brucet
Contributor
And just my opinion, but so often people seem to be looking for anyway to save a few bucks. You trust your life with the gear you dive with. No ask yourself, how much is your life worth.
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Okay, am I missing something here? Why on earth would anybody want to trust that a factory / shop has sent out a perfectly clean, ready-to-fill scuba tank?
Wouldn't you WANT the additional confidence of a Visual Inspection before you trust your life to what you are about to breath?
This "does it have to have ?" stuff is puzzling the daylights out of me.
If the LDS will only fill a tank(s) with a vip sticker on it then it needs it. The LDS are the ones filling the tanks with equipment they paid for in a building they own/rent. If you want your tanks filled and they want you to hop on one leg then what do you do?
The owner of a LSD where I brought my new 19cf pony minus a vip sticker to be filled he vip'd it and put a sticker on it for free. He told me he has found paper work and such in some new tanks. Safe or sorry?
my pony (catalina) came with a sticker on it saying it had been vis's in the process of qa and that that inspection was good for one year from the stamped inspecion date (hydro). from that you get a sticker after checking for clean tank prior to installing a valve. no detailed inspection required...
that is not the issue: a vip does lots of checks cylendar balloning or banana shape pits < scaring, gouging ect. those kind of checks are not necessary because it is a new tank. ......
the hydro shop does not typically put viz stickers on the tanks; they punch em on the neck. If you do not want to pay for the viz at the shop, I am sure they would be willing to provide your cylinder back to you with the old O-ring (cut upon removal to prevent accidental re-use) valve un installed and in a ziplock bag, and the thread guard plug still in the threads of the tank.......
if the hydro shop is required to do a vis on all tanks with valves, should i be paying for the second vis by the shop when it was already done by a hydro tester. i am assuming that the hydro vis is for air only, no O2 issues involved.
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and I had a shop manager once question why I had not punched a whole year on the VIP sticker... If the tank is not in hydro, it does not fulfill the requirements of VIP.... plus I have seen tank monkeys only look at the sticker not the neck stamp...i have only seen a couple of shops that know asbout the hydro/vis relationship they have a general rule no vis no fill. when i got my tanks the lds put vis stickers for the first year only to avoid hassles from other shops not knowing about the factory hydro date exception to the vis sticker.