Underwater welding??

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I'm really interested in welding and i've been divng for about 3 years just for fun and a few months ago a friend told me about underwater welding/commercial diving and I'm really interested in it I think I would really enjoy it. But just had a few questions I know it can take a while to "break out" so I was just wondering what a divers tender makes starting pay? And what is the best line of work for an underwater welder/commercial diver? obviously theres underwater welding, working on oil rigs, underwater construction and i've seen some stuff about people doing hazmat work and working on underwater nuclear reactors just wondering if anyone knows what pays more?
Reply:Commercial diving is completely unlike regular SCUBA. I do both. Commercial work is dark and cold, and frequently you do everything by feel in zero vis. There's not all that much welding done underwater. It's usually not cost effective. You get a better job welding top side and then assembling the parts underwater with bolts. You'll go to school to become a comercial diver, not a welder. That means you'll learn rigging, runing a deco chamber, ROV work, inspections and all the rest, not just underwater cutting and welding.The big paying jobs don't last long. It's a young bucks job. The business chews people up and spits them out. You won't find many old commercial divers on those big money jobs still diving. It's very hard on the body. Many gravitate later to management, dock, pier and bridge inspections, harbor work, sewer and treatment plant inspections and so on, where the pay is less, but the works easier on the body.If you really want to see what it's like, go put on your wet suit, black out your mask, and the go try to assemble something in 50 deg temps underwater for a couple of hours..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
Reply:Originally Posted by DSWCommercial diving is completely unlike regular SCUBA. I do both. Commercial work is dark and cold, and frequently you do everything by feel in zero vis. There's not all that much welding done underwater. It's usually not cost effective. You get a better job welding top side and then assembling the parts underwater with bolts. You'll go to school to become a comercial diver, not a welder. That means you'll learn rigging, runing a deco chamber, ROV work, inspections and all the rest, not just underwater cutting and welding.The big paying jobs don't last long. It's a young bucks job. The business chews people up and spits them out. You won't find many old commercial divers on those big money jobs still diving. It's very hard on the body. Many gravitate later to management, dock, pier and bridge inspections, harbor work, sewer and treatment plant inspections and so on, where the pay is less, but the works easier on the body.If you really want to see what it's like, go put on your wet suit, black out your mask, and the go try to assemble something in 50 deg temps underwater for a couple of hours.
Reply:Risk... I imagine so.  I met just one commercial diver at my formewr work place.  He was a certified mixed gas, etc., bla, bla commercial diver  After training at Seneca College (Ontario Canada) with abour 19 other guys, he worked the offshore roil rigs for several years, went all over the world... and yes he  made a bundle.  BUT... he got out just like DSW said.  Risk?  One day he brought in a picture of his graduating class - all young bucks!  As I recall, he said only himself and 4 others were still alive.  That's a high risk job!  Time for a Reality Check.Rick V 1 Airco Heliwelder 3A/DDR3 CTC 70/90 amp Stick/Tig Inverters in Parallel1 Lincoln MIG PAK 151 Oxy-Acet
Reply:There definitely is a great deal more risk with it than traditional diving and its more dangerous than cave diving.  Allot of the people who start the schools don't finish because of the testing thats done such as blacking out a diving helmet then spinning the student around side to side and head over heals then waiting for them to orient themselves and figure out which way is up, freak out and panic and you get tossed.One of the guys that I went to welding school with went to a school in Jersey and they also would assist in underwater recovery efforts should a vehicle plunge into the river and that entailed recovering the body or bodies.  Salvage work is a part of it as well from what I have heard so theres that to.In my area we have a school that's just opening up and one of the big things that will get you booted is missing a single day of school, do that and you have to start over and pay a fee.Welding Supervisor Department of Corrections.
Reply:The above comments pretty much match what I've heard, too. I had a good friend who had scuba dived since he was old enough to walk, and was also a superbly skilled welder.  He was thinking about being an underwater welder and working on offshore oil rigs.  The real heavy-duty guys that go down deep in the ocean and work on rigs can make anywhere from  $50 to $300 an hour. However, their life expectancy is somewhat short.  These guys are the Navy SEALS of welding.  Do a Google search for "underwater welder" or "underwater welding" and you can get a bunch of information.
Reply:I have a buddy who did it for a while.  He said its hard on the body, did it for about 5 years.  He worked for a pipeline company that did all their own underwater work when doing river crossings and port work.  He was in his late 20's when he did it. He is now 68 and been welding pipe for 49 years in 48 states.   He said is totally not worth it as a carreerLincoln 300 Vantage 2008300 Commander 1999SA250 1999SA200 1968Miller Syncrowave 200XMT350MPA/S-52E/xr-15Xtreme 12vs Millermatic 251 w/30A  Millermatic 251 Dialarc 250 Hypertherm 1250 GEKA & Bantom Ironwokers
Reply:I thought about becoming a hardhat diver/weldor when I was in my 20s...I remember talking to a fella who did it. He only worked at maybe 1 atmosphere (~33 feet deep) on navy docks and such, but to reduce the decompression time, he said they would basically LIVE under pressure in these hyperbaric chambers. In other words, as soon as they were done work for the day, they would come up and then immediately get into this pressure vessel and eat/sleep/do their downtime so that they didn't need to decompress every day. I think they only decompressed once a week or whatever.He said it was still hard on the body and like DSW said, not very glamorous, just working in cold, wet, dark muck. I suspect the pay is good, though, if you can deal with that kind of "Major Tom" lifestyle.
Reply:Kelvin, what you describe is saturation diving. It's used usually when working depths top 300+'. It can literally take more than a day to decompress from those depths, so divers are transported to and from working depths in diving bells under pressure and stay at "depth" in saturation chambers on deck. A week would be a short run, frequently times can vary from 2 weeks to almost a month depending on working depths. Any damage to the chamber that causes a loss in pressure most likely would be deadly to anyone inside. Ear infections are typical and usually quite severe while under saturation. Medical care is also difficult if a diver is injured. Medical help would have to lock in and "decend" to pressure before being able to assist a diver which is time consuming. Bringing a diver out will take more than a day, so imeadiate medical evacuation for life threatening issues is impossible. Also being under pressure raises other dangers such as fire, as many items become more combustible when even low percentages of O2 are compressed. certain electronic devices can't be used under these conditions, such as defibulators. Then there are issues having to do with high nitrogen pressures ( narcosis), high O2 pressures ( O2 becomes toxic at even moderate pressures over long periods. divers often go into convulsions ue to high O2 percentages durring decompression or while under going treatment for decompression sickness ( bends)), difficulties in comunication because of the high percentage of helium used to reduce nitrogen and O2 ( anyone who's ever inhaled from a balloon and talked knows this). Add to that deep bone necrosis, ( where the cell structure of a divers bone begins to break down due to long term exposure to elevated pressures, hearing loss due  to ruptured ear drums under rapid accent/decent on "shallower dives where divers are rapidly brought up from depth and the put in a chamber and rapidly placed back under pressure to decompress on the surface, decompression sickness, the general dangers of being crushed while working around heavy objects that are suspended and tossing about due to heavy seas,... Drowning is always a danger. A diver I know had his faceplate smashed by a hydrogen explosion while cutting underwater. If he hadn't remained concious and increased his air flow to max and turned face down he'd have drowned before the safety diver got to him. Another had his air line seperate due to the high temps of the water we were working in softening the line. He was lucky because he was shallow enough to surface and pop the helmet. Had an air compressor fail on another job and we had to switch over to the backup cylinders to bring the diver back up..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan