Spent 3 days chasing a leak on a suction hose that turned out to be a $4 O-ring

Piper Lopez · 2026-10-02T20:30:04.341201+00:00

Everyone says the diver with the most hours gets the fastest fix, but that was not me two weeks ago at the job in Morgan City. We had a 6 inch suction hose that kept losing prime on the pump every time the tide came up, and my first call was to blame the gasket on the flange. I spent one whole day pulling and re-seating that thing, another day checking the strainer and the foot valve, and a third day swapping clamps thinking they had stretched out. The pump guy on the bank kept telling me it was my hose, so I ran a pressure test on the deck and of course the hose held fine at 40 psi. At the end of day three I finally crawled down the ladder and looked at the actual pump coupling, and the O-ring inside it was chewed up from grit. Four dollars at the supply house and the whole thing was fixed in ten minutes, and the crane operator still brings it up every morning. So is it just me, or does anyone else jump straight to the expensive parts before checking the cheap ones first?

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Spent 3 days chasing a leak on a suction hose that turned out to be a $4 O-ring | Commercial Divers - Rigidtalk