Not all places bank nitrox.
Most will bank air and to partial pressure filling. This needs an oxygen clean tank as you're pumping in 100% for the blending.
Nitrox shortage????
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Most will bank air and to partial pressure filling. This needs an oxygen clean tank as you're pumping in 100% for the blending.
It varies with location in the US, and in the Caribbean. Certainly, 32 is most common. One place I go to banks 31 (!), because that is a better mix for the max depth at their nearby popular site. Some places have only PP blend, if at all, because their nearby dive sites provide no deeper rec possibilities, so BT is rarely an issue. One place used to have 32 and 36 because the NOAA/PADI tables were for those two blends; now they just have 32 because a lot of their dives go to 100 ft.
I'm told (no personal experience with this) some of the shops in the North Carolina area bank 28% so it is usable (for PPO2<1.4) at any rec depth.....nice since the wrecks are at all depths and the variable weather/currents make foreknowledge of which wreck you'll be diving on highly uncertain.
Do you not choose the best gas for the depth you're planning to dive at? For example 28% for 40m, 25% for 45m, or 32% for 32m?
Over here in the backwaters of Europe (where the French don't rule), there's no banking of nitrox in any location I've ever dived at -- even the massively popular quarries. Everything's done with partial pressure blending on demand. Maybe because it's up to the diver to order the right gas and there's no real issue with mixing it to order.
Over here in the backwaters of Europe (where the French don't rule), there's no banking of nitrox in any location I've ever dived at -- even the massively popular quarries. Everything's done with partial pressure blending on demand. Maybe because it's up to the diver to order the right gas and there's no real issue with mixing it to order.
I've been to NC several times diving with both Olympus and Discovery. On those trips they banked 30%. Regardless, there are probably some locations that bank 28%. The shops that have one or more banks determine the mix to bank based upon their most used/needed gases. For example, I get alot of fills from Force-E in Riviera Beach and Boca Raton. Their primary banked mix is 36%. The majority of the recreational reef and wreck diving in those locations is 45-90', thus making 36 is ideal.
No, not really. Best mix sounds good in theory but is logistically challenging and time consuming. In many of our high volume locations it's not really scalable. Most high volume areas follow more of a standard mix concept. They bank a few of the most widely used mixes and then support custom mixes as needed with a much longer wait time for your fill.
In our high volume locations (NC, FL, and CA for example), PP blending is completely unworkable due to the volume of fills. The vast majority of shops in these areas bank the most commonly used mix(es). Most can then also do a custom mix for you assuming you can leave the tank with them for awhile, typically at least overnight.
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