Cylinders for Inspiration

[Chardy]

I need a favor, I have emigrated here from the UK, in Fl. I have brought my YBOD with me. The Lime arrived last night from Silent Diving(great service by the way guys)in NH. Questions is, are my uk cylinders legal here or do they need some kind of US test or does the credit card have to come out to play, again,

Any ideas,

Paul

 

[caveseeker7]

US cylinders have a DOT (Dept. of Transportation) stamp. It is legal to own and use non-DOT tanks.
It is, however, illegal to tranport pressurized tanks across state lines.
Some shops will not fill them, and most will not do visual (annual) and hydro (5 yrs) inspections.
I believe Fill Express in Florida will fo the inspections.
Getting fills with a viz sticker should be a lot easier.

 

[BigJetDriver]

Chardy,

I just checked with Julianna at Fill Express. They have a source for doing the hydro on the Faber UK cylinders. Fill Express will then VIP them, and send them back to you. You should be able to get fills almost anywhere with the current hydro and VIP.

Check here: http://www.fillexpress.com/

Scuba Board Staff at your service.

 

[Camerone]

One caveat - the UK valves are different from the US ones.

The US ones require a burst disk be present for venting should the cylinders exceed a particular pressure. There are many who replace this burst disk with a shim or solid bolt, but, at least here, the shops look for it to be on the valve before they'll fill. Down in FL, where there's debate over its worth, they may not look so closely. It is, however a requirement.

Also, UK and US threads are not the same on the cylinders for the valve; the UK ones are Metric threads, and the US ones are the standard 3/4 NPT.

I _wish_ they were the same, as I could really use a cheap second set of Evolution (2L) cylinders and valves, but the retail price for them seems incredibly high.

 

[Chardy]

I will call Fill Express and prepare the credit card !

Thanks,

Paul

 

[oxyhacker]

I've always been told, by the DOT and others, that there is absolutely no way to make a non-DOT tank into a DOT legal tank - the design of the tank has to meet DOT approval, and DOT test procedures observed during its manufacture, so a tank can not be retroactively made DOT-legal even if it passes hydro.

There is a process on the books that allows hydrotesting non-DOT tanks in the USA. It's intended, apparently, to allow cylinders used on foreign ships/aircraft to be retested in the US should their certification expire while here. The shop stamps the tank with the date, but not the shop's DOT retester number. Any hydro shop can do this to a non- DOT tank if you request it - no need to send the tank off somewhere.

A fill station can, at its option, fill a non-DOT which has been so tested, but then it can also fill a privately owned tank which has not been tested at all! Many, though, will choose not to.

The other problem is that this procedure results in a stamp that looks exactly like what you could do yourself with a $9 set of stamps. If you do have this done, be sure to get a letter/testform/whatever from the shop saying that the tank was tested to DOT standards at that date.

There have been rumors of a shop who will hydro non-DOT tanks and stamp them with full DOT markings. Unless there has been some change in the DOT regs, the legality of doing this is highly questionable. So I'd want to check and find out exactly what I was getting, before I sent my tanks off.