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.

We went and brought KS160 strobes from Reef this morning, we have zero faith in Backscatter and their customer service

Good luck. Every underwater device sealed with orings can and will fail, even if you take care. I am very meticulous and I've had a 3-4 strobe and housing leaks across 1500 camera dives. Only one (the first) can i directly attribute to my avoidable errors. I likely made other errors, but less obvious ones. Not replacing orings soon enough for example.

4 hours ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Good luck. Every underwater device sealed with orings can and will fail, even if you take care. I am very meticulous and I've had a 3-4 strobe and housing leaks across 1500 camera dives. Only one (the first) can i directly attribute to my avoidable errors. I likely made other errors, but less obvious ones. Not replacing orings soon enough for example.

This may be true, however it should not be happening after 6 dives. I think the report of differing cross section o-rings is a concern though.

I would think that 2 o-rings are there for redundancy, but it is hard to understand how it would leak unless both were small.

Bill

3 hours ago, bvanant said:

I would think that 2 o-rings are there for redundancy, but it is hard to understand how it would leak unless both were small.

Bill

I think they are saying both o-rings are small. This strobe has a third "sand" ring designed to keep particles from getting into the o-rings and they are very effective, I have one on my INON torch and it's also usually dry inside, so no water droplets on the o-ring, but I don't think it is a completely reliable seal. It may work for the first few dives but eventually water gets through to the under sized o-rings. This could explain the strobe working for a short while then flooding.

Has the issue of the different sized o-rings been presented to Backscatter, has anyone measured to the cross section with calipers? If you look at their website this photo shows an apparent difference in the size of the two o-rings installed on the strobe. It may be an optical trick, but it is worth raising with them.

1 hour ago, Chris Ross said:

I think they are saying both o-rings are small. This strobe has a third "sand" ring designed to keep particles from getting into the o-rings and they are very effective, I have one on my INON torch and it's also usually dry inside, so no water droplets on the o-ring, but I don't think it is a completely reliable seal. It may work for the first few dives but eventually water gets through to the under sized o-rings. This could explain the strobe working for a short while then flooding.

Has the issue of the different sized o-rings been presented to Backscatter, has anyone measured to the cross section with calipers? If you look at their website this photo shows an apparent difference in the size of the two o-rings installed on the strobe. It may be an optical trick, but it is worth raising with them.

I thought it was just my old eyes seeing two different sized o-rings when I looked at the picture on Backscatter’s website. In the picture the o-ring on the bottom appears to be thicker than the one on top.

5 hours ago, JS1221 said:

I thought it was just my old eyes seeing two different sized o-rings when I looked at the picture on Backscatter’s website. In the picture the o-ring on the bottom appears to be thicker than the one on top.

It seems to me that there is a problem in the production pipeline at Backscatter: I just had a look at my HF-1s that I purchased quite early, when they appeared on the market, and there is no sign that the O-rings are of different size and/or diameter, they are exactly the same (two identical grey O-rings; nothing like an additional third and smaller O-ring to protect against sand is there).

I have now approx. 100 dives with them and there was never a leak (but this, of course, does not prove anything, the N number is too small to allow a meaningful statement). On the other side there are several reports about leaking battery compartments that disturb me. Some reports of O-rings of different size/diameter, it seems to be a real thing...

Did someone ask at Backscatter from where these different size O-rings come from?

Edited Monday at 07:52 AM1 day by Architeuthis