OK, so you are SRTing onto what looks like a coal mine and your 4gas starts yelling like a lunatic. Do you...
a) Make your way calmly out?
b) Get the fuck out a bit fucking sharpish?
c) Nah, it's fine. Keep going down.
:ohmy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0YkNnbK9Bo
I've gone running out of certain mines known for the blackness of the mineral having disturbed shitty water and released loads of H2S, or otherwise hit low oxygen, but hell...... gotta give it to this girl!
They don't know much about SRT! climbing harness, what looks like a Gri-Gri 2 and no up gear. Guess some mine explorer came along later, found the camera and bodies and posted it on you tube.
She makes bloody good videos, though! I've squandered most of an evening on them. Really well produced.
Reading the comments seems its someone named Tina.
I've been told when SRTing into unknowns, you lower the air meter SLOWLY down before the person goes into it. Logic being if she hit really bad air, by the time the meter reacted and she changed to ascending, she'd be dead.
I have to disagree with her version of "unstable" though, she has obv never explored in South Wales :ohmy:
The meter was alarming at 18% though, still well above safe levels. At the bottom it was still showing 17% O2 so still plenty of oxygen. It is possible to get down somewhere near 12% before you might die quickly so 17% is no real risk and probably common underground. It will equate to about 2 or 3% CO2.
It annoys me that people are frightened of alarms, where as they should be frightened of the actual levels. Trouble is it is quite difficult to detect CO2 so generally it is inferred from the O23 levels, this is a rather simple view and reality is much more complex.
The meters are set to alarm at HSE levels for a working environment and ought to be reset to more practical underground levels.
Problem is, these meters are for boiler flue gas readings and are not really appropriate for underground use in most cases anyway...
I have the same meter as her, and it starts to sound at 19% oxygen. I'm told that I've already been in places that we don't mention on the public forum where the oxygen is much lower than this, a place known for giving the visitor a hangover the following day. But it's just as you say Les, it's the bloody noise, I wouldn't want to be in my lounge with that racket, let alone in some collapsing hole. And all the time it's sounding, it's draining the battery and could mask other, more important sounds. I'm told that it's possible to alter the parameters on the Altair4 that I use, but few professionals are willing to do it. And you'd have to be nuts to enter a coal mine without one.
Yet hats off to her, she is either brave or stupid, she appears to be doing it alone!
doing it alone equates to STOOOOOOOOPD :silly: :blink: :silly: :blink: :silly: :blink: . saftey in numbers and all that
I have heard tales of an oxygen meter alarming during a management meeting with the windows closed. O2 regularly drops when you put several people into a smallish room and close the doors and windows, and consequently CO2 almost certainly rises by a similar amount. It is almost certainly why people doze in meetings, warm stuffy and higher CO2. Seems stupid to me that an HSE level is regularly breached by a standard work activity. Perhaps the HSE levels are wrong...
Meters really should be able to be set for real world applications rather than some level that will be encountered often. You are right, the noise is a pain and also how will you know when a more serious level has been found if it is already alarming...