Wanted Invacare home fill or similar micro-compressor

[TMurrr]

Yes, I have done it many times.

Of course, using it effects the life, if you never use it, it will last forever.

I haven't had any issue with any of my various boosters, but they do have a finite lifespan.

Roughly how many hours are on your units, both concentrators and homefills?

 

[OTF]

Tracey I'm curious about your actual experience is with the longevity, maintenance, and failure modes of these medical oxygen booster units. Have you had one wear out in any way, and if so what were the symptoms? The manual for the Ultrafill basically says there is no maintenance, but surely a machine pumping high pressure pure O2 won't run perfectly forever.

 

[tbone1004]

Hello! Yes, for O2.

What I meant by continuous is long enough to fill a 200cf oxygen tank. Are you saying it can’t do this, or just that it will reduce the life of the compressor. I’m interested to hear from anyone who’s doing/done this and what life they got out of the Invacare.

Between me and dive buddy, we spend almost $1000 per year on O2, so I’m thinking it would be an easy payback if it works.

The homefill is definitely not designed to be continuous and while I don't usually fill bulk tanks with it, I regularly fill AL80's with it without issue. Have a couple thousand hours on it and still running well. Definitely worth the time investment for me ~10 years ago when I did it. I have a personal T bottle that I have filled for CCR use but I use the Homefill O2 for all OC and dilout gases. With the CCR the hassle of dil flushing compounded with the built-in inaccuracy of calibration makes it not worth the cost savings to me, but that's not a whole lot of O2 per year compared to the blending and OC deco gas use.

I would take @Tracy up on his offer though, getting the plumbing reconfigured is a bit annoying to adapt the Invacare QD into a fill whip.

@OTF there is no maintenance to be had. The built-in O2 sensor is like the one in your car so it isn't galvanic which is nice, the pump is oil-less so it's like a Masterline where the seals are teflon and provide all of the lubrication. Eventually the seals will wear out and you have to rebuild the pump and @Tracy has a lead on where to get the parts kits for them. They don't move enough gas to warrant using them in a diveshop type setting and the liability risk is not worth any cost savings so it's unlikely any home user would ever wear one out unless it was already pretty high hours to begin with.

 

[TMurrr]

The homefill is definitely not designed to be continuous and while I don't usually fill bulk tanks with it, I regularly fill AL80's with it without issue. Have a couple thousand hours on it and still running well. Definitely worth the time investment for me ~10 years ago when I did it. I have a personal T bottle that I have filled for CCR use but I use the Homefill O2 for all OC and dilout gases. With the CCR the hassle of dil flushing compounded with the built-in inaccuracy of calibration makes it not worth the cost savings to me, but that's not a whole lot of O2 per year compared to the blending and OC deco gas use.

I would take @Tracy up on his offer though, getting the plumbing reconfigured is a bit annoying to adapt the Invacare QD into a fill whip.

Isn't it just this to get the quick disconnect to any standard 1/4" Male NPT?

 

[Tracy]

Isn't it just this to get the quick disconnect to any standard 1/4" Male NPT?

That and a hose and a cga540 fitting. It isn't rocket surgery, but I installed seatbelts to hold tanks on my boat because over half the people couldn't understand how a bungee cord works.

 

[tbone1004]

Isn't it just this to get the quick disconnect to any standard 1/4" Male NPT?

ahh, those were definitely not freely available when I was building mine. The recommendations then was to make sure you got at least 1 tank from the Homefill so you could pull the port then go find some ORB adapter to get to NPT, and finding that ORB adapter was not always fun. I put QD's on the end of mine so all of my whips can move around to whatever.

You can also remove the QD which is what I was alluding to being annoying.

 

[Invader]

Thanks for the discussion guys. Much appreciated!


Airgas gets $91 tax and fees included per 200cf plus another $115 for annual tank lease. For two guys, each with their own tank, diving frequently on Nitrox or air with deco cylinders it gets close to $1000/year. And to further complicate for the benefit of your confused emotion on my earlier post, just add the cost of inconvenience to pickup and transport the bottles.

Is Airgas your only option? I pay ~$40 for a 200FT3 tank refill. Will Airgas exchange tanks that you buy? Plenty of them on marketplace.

 

[grantmac]

I'm still messing with the Philips Ultrafill I picked up a few months back. No adapters available there I had to get their bottle plus a transfill whip.
Also it's sensitive to input pressure/purity and I think my concentrator isn't outputting enough so it throws a code (which I don't have the diagnostic tool to read).

All this to say they aren't exactly foolproof, but perhaps I'm especially foolish.

 

[iointerrupt]

UltraFill circuit board can't complain about purity if there is no circuit board anymore. I machined the output adapter to make it NPT. Not practical for most people, although I think I still have the CAD file for it if anyone wants to try.

As for durability, the rebuilt oxygen concentrator I got had 18,000 hours on the clock. Guessing these oxygen boosters are probably good for at least a few thousand hours of runtime.

 

[Rollin Bonz]

Is Airgas your only option? I pay ~$40 for a 200FT3 tank refill. Will Airgas exchange tanks that you buy? Plenty of them on marketplace.

Same. Actually more like $25 for a tank swap empty to full with the yearly lease of about $75.

@Curious_George are you using aviation or medical grade or industrial?