The Avelo System
Meet the Avelo Hydrotank. It's a lean, high-capacity, ultra-durable scuba tank with an integrated buoyancy control feature.
The Avelo System
Meet the Avelo Hydrotank. It's a lean, high-capacity, ultra-durable scuba tank with an integrated buoyancy control feature.
Webinar with Dan Orr
Dan is a diving expert and former CEO of Divers Alert Network who was first able to dive the Avelo System as a pilot participant. Learn more about his experience with the Avelo System, how Avelo works, and what we’re planning next.
Weight, what?
Our lightweight tank is buoyant and can become lighter or heavier by using water from its environment. It operates by adding or removing water to maintain neutral buoyancy.
Once neutral buoyancy is achieved, it remains neutrally buoyant for long periods of time. This form of buoyancy is ultra-stable and is not affected by ascending or descending.
This concept changes everything about scuba diving. Imagine walking into the water carrying one of our lightweight systems. On the water’s surface you float because the Hydrotank is buoyant. When you are ready to dive, you press a button and water is pumped into the Hydrotank and around an inner bladder. When you feel neutrally buoyant, you stop the pump and swim down with 20-25 minutes of perfect neutral buoyancy without changing anything else. You can ascend or descend freely without feeling like you are being pulled up or down.
After 20-25 minutes you consume enough gas mass to become a little buoyant. You turn on the pump again for 20-30 seconds. The water in the Hydrotank replaces the mass of the gas you consumed, and you experience another 20-25 minutes of pure underwater Zen. Repeat until it’s time to get back on the boat (or shore).
At the end of the dive, you open a purge valve and all the water from the Hydrotank is released, you are buoyant and lightweight, making the climb back aboard a breeze.
Why it works
Eliminates instability
There is no air pocket (i.e. BCD) that causes these rapid buoyancy changes. When you swim with the Avelo System, you move. When you stop swimming, you hover. It’s an underwater stability sensation that cannot exist with standard scuba systems today. We stand by this statement as dive professionals with 20+ years of teaching scuba all over the world.
Wetsuits, even thick ones, have a minor effect on buoyancy. Their buoyancy needs are easily managed with our Hydrotank. While drysuits are a buoyancy bubble similar to BCDs, they are much more easily managed with the Avelo System.
Perfect buoyancy with intuitive lung control
Experienced dive professionals correctly emphasize the importance of lung control as the foundation for perfect buoyancy. The air pocket (BCD) is supposed to be used to adjust the diver’s buoyancy to "about neutral" and then the lungs are used to fine tune this buoyancy.
The problem with the air pocket is that it is very sensitive to depth changes. As such, it provides an unstable platform for neutral buoyancy. The larger the air pocket the more sensitive it is to depth changes. This phenomena narrows the depth range in which controlling buoyancy with the lungs alone is effective.
The Avelo System eliminates the air pocket. Perfect neutral buoyancy is easily reached using water weight. Once reached, the diver can pinpoint their vertical location in the water column at any depth using slight breathing modifications.
Perfect weighting every dive
Proper weighting is paramount for a good diving experience. Too much weight means the diver must carry a larger air pocket in the BCD. This exacerbates the instability of neutral buoyancy.
Too little weight and the diver is struggling to stay submerged. This is a sure recipe for over-exertion and shorter dives.
The Avelo System allows you to use the buoyancy of our lightweight Hydrotank to your advantage. When you need weights, you "borrow" it from the water around you. Even better, you borrow just the right amount of weight for you to be neutrally buoyant. You need more weight? Start the pump. You need less weight? Purge water.
What about all the other scenarios?
We know this is new. It’s not only new scuba equipment. It is also a completely new discipline in scuba diving. For that, we created our Recreational and Professional Avelo Diver certification programs where we review all aspects of diving Avelo.
Diving the Avelo System
Technical specifications
| Traditional equipment | The Avelo System | |
|---|---|---|
| Average weight | 75 lbs / 32 kg | 45 lbs / 20 kg |
| Components |
Tank Weights Buoyancy Control Device (BCD) Regulator |
Hydrotank Battery Pump Regulator |
| Working pressure | 3,000 psig / 206 bar | 4,350 psig / 300 bar |
| Valve type | DIN or Yoke | DIN |
| Fill pressure | 3,000 psig / 206 bar | 3,000 – 4,350 psig / 206 - 300 bar |
| Amount of weight required | 14 - 36 lbs / 6 - 16 kg | 0 - 6 lbs / 0 - 3 kg (in most cases) |
| Equivalent tank size | 77 cubic ft / 2,180 liters* | 77 - 106 cubic ft / 2,180 - 3,000 liters** |
* AL 80 / 12 L is the common name for tanks used in standard scuba
** Steel 100 / 15 L is the common name for high-capacity tanks
How does the Hydrotank work?
