Free air for life?

[Gen San Chris]

Free air for life! Be sure that the LDS owner is not your Doctor and knows something that you do not know!
Are there any Serial Killers loose in your area?
Is the LDS about to close?
Do you dive near a Nuclear Plant?

Nothing in life is free, its just a 4 letter word!

 

[JDMerk]

Are these old hydro tanks?
The reason I ask is because tanks in particular have very small margins so there usually isn't much incentive to sell unless they are old stock and taking up valuable retail space.
As to the fills, they are able to do this because the fills are more valuable to you ($7) than they are to them (virtually free).

Either way sounds like a good deal for you as long as they hydro's aren't more than ~2 years old

 

[rstofer]

A steel tank probably has a residual value of 80% so you only need to get a dozen fills and you are good. Personally, I would buy two tanks per diver. Since you dive cold water, both would be steel HP 100s (Worthington would be my choice). Oh, that's right! I did buy 6 of them for the 3 of us. Plus a bunch of Al 50s for the grandson and use in the pool.

It's nice to be able to make a couple of dives per day without having to have tanks filled. Besides, the most convenient fill station at Monterey (Breakwater) doesn't have clean air for my Nitrox tanks. No Nitrox, either. Driving around looking for fills is a sure way to lose a good parking spot that costs $10 per day, I believe.

If the tanks are approaching their hydro date, figure $40 or so of expense in the near future.

Richard

 

[BEM]

If you want the convenience and better charistics of steel tanks, then go for it. Make sure the tanks are new, and get the "free air for life" in writing. Find out if it is only good for the original owner and is it just air or nitrox (that would be quite the deal). Find out if there are any strings attached.

I bought two Al tanks 8 years ago and paid $125/tank for "free air for life" So far I figure I've paid about $1 per fill. I like steel tanks better, but the Al are OK for 3mm warm water dives.

If that deal was here I'd get a couple of 100's as long as they weren't PSTs.

 

[padiscubapro]

"High-pressure" 3442psi rated cylinders do not require DIN regulators. They are usually sold with convertible valves so that you can use either DIN or yoke fittings. A yoke regulator will function just fine.

One of those myths, kinda like you can't put air in a nitrox cylinder, or that once your switch to synthetic oil in your car you can't use organic oil afterwards. Nonsense.

Don't assume its ok... You need to look at the specs of the regulator.. Not all yokes are created equal.. Most modern regulators are ok but you need to check it out.. You can't issue a blanket statement like that.. Its dangerous and irresponsible.

Also even if the regulator is rated to use a higher pressure, the chance of an o-ring blowout increases as the pressure increases..

 

[Florabama]

It sounds like a great deal to me, but I'm not a fan of HP tanks myself. They take a long time to fill and some shops can't fill them to their working pressures at all. At our shop, we fill them to 3 grand, then take them off the whips and let them cool before topping off to 3500, and that takes a while. I'm not sure how your shop does it, but keep in mind that the faster the fill, the hotter the tank and the less you'll actually have when the tank cools.

A plus rated LP 108 can be filled to 2640 psi and since I fill my own tanks, I go ahead and bump them up to about 3 grand, which gives me around 120 cf of gas at 3000 grand. A HP 100 at 3500 psi will give you around 100 cf of gas at 3500. The HP 100 is about the size of an AL 80, and that can be an advantage, but I'll trade a little size for more gas.

 

[h2onutz]

Are these old hydro tanks?
The reason I ask is because tanks in particular have very small margins so there usually isn't much incentive to sell unless they are old stock and taking up valuable retail space.
As to the fills, they are able to do this because the fills are more valuable to you ($7) than they are to them (virtually free).

Either way sounds like a good deal for you as long as they hydro's aren't more than ~2 years old

Air fills virtually free?? The dive shop (Fill Express in Pompano Florida) I go to has tens of thousands invested in equipment, spends alot of money each month to maintain. I wouldn't give away free air especially to the diver who buys his equipment on-line. This dive shop that is giving away air will soon be out of business.

 

[bronk]

Milwaukeee area?
Underwater Connection by chance?
I have been making good use of my lifetime free fills from them.
With now 3 and soon 4 divers in the family, it helps a bunch.

 

[JDMerk]

Air fills virtually free?? The dive shop (Fill Express in Pompano Florida) I go to has tens of thousands invested in equipment, spends alot of money each month to maintain. I wouldn't give away free air especially to the diver who buys his equipment on-line. This dive shop that is giving away air will soon be out of business.

When you amortize the investment out over the hundreds of thousands of fills it will give you it ends up costing you pennies per fill (virtually free) and when you deduct the revenue generated from air sales from that initial investment it becomes even cheaper. Air fills are dirt cheap, im sure they spend more in the labor for the tank monkey to hook up the fill whips, but at margins they earn on the tanks themselves its hardly worth it.

 

[spectrum]

For HP steel tanks you will need to convert your regulator(s) to DIN.

This is probably not true. Nearly all "HP" cylinders being sold these days are the 3442 PSI pseudo HP models that have a convertible valve and work just fin with a yoke rated to that pressure.

The earlier generation 3500 PSI cylinders do require a DIN connection. The newer models solved that by shaving a few atmospheres from the rating.

As for free air for life, there may be some fine print and/or it's a traffic builder. After all you need to visit the shop to claim your prize and that keeps you out of the competitions shop.

The pricing is not out of line so even after a few fills you got a great deal.

Pete