will become very overweighted at depth.  This is sometimes referred to as not having a balanced rig.  A balanced rig essentially amounts to whether you can swim it up to the surface if you have a BC/wing problem.  And while we're on the subject, a BC is for buoyancy, the drysuit is not.  A neoprene suit is quite durable, but many of the tri-laminate shell suits are too.  The biggest issue when purchasing a suit is fit.  There are a few other things like what kind of seals you want (I like a neoprene neck seal) and maybe what you want for boots.  I have vulcanized rubber, but I would do turbo soles if I did it again and may actually get mine switched.  Do some reading, and I recommend a DIR-F class.