Good compressor for infrequent use?

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84CJ7

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Location
Rice Lake, WI
I know nothing of scuba compressors.
I live in a part of WI where the nearest air fills are a 2 hour round trip which makes any local lake diving (as crappy as they are) somewhat inconvenient and even better dive sites with shops nearby are somewhat inconvenient due to weekend hours and needing to get there after diving before they close or stop before diving the next time I go.
I actually expect some of the few local shops that are left to disappear eventually for various reasons.

I don't dive enough for a compressor to be practical in an economic sense, but the lack of air fills makes it more difficult to dive at all and so it would be nice to just get a compressor.
It would actually eliminate the need for a dive shop permanently as I rebuild all my own gear and drive my tanks to the hydro tester myself already.

I'm not sure what sort of maintenance a compressor needs on a time rather than hours used based schedule or what would be a good choice for my very low demand usage assuming its even possible to use them that way.
I don't really have exact numbers for you for how infrequent but several tanks a month and only during the dive season would be about right.

I occasionally see used stuff listed locally thanks to the great lakes keeping people diving locally (and then quitting) but I don't know even how to tell if something is old crap with no parts available or a good price or really anything.
So long as there is good documentation and parts availability I could handle fixing up a cheaply acquired mess.

Here is a local for sale example (neat little compact thing) though it looks fairly old to me:
Fill scuba or paint ball tanks with this Mako high pressure air compressor, has filtration for breathing air. 3hp, 220volt single phase. Have extra filter cartridge & fill hoses.$2000
 
I thought you would of had a few responses by now from knowledgeable people but in the absence of that I will give you my limited experience. I have a Rix SA6 which is a unit developed for the military for field charging cylinders. It is an oil free unit and doesn't seem to mind being ignored for a few months at a time. I like the benefit that it cannot generate CO by itself and with no oil there is little to filter out, in fact the condensate is pretty much clean water. I don't bother having the air checked but do use a CO monitor in the area of the intake to make sure I am not putting any CO into it. I do use a filter tower to keep the moisture content low and a moisture monitor to let me know when the filter needs replacing. This type of unit does have consumables in that the rings need more frequent replacement than a typical compressor but they are quite simple to change. If you do look for one of these 2nd hand be aware that there are quite a few basket cases out there and to read up on them beforehand.
 
At $2000 for a used unknown, you are about $700 away from a brand new compressor with a warranty. And, with your usage, you are looking at about $75 a year in oil & filters
 
At $2000 for a used unknown, you are about $700 away from a brand new compressor with a warranty. And, with your usage, you are looking at about $75 a year in oil & filters

$2700 sounds like a pretty good deal on a new compressor. I clicked the link in your signature but could not find a model for that price. How about a link?

TIA

Couv
 
$75 a year works for me.
$2700 new for a good brand would be worth looking at, everything I have seen starts at least $1000 more than that.
If I were to get that used mako it would be for far less than the asking price for sure or I wouldn't buy it (ad is like a month old now I think) and I would be looking up rebuild parts for it ahead of time. I have learned to assume the worst. I would assume with a brand like Mako I would have the best chance of easy parts availability but as I said I know nothing. I did see in the pictures that several parts on it are clearly new so at least someone was keeping it up.

I wouldn't even know what to shop for with a new compressor, its like someone went out of their way to make it impossible to get pricing on anything without asking for quotes and most of the stuff is way oversized for my uses. I would love to see more places that list all the prices up front and stock the small ones.
I also can't tell what are the long established companies and the odd brand ones that I would have parts issues with down the road.

I just learned yet another dive shop bit the dust near me. If one specific local one fails I would almost have to buy a compressor because I would end up spending at least that much in fuel in just a few years of multi hour round trips for tank fills if I wanted to dive local lakes or missed the weekend hours at the shops closer to destinations.
 
That $2700 compressor is the MCH6 that is listed on my site. The retail price is $3581 but it is on sale. I really don't know how long the retail price is going to last. The Italians are at DEMA now and we have to see what they are going to charge us for the next year.

On the Mako, just remember that they are re-packagers and darn good one but you may get a Bauer compressor block in there or something else. See if you can find the shop that just closed and see of they are selling their compressor ... unless they closed because of selling bad air. :wink:
 
The guy who owned it got out of doing it so he could dedicate time to other things in his life, it was a technical diver oriented shop near lake wazee that did stuff like trimix so his system would be WAY more than I would need in both size and complexity.
I was told he plans to keep that equipment to do air fills for himself and some others when he has time.

$2700 is definitely tempting especially since I wouldn't consider coltri sub an off brand, but I was hoping to get the used one for far less than $2k, I would still be saving up long after the sale is done if I went the new route. Maybe if its a yearly sort of sale its something for my future as I may not even buy anything for a fair while. I assume that new one would need extra stuff added on before it could be used as well.
 
Wazee Sports is closing?!
 
Bloody dive shops... see post number 16 by Dubious. I got a PM when I asked which shop and they said it was Wazee Sports and this was the last season and had clearance sale since sept I think it was. Dunno whats left at this point and I haven't talked to the shop personally.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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