Air in tank marked Nitrox?

[String]

And thats why an air diver should not be using a tank marked nitrox.

Why shouldnt a dive trained to use air dive on a tank containing air? The nitrox sticker is meaningless. Its no indication of whats in the tank. No different to non standard tank-neck colour codes. Not all air tanks have white/black neck panelling, lots are yellow yet divers are still allowed to put air in and use them.

A meaningless sticker makes no difference if its on there or not.

 

[pants!]

"The nitrox sticker is meaningless."

"Again, it only means you CAN put nitrox in it. Doesnt mean you have to. No different from finding a water bottle on a floor and wondering if it contains water, white spirit or acid."

"And thats why an air diver should not be using a tank marked nitrox."

All of this absolutely underscores the NEED to have contents stickers on tanks and the NEED for divers to KNOW what they're diving. Grabbing a tank that simply says NITROX on it and trusting the fill simian when he says "oh it just has air in it" is NOT ACCEPTABLE.

It also underscores the worthlessness of those big NITROX stickers and how dumb they are. They don't help because they say nothing about what's in the tank even though they imply that there's nitrox in there. Non-nitrox certified air divers who don't have a clue shouldn't be diving them period, and nitrox certified divers need to analyze them and have a contents sticker on anyway!

As for this comment:
"Only amongst people that would get confused walking and talking at the same time it seems."
I take that as a personal insult. While you may be able to divine the contents of a tank that says nothing other than "NITROX" on it, and dive it accordingly, the rest of the diving world cannot. And let me respectfully say that if you would grab a tank with a huge NITROX sticker and dive it as air because there isn't a contents label on the tank neck, you are exhibiting the height of ignorance and you should in no way be condoning or recommending this daredevil practice.

 

[ScubaSixString]

Why shouldnt a dive trained to use air dive on a tank containing air? The nitrox sticker is meaningless. Its no indication of whats in the tank. No different to non standard tank-neck colour codes. Not all air tanks have white/black neck panelling, lots are yellow yet divers are still allowed to put air in and use them.

A meaningless sticker makes no difference if its on there or not.

Ok. You're on a dive boat. Are you suggesting that a diver, ANY DIVER, grab a bottle marked NITROX and head over the side, no analysis, no idea whats in the thing?

I don't know how things are done across the pond, but if i rented a tank of air and got one marked NITROX, I'd have some serious questions to ask the guy who gave it to me. Especially if i didn't know how to analyze the stuff.... but thats just me.....

 

[The Kraken]

Why shouldnt a dive trained to use air dive on a tank containing air? The nitrox sticker is meaningless. Its no indication of whats in the tank. No different to non standard tank-neck colour codes. Not all air tanks have white/black neck panelling, lots are yellow yet divers are still allowed to put air in and use them.

A meaningless sticker makes no difference if its on there or not.

Just a hypothetical case:

Suppose some PADI certified "deep diver" grabs hold of a big old honkin 130 with a "NITROX" label on it and doesn't check the mixture.

He now makes a dive to 132'. Alas, he discovers too late, much to his chagrin, that the tank was filled with EAN40.

He's diving at a depth where his PPO2 is now 2.0. Oops, bad mistake.

I still love the old legal catch-all phrase, "A reasonable and prudent man . . .".

A reasonable and prudent man, seeing a tank with a "NITROX" sticker could (or should) safely deduce that the tanks is filled with nitrox and therefore have its contents tested before he dives it.

Just a thought.

the K

 

[CIBDiving]

Then the stickers should say "O2 Clean" instead of Nitrox. Nitrox implies that the tank is filled with... Nitrox!

No all those big stickers imply is that the owner of the tank is so vane they need the world to know that they can dive nitrox- "Look at Me, I'm a real scuba diver, I dive this!". They serve no other real purpose. An O2 clean tank should say so on the Vip sticker and that should be the Only place that matters, of course that implies a O2 cleaning every year also.
What marks a bottle as containing Nitrox is the MOD sticker on it, NOT some silly feel good but gives no info BS. It would be far better to have bottles marked AIR than nitrox, since there is only one kind of air( maybe we should label Air type too, eh?) and you don't know what kind of nitrox unless you check the contents sticker.

 

[The Kraken]

In my humble opinion they serve a purpose that in a covey of unsupervised tanks one can distinguish between tanks that have been filled with an EAN mixture and those that have not.

Scenario: Dive boat, 16 divers all but two of whom are making a dive to 120'. The two not making a dive to 120' are setting a max depth of 60' and are diving EAN36.

