Have you ever learned or done analyzing your air? (no nitrox, not against CO)

[jeffmg]

Learned nitrox during my gue fundamentals

Analyze and label every tank, regardless of where it came from

 

[Belzelbub]

I'm not trained in tech, and don't do tech dives. The only thing I learned in my OW course was how to identify nitrox tanks (big green-and-yellow bar sticker), and not to dive those tanks under any circumstance until I was trained on nitrox. Which, looking back, I find to be an acceptable level of instruction for basic OW course.

Well, it was certainly better than my first OW course. Instructor was not really a fan of Nitrox. He felt it was reserved for tech divers, so didn’t really talk much about it other than to say it wasn’t for us, at least not now.

The green and yellow bar is interesting though. Might be a regional thing, but I don’t see a lot of tanks with green and yellow bars. None of mine have them, none of my regular buddies’ tanks have them, and I don’t often see them in the customer tank area at my usual LDS.

 

[gmerick]

I learned about Nitrox in my first Open Water course - it's part of chapter 4 of my 2016 PADI OW manual. I bought my first analyzer 3 months before taking my Nitrox course. I analyze everything. Analyzing air is just confirming my analyzer calibration. If what I know to be air matches what I get from swinging the uncapped analyzer from it's rope, it's a feel good moment.
Was on a resort trip in Belize, and the dive center was down to one analyzer because WWPF divers should never be loaned good equipment. At the end of my trip, my analyzer became part of my tip for the crew.

 

[Brett Hatch]

Well, it was certainly better than my first OW course. Instructor was not really a fan of Nitrox. He felt it was reserved for tech divers, so didn’t really talk much about it other than to say it wasn’t for us, at least not now.

The green and yellow bar is interesting though. Might be a regional thing, but I don’t see a lot of tanks with green and yellow bars. None of mine have them, none of my regular buddies’ tanks have them, and I don’t often see them in the customer tank area at my usual LDS.

Interesting, yeah I guess the labelling must be regional. Around here, it's common for the visual inspection sticker to be of a different color, like white for air-only and yellow for O2-clean. Since some operators in the area use partial-pressure blending in the tank, an O2-clean vis pretty much synonymous with a nitrox tank. On top of the vis sticker, stickers like this one are fairly common too. They're big: 1" yellow bar, 4" green bar, 1" yellow bar. My tanks used to have stickers like that, but I decided they were ugly and a waste of a few dollars, so I stopped putting them on.

Trimix and O2 tanks are labelled differently... I don't recall a warning about them in my OW course, but maybe there was one and I just forgot it. I do have one AL40 that I've turned into an O2 tank for emergency surface, and I put two big green "OXYGEN" stickers on it. I am in the habit of setting it up before my dive and leaving it in the bed of my truck ready to use, in case it's needed. I sure hope that is enough to dissuade anybody from picking it up and diving with it, but you never know, people make bad choices every day. Maybe that's why the DAN O2 cylinders have a different fitting that does not accept a scuba regulator.

 

[Belzelbub]

Interesting, yeah I guess the labelling must be regional. Around here, it's common for the visual inspection sticker to be of a different color, like white for air-only and yellow for O2-clean. Since some operators in the area use partial-pressure blending in the tank, an O2-clean vis pretty much synonymous with a nitrox tank.

Yeah, could be. Around here, I don't believe they are different colors. My usual LDS uses VIP stickers with a couple different punch boxes. Nitrox Clean and O2 clean. I'm sure some may use different colors as well, but in the end, the important part for other dive shops is if the Clean boxes are punched.

On top of the vis sticker, stickers like this one are fairly common too. They're big: 1" yellow bar, 4" green bar, 1" yellow bar. My tanks used to have stickers like that, but I decided they were ugly and a waste of a few dollars, so I stopped putting them on.

I have 2 AL tanks that were my first tanks. When I got my EAN cert, I brought them in to get O2 cleaned, and the shop put the big Nitrox band on as well. Since then, I've bought new tanks, they have the O2 clean VIP sticker, but never had any of the green/yellow bar stickers put on. My AL tanks are still in service as well. They no longer have the stickers either. Got torn up a bit over the years and were removed. I can't recall if I removed them, or if they may have been removed during a hydro.

Most shops around here seem to think they are a waste of money as well. They check the VIP sticker to make sure it's the appropriate level of clean, but don't bat an eye if the large sticker is present.

 

[Brett Hatch]

Yeah, they do take them off during hydro. I think that the vis sticker is there primarily so that the shop can verify that it is safe and legal to fill (especially for a partial pressure fill). And, the big-ass bar sticker is there as a reminder to divers, like to dissuade people from diving them without training, or maybe to remind them to analyze.

Not so important on my own tanks, since they're all full of 32% pretty much all the time. But for a large shop with a couple hundred tanks, a big obvious marking has its upsides. For that purpose, I've seen various combinations of the big stickers, green paint, and different colored valve caps.

 

[Pbdiver84]

Learned Nitrox with my OW. I analyze any nitrox tank (which is 99% of my diving) and any air tank that I take deeper than 100ft.

All the tanks at LDS and resorts I’ve been to have been color coded for nitrox / O2 Clean or Air.

 

[Fishdip]

I now look at every tank when picking them up and right before I dive them. I also do it on any boat dives its funny how the DM's/crew give me dirty looks for testing even the 21% tank.