Welcome to Dacorum Sub-Aqua Club Details of Membership

This page provides you with the costs of membership and details of age limits and medicals.

Costs

There are two components to the total cost of your subscription for joining the Club:

1. DS-AC subscription

All Members - per year (+ one off fee for new members)

For your DS-AC subscription you receive diver training at no extra cost and the right to use of our facilities.

2. BSAC subscription

There are five possible rates for your membership of BSAC:

i. per year for Advanced Instructors and higher qualifications

ii. per year for Advanced Divers, Club Instructors and Open Water Instructors

iii. per year for all other qualifications up to and including Dive Leader

iv. per year for abated members. When there is one member paying subscriptions at rate i, ii or iii, other members in the same household can be abated members. Only one Dive magazine is sent to the household.

v. per year for Juniors and Students.

There are some other BSAC subscriptions, click on this link

See here for the benefits of BSAC membership.

As a member of DS-AC you automatically become a member of BSAC too.

Subscriptions generally run from April to March. If you join after April your first subscription will run for a full 12 months but your next year's subscription will be reduced, pro rata, to run until the March at the end of that year.

What's not included in your subscription to the club?

• If you don't have them already you will need to buy the following:
  • Diving manuals - £10.00+ (Ocean diver pack £35)
  • BSAC 88 Level 1 to 4 decompression tables - £17.00

• There are charges for :
  • use of the boat 
  • skills development courses  
  • hiring training equipment

These are designed only to cover the cost of running and maintaining those services.

• To use the pool on club night, you must enter the paying area of the Leisure Centre. You do this by:
  • either being a member (£20) of the Leisure Centre
  • or paying a £1.80 fee per night.

If you use the pool often, it is worthwhile becoming a member of the Leisure Centre at a cost of around £12 per year using the DS-AC group discount - ask the Membership Officer for details. Many DS-AC members are also members of the Leisure Centre - entitling them to cheaper use of the Leisure Centre's facilities even on the other days of the week.

DS-AC's only association with the Leisure Centre is that we rent the diving pit and the long pools from them on Thursday evenings.

Where is the money spent?

The club is a non-profit making organisation.

We collect money only so that we can provide facilities such as:

• the two training pools
• training equipment
• the boat and all its equipment
• oxygen first aid kits
• compressor for Air, Nitrox and Heliox fills
• lecturing equipment : a laptop and projector
• training materials : paperwork for courses and resuscitation manikins

Some of these items not only have a high initial cost but are expensive to maintain and keep in good condition.

Minimum age limit

At DS-AC, diving members must be twelve(12) years old or more. Applications for membership from under 18s must be accompanied by written parental consent.

Diving members under the age of eighteen years usually have a qualified diving parent who is also a member of the club. Diving members under the age of sixteen years will need to be supervised by a parent during all training and diving activities. If your child wants to dive with us, please come and discuss it with us.

Medicals

Although you do not need to be young or terribly fit to dive, there are some medical conditions which may disqualify you from diving - inform your doctor if you're concerned about any condition you have. BSAC has medical referees, doctors with specific diving medical knowledge, whom your doctor can consult.

All divers must fill in a medical self declaration form answering some medical questions each year. If any of your answers indicate a possible problem, you'll need to get a written certificate from a doctor who is a medical referee to say that there is no problem for you to dive. Several of our members have these certificates : it is fairly routine. The certificate may impose limits on your diving.

Additionally, we ask new divers to have a medical check-up with their own doctor to identify any undiscovered medical condition that would make diving unacceptably dangerous. You can obtain a diving medical form from DSAC forum (club docs section) or your GP. It provides your doctor with the criteria to examine your fitness to dive. The check-up is likely to cost you between £30 and £80. The result of this check-up is binding if it results in you being unable truthfully to self-declare your fitness to dive.

If you are unable to get a referee's agreement that you are fit to dive, then you do not have a valid diving medical and are not allowed to dive with our club. To protect your future dive "buddies", we strictly follow this rule.

To repeat:

• every one must complete a self-declaration every year.
• from 2002 everyone must self-certify every year even if they have any other medical certificate. The old form of medical, relying on an examination by a GP, is obsolete and is not a substitute for the new self declaration. 
• we ask new divers to have an old style medical check-up with their doctor as a precaution. Its result is binding if the diver cannot truthfully self-declare after the check-up.
• no valid medical self-declaration? No diving.