How reasonable is it to expect a "good" fill in New England?

[Diesel298]

Another side question here is how many shops in the NE will give your steel LP tanks "really good" fills. hehehe.

old school steels or newer, like fabers, and worthingtons....
not many thats for sure.
tech shops and even there iffy

 

[reefseal]

I avoid my LDS in Merrimack and drive over to Londonderry or Hudson for good fills. The shop in Merrimack usually has a young kid who ends up filling fast and hot. It's just may be me but I tend to buy more gear from store that appreciates my desires for full fill. maybe that's why I bought whole new gear set-up in Londonderry store. I just hate having to ask to overfill when has + rating. (over 2640 for steel) I'm usually end up with 2100, 2200 fills.

 

[dbg40]

Normally,I go to a shop here in Rocky Hill (Scuba Shack) that does wet fills. If you leave them, there on top when you get back. If you wait, and there not swamped, he'll sit em a minute, and top off over pres. 90% of the time you get a good fill, at a really cheap price.

 

[Scubar]

I pull out the P-gage right in the shop before the tanks leave the building and if I don't like the fill, I make sure it gets topped off.

 

[Web Monkey]

I got a couple tanks (both HP and MP) filled an an LDS today just to find out (again :sadlike that they were 300psi underfilled.

You should be checking the O2% and pressure before you leave anyway, to make sure you're getting the mix you expect (even if it's just air).

If it's short, just hand it back and ask them to top it off. 300 PSI should only take a couple of minutes.

Terry

 

[jwdiverdude]

A year or so ago I read a post by on of the guys who has been around SB for a long time and his job is a tank inspector.
He posted an excellent thread about wet filling tanks and how there was no benefit to wet filling over dry filling, reguarding final air pressure.
He also goes on to outline a ton of reason why to Not get a wet fill.
If anyone else either knows who I am talking about or that thread, I couldn't find it.
Please let us know where to look.

IMHO: It is One of the most informative Posts on here.

http://www.naui.org/pdffiles/tankfill.pdf
Here is a link that may or may not be the thing I read last year.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

We normally give "good" fills to regular customers. Even our regular fills are to rated pressure when topped off. I consider a good fill to be 100-300 over when cool. I myself get "really good" fills! Of course I'm there when it's done usually and I'm one of the managers. My new HP 80's are regularly at 3700-3800 when cool. If I'm planning deep or long dives I get my 72's at 2900 or so. Of course these do not sit for more than a week or so before they get used.

 

[oceancurrent]

We normally give "good" fills to regular customers

Amen, brother. We need more diveshop managers like you


Actually, the shop I usually get my fills at is religious about slow-filling the tanks. And this is great - the tanks are almost never more than marginally warm. However, they also seem to be religious about keeping the pressure under the rated max. So getting a good fill would be a game of top-it-off-please once or twice per tank.

But then again, I wander about the value of being religious about not exceeding the service pressure during fills. After all, the tanks are designed to handle a wide range of operating pressures and temperatures (up to 140 degrees / 10-20% overpressure is considered by experts in the normal operating range). And the minimal burst pressure of tanks is usually around 200% of the service pressure.

With a bit of experience a fill station op can give you a perfectly good fill from the very first time (if he wants). It's a matter of feeling the tank warmth once the service pressure is reached and adding a few extra psi so that the tank settles at the right pressure when it cools off. This can be as little as 50psi, if the fill was reasonably slow. No superhuman abilities or black magic here. And it doesn't sound to me like this will put any abnormal stress on the tank.

After all, modern tanks last forever and +/- 10% does not affect their life span measarubly. Also, PST recently recertified their LP tanks (2400psi) to HP (3442psi) and named them the E8 series. Not to say tha the DOT service pressures are much more conservative than the equivalents in Europe.

So heck, I don't understand where all this religiousness around here about never-ever exceeding the service pressure stems from. And no, I don't want my tanks overfilled - all I want is a realiable good fill to the service pressure at 75 degrees without having to beg for it and/or come back the next day. Is it too much to ask?

 

[Puffer Fish]

Amen, brother. We need more diveshop managers like you


Actually, the shop I usually get my fills at is religious about slow-filling the tanks. And this is great - the tanks are almost never more than marginally warm. However, they also seem to be religious about keeping the pressure under the rated max. So getting a good fill would be a game of top-it-off-please once or twice per tank.

But then again, I wander about the value of being religious about not exceeding the service pressure during fills. After all, the tanks are designed to handle a wide range of operating pressures and temperatures (up to 140 degrees / 10-20% overpressure is considered by experts in the normal operating range). And the minimal burst pressure of tanks is usually around 200% of the service pressure.

With a bit of experience a fill station op can give you a perfectly good fill from the very first time (if he wants). It's a matter of feeling the tank warmth once the service pressure is reached and adding a few extra psi so that the tank settles at the right pressure when it cools off. This can be as little as 50psi, if the fill was reasonably slow. No superhuman abilities or black magic here. And it doesn't sound to me like this will put any abnormal stress on the tank.

After all, modern tanks last forever and +/- 10% does not affect their life span measarubly. Also, PST recently recertified their LP tanks (2400psi) to HP (3442psi) and named them the E8 series. Not to say tha the DOT service pressures are much more conservative than the equivalents in Europe.

So heck, I don't understand where all this religiousness around here about never-ever exceeding the service pressure stems from. And no, I don't want my tanks overfilled - all I want is a realiable good fill to the service pressure at 75 degrees without having to beg for it and/or come back the next day. Is it too much to ask?

Seems rather simple, actually. One might also check the fill station gauge compared to what they are reading - not uncommon to have 1 or 2 hundred psi difference.

As temp and final fill pressure are simple math, it is easy to figure out how hot the tank was filled - might be a more important consideration.

 

[oceancurrent]

Wow. Based on the poll most people are getting "good" or "really good" fills around here. Makes me wonder why I keep getting lousy fills... Granted, my LDS doesn't make a squat from fills, yet hmmm...

So, where do you guys get all these great fills? Which places (beyond the Seeker) would take good care of you?