To view how the system works, add water to the hydrotank by pressing the On/Off button. When the tank is finished filling in the animation, press the Purge Valve button in this animation.
How does the Avelo System help us reduce the weight?
Since the beginning of scuba, there has been a need for lightweight gear. Until now, making the gear lightweight was not prioritized. A scuba set inherently has a certain amount of buoyancy. To sink it, you need to counteract this buoyancy with a certain amount of mass.
If scuba gear was made lightweight, but the buoyancy remained the same, you would have to add weight to dive. This provides a poor incentive to make scuba gear lightweight.
Moreover, standard scuba gear becomes lighter as the dive progresses because we breathe the air out of the tank, so we must add even more weight. This makes us too heavy at the beginning of the dive so we need to add a BCD. The result is a heavy and cumbersome system.
The Avelo System is lightweight and buoyant when you enter the water. To descend, you make the system less buoyant. Instead of using an inflatable and compressible BCD or wing, you use water to become neutrally buoyant.
Dive more
Enjoy longer dives with the Avelo System. Our Hydrotank is designed for a working pressure of 4,350 psig / 300 bar. The gas capacity of the Hydrotank is 106 cubic feet / 3,000 liters which means it is ready to provide 33 percent more gas than standard tanks if the compressor in your local dive shop can fill to that pressure.
Dive shops will typically fill the Hydrotank with 3,000 psig / 200 bar. Even though this is the same pressure as a standard scuba tank, divers still enjoy longer bottom times because the Avelo System optimizes diving efficiency and does not use breathing gas to manage buoyancy.
This is especially important for new or infrequent divers who will appreciate an excellent diving experience for longer than they typically do. Our system helps them quickly establish a calm and controlled mindset which makes buoyancy control a breeze. Our streamlined system also creates noticeably less drag underwater.
The equipment
Hydrotank
Our Hydrotank is a specially designed tank that can be swapped out between dives as with any other tank. It's the heart of the Avelo System and is why our product provides perfect neutral buoyancy.
The Hydrotank comes with a standard 4,350 psi (300 bar) DIN valve that is compatible with any regulator rated to 4,350 psi. Most regulators today are rated to 4,350 psi as long as they are equipped with an appropriate DIN connection.
* Refer to the user manual for your regulator to check compatibility with 4,350 psi (300 bar).
The Jetpack
Our Jetpack is a backplate system uniquely designed to hold and operate the Hydrotank, as well as give you a place to store all your goodies.
We keep it streamlined, but any number of accessories can be added beyond our standard D-rings for special needs such as pockets, cutting devices, and SMBs.
Charging the battery
Our rechargeable battery recharges within 40 minutes and can be swapped out with another battery or removed for charging.
The battery uses the same technology as that used in underwater lights for cave diving. An indicator light will appear green when the battery is ready to dive.
The number of dives you can get on a battery depends on your experience. The Experimental Dive Team gets 7 to 8 dives on a battery while a new diver gets 2 to 4 dives.
In the field
Wetsuits
Wetsuits do not compress as much as you think. The Experimental Dive Team completed more than 1,300 dives in suits that range from skins to 10mm. Any thickness wetsuit works with the Avelo System without adding the amount of additional weight you would need to add with a standard scuba system.
Diving with the Avelo System while using a drysuit will still provide all the lightweight benefits of the system.
Drysuits
Diving with the Avelo System while using a drysuit still provides all the lightweight benefits of the system. Since the drysuit is a compressible volume, the buoyancy of the drysuit will need to be managed. This may mean adding some weights to allow for these buoyancy characteristics.
Although weight is added for drysuit usage, the total weight difference is still substantially lower when using the Avelo System than when using a standard scuba system.
Safety matters
Our Recreational Avelo Diver (RAD) course teaches all safety scenarios, including failures. All possible failures of the Avelo System allow a diver ample time to respond and end a dive normally.
The Avelo System does not allow the uncontrolled ascents and descents that occur with standard scuba systems using a BCD. The Avelo System is manually controlled. No automation is required because divers instantly become experts at controlling their buoyancy by using their lungs.
