---
title: "Breathing rates"
description: "The Breathing Rates card at the top of the Gas Mixes section: working and decompression consumption, and the bailout pair a rebreather plan adds."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.divelogic.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Breathing rates

import { BreathingRatesCard } from "@/components/react/PlannerSettingsScreens";

The **Breathing Rates** card sits at the top of the **Gas Mixes** section,
above the gas cards. It holds two fields on an open-circuit plan; a rebreather
plan carries a second pair elsewhere in the brief.

## The two fields

- **Working SAC (L/min)**: charged for the descent, bottom time, travel between
  levels, and every part of the ascent that is not a stop. The planner starts
  at 15 L/min.
- **Deco SAC (L/min)**: charged for mandatory decompression stops, where you
  are hanging rather than swimming. The planner starts at 12 L/min.

Both accept 5 to 40 L/min, in steps of 0.5. Anything the planner scheduled as a
decompression stop is charged at the deco rate; everything else, including
ascending between two stops, is charged at the working rate.

Neither rate touches the schedule. Depths, stop lengths, runtime and TTS are
identical whatever you enter. What changes is every gas figure that follows:
the volume used per gas, the pressure remaining in each cylinder, the reserve,
and the turn pressure. Set them before you read the
[Gas Consumption view](/planning/review-gas).

> **Note**
>
> A SAC rate is a surface figure, and the planner scales it by the ambient
> pressure at each point of the dive. Twenty litres a minute at the surface is
> 100 L/min at 40 m in salt water, so a rate you guessed at is worth replacing
> with one you measured. See [Consumption](/gases/consumption).

## The bailout pair on a rebreather

A closed-circuit plan keeps both fields, and they still describe your
open-circuit breathing. On top of them it adds a **Bailout SAC Rates** card, in
the [CCR settings](/planning/ccr-settings) section:

- **Working SAC (L/min)**: everything in a bailout ascent that is not a
  decompression stop. The planner starts at 45 L/min.
- **Bailout SAC (L/min)**: the decompression stops of a bailout ascent. The
  planner starts at 25 L/min.

Both accept 5 to 60 L/min. They are higher than the loop figures on purpose: a
diver who has just come off the loop is a diver who has just had a problem.
Leave either blank and the plan's ordinary working and deco rates are used in
its place.

The loop's own consumption, diluent and oxygen, is not estimated. The rates on
this page account for open-circuit gas only, whichever mode you are in.

## Next

[Decompression settings](/planning/decompression) is the next section: the
model that shapes the ascent, and how conservative it runs.

Source: https://docs.divelogic.ai/planning/breathing-rates/index.mdx