---
title: "Repetitive dives"
description: "How a second dive inherits residual loading from the first, where the surface interval comes from, and how to set it by hand."
---

> 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.

# Repetitive dives

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

A dive planned within two days of an earlier one starts with the residual
nitrogen, helium and oxygen exposure that dive left behind. Give each plan a
date and an entry time and DiveLogic chains them, so the later dive is planned
from the loading it really begins with. Its schedule runs longer than the same
dive would alone.

## What gets chained

Every saved plan that enters the water before this one, and within two days of
it, joins the series. They are ordered by entry time, across midnight as readily
as within one day: a dive at 14:00 yesterday and one at 08:00 today are eighteen
hours apart, and both are in.

A plan with no date or no entry time cannot be placed in the sequence, so it is
left out. If it shares a date with the dive you are planning, the planner warns
you. That schedule was computed as though the dive never happened, so its
residual loading is not accounted for and the decompression is under-stated. Set
an entry time on the earlier plan and recompute.

## The surface interval

The **Surface Interval** card opens the **Decompression** section. It states the
time between surfacing from the previous dive and entering the water on this
one.

- **From dive times**: worked out from the entry times on the two plans and how
  long the first one runs. Extend the first dive's bottom time and the interval
  after it shortens by the same amount.
- **Set by hand**: you enter the interval in hours and minutes. Use it when you
  know the surface time whatever the entry times say, such as waiting on a tide
  or a boat move.

A hand-set interval replaces the derived one. Set one longer than the entry
times allow and the schedule gets shorter, because the planner credits you with
more off-gassing than those times give. The card says so, and so does the plan.

With no earlier dive in range the card carries no control and the dive is
planned from full desaturation. There is nothing to set until an earlier plan
has a date and an entry time.

## Next

- [Air breaks](/planning/air-breaks) is the next card.
- [The Review step](/planning/reviewing) shows the finished series, with the
  loading each dive started from.
- [Tissue compartments](/theory/tissues) covers what washes out across the
  interval.

Source: https://docs.divelogic.ai/planning/repetitive-dives/index.mdx