Cost of tank inspections(hydro, Vis, & refilled)......

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wysmar:
Ouch! Over a month w/o your tanks?!? :confused:
How long does it really take to get thanks inspected? Maybe the demand isn't as high there as it is here in FL.

I got mine back within a week.

Wys.

At least for $50, I got mine back in 2 days.............lol.........
 
Wow, some of you have some crappy prices to deal with!

I take my tanks to an LDS a little farther (about 20-30 minutes away) than my usual place (5 minutes away). They charge $20 for a hydro, and $10 for a VIP, which of course includes a fill. Guaranteed back within 4 days, since they do their own hydros in-house.

Not o2 clean... but then, I won't take my tanks to a place that only fills o2 clean. (Well, I'll get air there if I have no other options, but I have zero interest in maintaining o2 clean tanks considering the majority of shops near me bank or use a membrane system.) I have no idea if there is a different price for o2 clean hydros, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was.
 
Well Mike, after cleaning the tank, I can just slap the sticker on it and assume its clean. Or I can check it again. Which would you prefer? And yes there is a way to verify the presence of hydrocarbons and that is with the black light lamp that I referred to. Those things cost money and I'm not doing it for the fun of it. The nitrox visual takes me longer and costs me more in tools. I didn't say that I charged extra for the clean work area. But I do take the extra time to throughly re-clean any tools that might come in contact with the tank. I like my customers to know that I go the extra mile to ensure their safety as well as the air filler. Three extra bucks, wow. You don't have to pay extra if you don't want to. Find someone who will take the easy way out. Just remember, its the air filler who gets killed by the explosion.
 
I'm confused. Most shops don't charge extra for a nitrox-clean visual since they have already charged the customer for cleaning and figure that charge includes any extra inspecting it needs.

In your earlier post you seem to be saying that you will certify a tank as PP/O2 clean on the basis of a visual and blacklight inspection, without having cleaned it. Please say it isn't so!

jscott099:
Well Mike, after cleaning the tank, I can just slap the sticker on it and assume its clean. Or I can check it again. Which would you prefer? And yes there is a way to verify the presence of hydrocarbons and that is with the black light lamp that I referred to. Those things cost money and I'm not doing it for the fun of it. The nitrox visual takes me longer and costs me more in tools. I didn't say that I charged extra for the clean work area. But I do take the extra time to throughly re-clean any tools that might come in contact with the tank. I like my customers to know that I go the extra mile to ensure their safety as well as the air filler. Three extra bucks, wow. You don't have to pay extra if you don't want to. Find someone who will take the easy way out. Just remember, its the air filler who gets killed by the explosion.
 
oxyhacker:
I'm confused. Most shops don't charge extra for a nitrox-clean visual since they have already charged the customer for cleaning and figure that charge includes any extra inspecting it needs.

In your earlier post you seem to be saying that you will certify a tank as PP/O2 clean on the basis of a visual and blacklight inspection, without having cleaned it. Please say it isn't so!


My point exactly.


That and while a blacklight will show large amounts of hydrocarbons, it won't show what's allowed at just over the limit of parts-per-million per the CGA. No one can see molecules that small.
 
We are talking about two issues I think.
1 - Safety of a nitrox cylinder. A PSI VIP inspection protocol is sufficient to assess the safety of a nitrox cylinder for scuba service. Nor will the inspection necessarily disqualify the tank as oxygen clean. If the tank was already certified as clean, and upon inspection with a multi-bulb black light inspection lamp, no particles or hydrocarbons can be seen; and, the owner has not given cause to believe the tank is not clean; the the tank will remain certified as clean.

2 - Cleaning for O2 service. Necessary for new tanks desired for O2 service and existing oxygen service tanks which do not pass inspection. Either way, these must also be inspected for O2 service.

In either case CGA G-4.1 Cleaning Equipment for Oxygen Service, allows the use of a fluorescent wand of bulbs that emits black, long wave ultraviolet light with wave lengths between 320 & 380 n m to determine if sufficient contaminants exists to require cleaning.

Its up to you and the inspector if you wish to have the tank O2 cleaned anyway.
 
CGA 4.1 is really about cleaning dedicated oxygen equipment, not dealing with the ******* stuff we divers use, that is not designed specifically for oxygen service, and is refilled regularly using oil-lubricated compressor. I think I would go by the recommendations of any of the tech agencies before I'd try to go by 4.1 for scuba gear.

Also, some of the CGA stuff is not all that up-to-date. I wonder if whoever wrote 4.1 is aware that most breathing air compressor now use synthetic oils that DON"T flouresce.

jscott099:
In either case CGA G-4.1 Cleaning Equipment for Oxygen Service, allows the use of a fluorescent wand of bulbs that emits black, long wave ultraviolet light with wave lengths between 320 & 380 n m to determine if sufficient contaminants exists to require cleaning.
 
I'm not interested in a pissing contest here. But CGA G-4.1 is up to date as Feb 2004. What tech agencies are you talking about? When it comes to cleaning and inspection for oxygen service this is the defacto standard for ANY compressed gas cylinder that may contain pure oxygen. Various tank inspection cert groups (PSI is the one I am certified with) use CGA G-4.1 as the guideline. Tank manufacturers also use 4.1 as the guide for denoting when (or if) they clean their tanks before shipping.

Look in the Scope section of CGA G-4.1 - it states that "equipment and systems handling any gas in excess of 23.5% xygen by volume shall be designed as if that equipment and system is handling oxygen."
 
By tech agency, I mean the tech scuba certification agencies like ANDI, NAUI Tech and IANTD that offer oxygen technician certification (sometimes as a separate certification, and sometimes as part of their blending course). Their standards are much more relevant to scuba applications than G 4.1's, since the CGA stuff for reasons already mentioned is not that applicable to scuba. And I don't know of any of the tech dive agencies that allow black light light inspection in lieu of cleaning!

Global Manufacturing, one of the best sources of information on oxygen cleaning for scuba has this to say, in the directions for their UV light:
"GMC does not recommend UV-inspection of dive tanks after oxygen-cleaning. If the presence of the most common pollutants cannot be confirmed by UV-A, the purchase and use of a tank VIP blacklight makes no sense... Most military and research organizations agree with this point, and no longer mandate blacklight inspections for all types of oxygen equipment" There is similar language in their Converting Dive Tanks For Oxygen Service document, which can also be found on the GMC website, and which anyone doing O2 cleaning should be familiar with.

To put it another way, we in the dive community know that black light will not reliably detect many synthetic oils and silicone greases, and these are the contaminants most likely to be found in a scuba tank. So it just doesn't make sense to rely on something we know doesn't work, just because the CGA says we can!

BTW, are you really a certified oxygen cleaning technician, or just a PSI inspector? The PSI course touches only briefly on O2-cleaning issues, and does not really qualify someone to do oxygen cleaning.

jscott099:
I'm not interested in a pissing contest here. But CGA G-4.1 is up to date as Feb 2004. What tech agencies are you talking about? When it comes to cleaning and inspection for oxygen service this is the defacto standard for ANY compressed gas cylinder that may contain pure oxygen. Various tank inspection cert groups (PSI is the one I am certified with) use CGA G-4.1 as the guideline. Tank manufacturers also use 4.1 as the guide for denoting when (or if) they clean their tanks before shipping.

Look in the Scope section of CGA G-4.1 - it states that "equipment and systems handling any gas in excess of 23.5% xygen by volume shall be designed as if that equipment and system is handling oxygen."
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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