Let us suppose the tanks are not marked with any distinguishing ID that will allow the 2 EAN divers to pick out their tanks.

This could possibly result in other divers creating some dangerous PPO2 situations.

the K

 

[CIBDiving]

J
I still love the old legal catch-all phrase, "A reasonable and prudent man . . .".

A reasonable and prudent man, seeing a tank with a "NITROX" sticker could (or should) safely deduce that the tanks is filled with nitrox and therefore have its contents tested before he dives it.

A reasonable and prudent man should not "grab" a tank that is not His Period! He should instead assume it is filled with cyanide gas until it's proven otherwise.

 

[BigJetDriver]

I had a shop refuse to put air in a tank I had dedicated for Nitrox. They are using the same system, filters and hoses for both so that wasn’t an issue. The kid said he could only put Nitrox in a Nitrox tank. I told him I wanted a 21% mix and that was OK with him so he did it. He was nice but he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the marquee.
Just because the tank is marked Nitrox that isn’t the end. The percentage should be there as well.

Gary D.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of that going around!! :11: :11:

All divers who dive ANY mixed gas must always remember that it is the DIVER'S responsibility to analyse the breathing gas FOR EACH DIVE ON THAT CYLINDER, and to sign off on it. As Gary has correctly pointed out, you have to mark the percentages on the tank.

A shop has a right to be concerned about a tank that will be filled by the partial pressure method. Since you are pouring 100% O2 under pressure into it at one point, it MUST be O2 clean, with O2 compatible O-rings and grease.

As in the case that Gary is talking about, if they then fill bottles for both uses from the same source, either they have taken care of the filtration, or they don't care. Either way, you need to know!

 

[lamont]

gotta agree with everyone who thinks the nitrox bumper stickers are worthless.

all the rules about how to deal with tank labelling are basically out of the dark ages at this point before you could get an O2 analyzer for $100-$200. i've got a really simple method for tank labelling which is NONE. if a fill operator puts a label on it, i won't pull it off, but i don't care. immediately before the first stages goes on, while its sitting in my harness i analyze. there's simply no question about it then.

when it comes to shops filling nitrox-labelled tanks with air and renting out to divers who aren't nitrox certified -- i can't believe anyone is really surprised by this, and that there are people in this thread getting all huffy about the shop. so, they're supposed to keep two fleets of tanks for nitrox and air, and when they're out of the air tanks not rent to people who aren't nitrox certified, and when they run out of the nitrox tanks they can only fill air? rules are gonna get bent there in favor of economics. duhhhhh. it doesn't indicate the shop is dumb, it indicates the rules are dumb since they only encourage shops to break them.

junk all the stupid rules, teach nitrox in BOW, put the onus on the divers to analyze their tanks, all tanks are nitrox tanks. doubles may have trimix, so don't touch if they're not yours. simple.

 

[in_cavediver]

"The nitrox sticker is meaningless."

"Again, it only means you CAN put nitrox in it. Doesnt mean you have to. No different from finding a water bottle on a floor and wondering if it contains water, white spirit or acid."

"And thats why an air diver should not be using a tank marked nitrox."

All of this absolutely underscores the NEED to have contents stickers on tanks and the NEED for divers to KNOW what they're diving. Grabbing a tank that simply says NITROX on it and trusting the fill simian when he says "oh it just has air in it" is NOT ACCEPTABLE.

It also underscores the worthlessness of those big NITROX stickers and how dumb they are. They don't help because they say nothing about what's in the tank even though they imply that there's nitrox in there. Non-nitrox certified air divers who don't have a clue shouldn't be diving them period, and nitrox certified divers need to analyze them and have a contents sticker on anyway!

As for this comment:
"Only amongst people that would get confused walking and talking at the same time it seems."
I take that as a personal insult. While you may be able to divine the contents of a tank that says nothing other than "NITROX" on it, and dive it accordingly, the rest of the diving world cannot. And let me respectfully say that if you would grab a tank with a huge NITROX sticker and dive it as air because there isn't a contents label on the tank neck, you are exhibiting the height of ignorance and you should in no way be condoning or recommending this daredevil practice.

Here's the real solution. Get everyone certified in Nitrox at the OW level and make it very easy for already certified divers to get nitrox trained. There just isn't much to it.
End of problem.

I for one think the big honkin nitrox stickers are for the birds. They convey no useful information other than "hey look, my tank is special". I don't have them on any of my tanks anymore. Simply VIP stickers with 02 service information. I use Duck tape/Masking tape for the contents and blending information and large MOD stickers on the sides of my singles.