On 4/29/2025 at 10:44 PM, Susa said:

I had the same issue before 2 weeks, let it closed overnight, and next day when I opened it, there was a little water inside. Luckily it worked after drying. I did not found any problem on o-ring or elsewhere. I changed the almost new o-ring without really thinking that this was the issue :-(.

That's 3 similar HF-1 floods on this thread.

42 minutes ago, JayceeB said:

That's 3 similar HF-1 floods on this thread.

FYI - I've done about 20 successful dives with my HF-1 since the battery compartment had a flood. I cleaned it and replaced the orings for good measure and it's working great.

Dave: Did you replace the cap?

BVA

Just now, bvanant said:

Dave: Did you replace the cap?

BVA

No. The cap seems to be working just fine and no visible change.

Add us to the list of HF-1 Floods, ours flooded on the 6th dive, but Backscatter wants to place blame on us so we have to pay for the parts but the labor is free 🙄

I am the most persnickety person known to most people when it comes to gear, we inspected the seals before installing the battery cap, two of us verified no debris at all (hair, dirt, sand etc) entirely free of anything foreign both on the seals and the cap, yet if flooded on the 6th dive, brand new! I am so persnickety we even use a magnifying glass when we do it (yeah, I know, its a lot but I know stress cracks and smaller debris can cause catastrophic problems too and an extra $9 device and 5 seconds goes a long way). I talked around some folks here in South Florida, three others said the same thing happened to them, both with nearly new HF-1 strobes. Since they're not big forum people they won't post about it, but if you add them, its seven floods this year, but Backscatter wants to blame everyone else, I wonder when this becomes a bigger problem if they'll realize they have a larger issue. I have a video that even shows the difference in the thickness of the o-rings from the failed unit to the one that didn't, its very noticeable, but I won't get into how O-rings work and why, sometimes, undersized and/or oversized o-rings can still "work" but usually not long term, using an incorrect washer is more like my Australian friends call a "bush repair". The funny thing, the replacement o-rings are also thicker (same size as the one that didn't fail) from the ones that did fail, but yeah, the customer is the problem so we're done with anything Backscatter.

Sorry you had this problem. Hopefully Backscatter has upgraded the orings. I had one HF-1 flood, but it did not harm the strobe. Cleaned it up and it is still going strong.