Do you check tanks for pressure and contents before you leave the shop?

[The Chairman]

the shrinkage and overfill their tanks somewhat. But these guys are running a business so time is money, and it takes more time to fill them correctly and if they are low, they get a quicker turn araound time on the trip as well. Make sure you let your disappointment be known, and next time bring your own (or rented) tanks so that you know how full they are.

 

[wreckchick]

So, I didn't understand half of those posts up there, but here's what I know as a basic open water diver: when you get on a boat and they take all your gear, you ask which tanks are yours and you check the pressure before the boat leaves the dock, if they have a big yellow and green sticker you don't use them.

Why on earth should I have to be responsible for everyone else's enriched air or custom mixes when by leaving the air tanks unlabeled and labeling all the non-air tanks and making the air fill stations abide by the simple credo that "nothing but air shall be pumped into unmarked tanks" would handle the whole issue?

Let's face it people AL80's look pretty much the same, it's not inconceivable that and unmarked custom mixed tank could end up in the hands of say me.

We, the newbies of the sport, should not have to worry about about our mix! I have enough problems figuring out my right and left fins!!

Rachel

 

[Lead_carrier]

biscuit7 once bubbled...
when you get on a boat and they take all your gear, you ask which tanks are yours and you check the pressure before the boat leaves the dock, if they have a big yellow and green sticker you don't use them.

Why on earth should I have to be responsible for everyone else's enriched air or custom mixes when by leaving the air tanks unlabeled and labeling all the non-air tanks and making the air fill stations abide by the simple credo that "nothing but air shall be pumped into unmarked tanks" would handle the whole issue?

Let's face it people AL80's look pretty much the same, it's not inconceivable that and unmarked custom mixed tank could end up in the hands of say me.

You're not responsible for someones elses mix. If the tank is marked for EAN and it isn't yours, then don't mess with it. Personally, I have never had any trouble noticing the difference in a regular AL80 and one with a big green and yellow sticker that says NITROX on it.

As for the left and right fins. The shorter one goes on the left unless you're right handed in which case the long one goes on the right.

 

[runvus4]

A tank filled with anything other than "air" should always be marked with a contents tag, irregardless of yellow/green Nitrox wrap.

Everyone should be responsible for knowing what is in the tanks they dive with. If you cannot determine if the tanks hooked up to your reg is the tanks you brought then you have a potentially serious problem. Even if everyone has "air", the person next to you on the trip may have filled his tank with a bicycle pump, or some sort of carbon monoxide exhaust compressor system. Once you get a tank in your posession whos contents you are comforable with, you should put some sort of tape on it and write your name.

 

[DameDykker]

From several sources I've heard that there will shortly be a new Euraopean CE standard for Nitrox. I short this should result in different treads for nitrox bottles (can't remember if tri-mix is included on this) i.e. new 1st stages ect.

That will be expencive for everybody but also safe. After this there's No way you can get nitrox in an air bottle. This is also the approach used for gases in the chemical industry.

 

[Genesis]

Why on earth should I have to be responsible for everyone else's enriched air or custom mixes when by leaving the air tanks unlabeled and labeling all the non-air tanks and making the air fill stations abide by the simple credo that "nothing but air shall be pumped into unmarked tanks" would handle the whole issue?

Because unless those are YOUR tanks, and you WATCHED them be filled (e.g. you're not renting, and you didn't drop them off to be filled with air and then come back for them later) you simply do not know for certain what is in there.

Without a contents tag you DO NOT KNOW. In MOST dive shops it would be trivial to either hook you up to the wrong whip or twist the wrong valve, and now you have Nitrox instead of air. Most of the time you would not even KNOW that this happened, since most recreational dives are within the MOD of the common banked Nitrox mixes - but it only takes once, or someone who returns a rental tank with a rich mix in it, or any one of a number of other mistakes, and you end up grabbing a bottle full of something unintended.

A contents tag on ALL tanks solves this problem.

If the CE folks go to "funny threaded" tank valves, they will simply isolate themselves. I can't imagine this happening over here in the US - although stranger things have happened.....

 

[Lead_carrier]

djbos once bubbled...
I just got back this weekend from a dive in San Diego thru Dive Connections 3 tank (two ships and kelp) and just about every tank on board had less than 2800 psi and some as low as 2500. I'm still new at scuba and I need all the air I can get but 2500 I felt a little cheated. The boat already had the tanks on board so what am I suppose to do? any suggestions so this doesn't happen again?

Just ask the captain or dm, since we are letting you give us discounted fills on the tanks do we get discounted rates on the dives? Or make sure you are within earshot of the boat crew and ask a few of the divers on the boat if it is standard practice of the charter to screw you out of the extra air. That will usually start some coversations about the short fills.

 

[Lead_carrier]

Genesis once bubbled...


Because unless those are YOUR tanks, and you WATCHED them be filled (e.g. you're not renting, and you didn't drop them off to be filled with air and then come back for them later) you simply do not know for certain what is in there.

Without a contents tag you DO NOT KNOW. In MOST dive shops it would be trivial to either hook you up to the wrong whip or twist the wrong valve, and now you have Nitrox instead of air. Most of the time you would not even KNOW that this happened, since most recreational dives are within the MOD of the common banked Nitrox mixes - but it only takes once, or someone who returns a rental tank with a rich mix in it, or any one of a number of other mistakes, and you end up grabbing a bottle full of something unintended.

A contents tag on ALL tanks solves this problem.

The bottom line is buy your own compressor, get your own O2 bottles and fill and blend your own. That way you will know exactly what you have in your tanks and you won't have to worry about whether the dive shop knows the difference between O2, banked EAN, and plain air. It will save you lots of money and you can actually make money by filling for your friends and undercutting the LDS in the area. Right Genesis?

 

[Genesis]

At least for me.

Every one of the tanks sitting around my house right now full has a contents tag on it, even if what it says is "OCA", with my initials, final pressure and the date I filled it.

Even my pony bottle.

I log my fills on a spreadsheet too, but that is small comfort when you're on the boat with a tank and aren't quite sure what's in it.

I was taught that you didn't need lables on air tanks. Then I took the Nitrox class and saw a few shop fillstations where you would be literally one twist of a valve away from getting something unintended in the tank, and my opinion on this changed.

IMHO tank bands are worse than useless and the only proper way to handle this is to tag all cylinders with their contents, which implies that you must analyze the contents so you can actually fill in the tag.

 

[wreckchick]

I don't disagree that a nice thing would be for all tanks to have a label, but the labels can be wrong too. My point was more that if a bunch of tanks came into a filling station from a charter and the tagging is less than perfect or non-existant, an unmarked tank can be filled with the air even if it had a rich mix in it for the last dive. The nice big green and yellow markings would at the very least alert the person filling that that tank had a nitrox mix in it for its last use.

Has anyone seen a filling station test the mix in tanks that need to be filled to check contents from the last fill?

Rachel

P.S. My own personal filling station is a nice idea, but getting it to my 4th floor apartment would be a little tricky