I'd have thought a Scoff bag (which is more of a time investment than a financial one) would be the way forward, as they're specifically designed for cave diving. If you buy a BCD intended for open water you might then find its use is limited with side mounted gear in caves.

One thought to bear in mind; a BCD for open water may be better at supporting you face up if you end up unconscious on the surface for any reason. A Scoff bag would hold you face down. Weigh the pros and cons of each carefully before deciding.

 A member of the welsh section mentioned that there was a form of DIY BCD device, though not sure whether he was talking about the Scoff bag. Hopefully there is somebody out there who knows how to make one. Might look for a cheap off the peg BCD for any open water diving in the mean time.

Here's an example of a Scoff bag, with photos, to give you the idea:

https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=6821.0

I should stress that, although these are inexpensive to make as a DIY project, the main reason the late Bryan Schofield ("Scoff") came up with the idea was because he wanted to design something which was better for side mount diving than anything commercially available. Scoff was a great innovator and this was one of his masterpieces.

However, if you can find a cheap open water BCD second hand, which is actually designed for open water use, that may be your safer option in the short term. Meanwhile, you might like to start accumulating the various parts needed to make a Scoff bag, if you plan any amount of cave diving in the UK in the future.

Hope that helps; good luck.

John

A few of us use these wings:

https://www.diveequipmentco.com/bcd-s/sidemount/sidemount-bladder-22-16.html

Very easy to fit onto a standard sidemount harness and reasonably priced. 

If you're planning on getting more practice in an open water environment, specifically to improve your cave diving, I suggest you do this in the configuration you'll use underground, which for the UK will be sidemount. It can take a while to get used to it if you've come from a backmounted configuration previously.

B

That's a good find Ben.

Plan to stay focused on kit and configuration suitable for cave diving even if I am in the open water environment.

I saw a BCD called an XDEEP Stealth sold by Simply Scuba but this, however, is considerably more expensive £250 than the American one above and comes with a harness which I probably wouldn't need.

Anyhow thanks for all the advice.

The xDeep Stealth on Simply Scuba for £250 is just the wing, not the wing and harness, so its equivalent to the american one I posted (the harness is a further £207). I know a few people that use it, but I'm pretty sure its a little more difficult to mount on a standard ASM harness than the one I posted. You'll find that a lot of the commercially available side-mount systems are wildly more expensive than the ones that British cave divers use and although they are pretty good in the water, out of the water they are less comfortable (as the attachment points for bottles are lower), so carrying bottles between sumps is a bit shit.

You wont go far wrong with getting either a Warmbac or Farr sidemount harness (or making your own) and then mounting that american wing on it. I've used mine in both the UK and in France with lots of different bottle sizes and configurations without any issues. 

B

I use the old style xdeep. Just bungee it over the sidemount harness with clips. Don’t attach to harness.