Cave diving habitat

It is hard to imagine a deep cave diving exploration project without using a habitat (a bell) or even several bells at different depths. To spend hours of deco time is much more comfortable, warmer, and safer sitting in the air in the bell than swimming. I prefer to do meditation during deco, but a diver can even watch a movie or listen to music using your phone in an underwater case. You can orginize audio and video communication with your support team on the surface. If you have a big enough habitat you can even place a CCR with a ventilator and can even not to breath through your CCR, but do it normally like you breath on the surface.
In open water, there is no problem with installing a habitat in any place, but in cave diving everything is different. Most of the time you simply can not install the bell where you want and at the depth which you want. You are limited by the environment. If the cave is big and the logistics are simple, you are lucky and can use a regular farmer´s water deposit as a bell. See the video about the installation of this type of the bell in Alviela cave, Portugal at the depth of 7 meters. 

Some divers also use plastic street deposits for the rubbish as a bell.Prons of this type of the bell. It is the cheapest and easiest way to organize your deep-diving adventure. You can just stick the bell on the ceiling giving air inside. It is fixed by pressure. The cons are: the metal structure of the bell is made from very weak metal, and if you leave the habitat underwater, be ready to change it every couple of years. The plastic cube is forever.
If you have a lot of space in a cave you can also use a balloon type of diving habitat. The prons are: the balloon is light and compact. You can bring it even through a restriction, but the problem is to deploy it you need a lot of space in a passage due to the necessity to fix the ropes to keep the balloon. You need to drill the stones with an underwater drill to install the anchors for the ropes. Also, you should place the ballon in a place where the ballon does not touch the sharp surfaces of the stones, otherwise, you can damage it. 

What to do if you have a restriction near the entrance and the only place to put the bell on a depth of 12-6 meters is a narrow passage after that restriction? You are not able to bring the rigid bell, you do not have space to stretch the soft habitat. So, what to do? Well, use my invention - the first rigid foldable habitat in the world! Look on the photo below.

Assembled underwater the bell looks like on the photo above. It has a rigid structure. The size can be any. That one on the photo is 1.2 m x 1 m x 1 m. Each section you can fold in two parts. The biggest size of the folded panel is 60 cm x 50 cm. The material of the bell is aluminum. Each panel weighs not more than 15 kg on the land and much less underwater. Inside the aluminum profiles is air. The buoyancy of the panels underwater is negative, but it is easy to carry them without any buoy. Inside the metal structure is the soft bag from trilaminate. The weight is around 1o kg on the air. You can easily assemble the habitat underwater solo.

The habitat has a 25 cm wide bench to place your gear and sit comfortably. Around the bell, you have the frame to put your legs and hold the tanks and other gear.

In the folded condition the appearance of the bell is on the photo below.

Transporting the panel through a restriction:

Assembling the bell alone. It took 3 hours of one dive to install it solo:

My habitat in Anços cave, Portugal at a depth 9 meters:

I have created the most versatile in my opinion habitat for cave diving which you can "stick" with the air to the ceiling of the cave as it is a rigid farmer´s bell or inflate it as a balloon fixed by ropes to ankers. At the same time it is compact and portable as just a balloon and you can pass with my bell any restriction.  I spent 18 hours total in the bell in the summer of 2023 when I explored Anços cave, Portugal. - 169 meters of depth, 550 meters from the entrance, 8 hours of diving.

The price of the bell is on request after getting the info about the size of the habitat.