Not necessarily a scuba agency but they do provide a cert. PSI-PCI ?

[redacted]

Rarely will I ever read something here and think "too far"... But this is close. . Leave that nice old lady out of this .

"Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
― Betty White

 

[Wookie]

"Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
― Betty White

Rarely will I ever read something here and think "too far"... But this is close. . Leave that nice old lady out of this .

@Netdoc, can you clarify what you mean by being required to be a tank inspector to get a gas fill? I'm not sure I understand the point you were trying to make?

Thanks!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

It was certainly not meant to disrespect to Ms White. But it is her quote. I will remove it if you feel it's in poor taste.

 

[The Chairman]

I'm not sure how much tongue in cheek to agree with here.

Why Frank. All of it. No one trolls like an admin.

The reason we have a small number of explosions has nothing to do with the shop, in fact, my guess would be that most explosions are directly attributable to poor filling practices.

That was my point. In spite of the obvious deficit in knowledge by many shops and divers when it comes to tanks, gas blending et al, it's phreakin' amazing that tanks aren't popping all over the place. Oh, the blow hards (see what I did there?) will pontificate long and hard about how this will never happen to them because of this and that and in reality it probably won't. No, not because they are so diligent, but the safety factors built into tanks are epic. It's more of a reverse lottery than a punishment when they do pop. That doesn't mean that we don't have a few Darwin Award winners and runners up, but any tank treated with a modicum of respect will be good for a long, long time. In reality, the Hydro Static tests are more than sufficient in the long run.

@Netdoc, can you clarify what you mean by being required to be a tank inspector to get a gas fill? I'm not sure I understand the point you were trying to make?

You have to prove that you're a certified diver in order to get a fill. You don't have to prove you're a certified anything to give me a fill. Yes, I've met dive monkeys (even in Cave Country) that were not Scuba certified, much less certified to conduct an inspection or to properly blend gasses. Ignorance doesn't seem to impede them one whit.

My only real problem is with PSI's ongoing cert process. It's not convenient for me and mine lapsed a number of years ago. I still inspect my own tanks. Yes, I am quite diligent about my inspections too. 3000+psi scare the bejesus out of me and so it should. Why mess with success?

 

[boulderjohn]

You have to prove that you're a certified diver in order to get a fill. You don't have to prove you're a certified anything to give me a fill.

A friend of mine who worked in a shop walked by the compressor room one day and glanced in to see a tank being filled. It was obviously not one of the shop's tanks. It was a steel LP covered with rust. He rushed in, shut off the compressor, and took a look. It had not been hydroed in over 15 years. A customer had brought it in for a fill, and the employee had just walked back and started filling it without any question, even letting it go to the automatic shutoff of 3,000 PSI. The employee had had no special training in any of this, probably because it is so rare in Colorado for a local customer to come in and ask for a fill for a personal tank.

My only real problem is with PSI's ongoing cert process. It's not convenient for me and mine lapsed a number of years ago. I still inspect my own tanks. Yes, I am quite diligent about my inspections too. 3000+psi scare the bejesus out of me and so it should. Why mess with success?

It is much too expensive for the renewal of certification for a process that really does not change much at all.

 

[Wookie]

It is much too expensive for the renewal of certification for a process that really does not change much at all.

Least expensive liability protection I can buy. Let's see. 100 rental cylinders and 30 bank bottles. VIP (let's be generous and say $10) $10 yearly. O2 cleaning (they are all luxfers and sometimes actually get 100%) and are all nitrox, let's be generous and say $25 a year. Hydro, I remove all of the valves before I deliver them to the hydro facility, $20 every 5 years. That's a wash, because I can't do it myself.

Cost to maintain 100 O2 clean rental cylinders? $199 x 2 every 3 years for a total of $133.33 a year.

Cost to have someone else sticker them every year? $3500 per year.

I'll keep on renewing certification, thanks.

You know why they keep the price so high? So that it needs to be worth it to you to get certified. If the certification agencies charged $1000 per year for renewal and $1,000 for each member for insurance, there would be a lot fewer bad instructors out there, me included.

 

[boulderjohn]

Least expensive liability protection I can buy. Let's see. 100 rental cylinders and 30 bank bottles. VIP (let's be generous and say $10) $10 yearly. O2 cleaning (they are all luxfers and sometimes actually get 100%) and are all nitrox, let's be generous and say $25 a year. Hydro, I remove all of the valves before I deliver them to the hydro facility, $20 every 5 years. That's a wash, because I can't do it myself.

Cost to maintain 100 O2 clean rental cylinders? $199 x 2 every 3 years for a total of $133.33 a year.

Cost to have someone else sticker them every year? $3500 per year.

I'll keep on renewing certification, thanks.

You know why they keep the price so high? So that it needs to be worth it to you to get certified. If the certification agencies charged $1000 per year for renewal and $1,000 for each member for insurance, there would be a lot fewer bad instructors out there, me included.

Great for you with all the work you do with it. Not so great for me with my much lesser numbers of tanks being inspected. The fact that it is relatively cheap for you does not mean it could not and should not be cheaper.

I am PSI certified, and I am current with that certification. I think training is important, but I also think that the training is overpriced. As a consequence, because there is no real legal requirement that people receive such training, a lot of shops will balk at spending that kind of money to get their employees properly trained for something they think they can do themselves. How many shops slap stickers with their own shop's name on them or with no identifier at all? How were the employees who did those inspections trained? I bet that if the cost of continued certification were less, more shops would be willing to have their employees get that training, and PSI might fill more classes and make more money.

The summer 2014 issue of Alert Diver includes the story of an O2 deco bottle explosion that occurred just after its owner, who nearly died, had had the tank O2 cleaned and inspected. The analysis of the tank remains showed lots of silicone. The resulting investigation showed that the employee who did the O2 cleaning and inspection had had no official training and had no real clue what he was doing.

If another agency wants to offer competent training at a more competitive cost, I have no problem with it. Maybe we'll all be a little safer.

 

[SeaCobra]

So, for the average Scuba shop: the training is not essential. That's not saying that I don't appreciate shops that go through the training, but how many divers ever ask to see a tank monkey's credentials? I remember the first interaction after I went through PSI's process with instructor #4. The tank monkey looked at my PSI inspection sticker and balked at filling my tank. He demanded to know who did it, and I freely confessed the deed. Then he went on to tell me that I was not qualified to inspect my own cylinders. O rly? So, freshly out of the class, I started to quiz him on when to fail/not fail a cylinder. I was appalled at his lack of knowledge. Then I asked him when he took the class and it turned out that he hadn't. He was shown how to conduct an inspection by the shop manager. WHAT??? The guys who require me to be certified in order to buy gas don't have the proper certs to even inspect the cylinders? I was shocked.

That was more than a dozen years ago, and I'm no longer shocked. We average only two tank explosions a year here in the US. Whatever the shops are doing, it seems to be working!

And therein lies a problem. The scuba industry has a standard practice of requiring a VIP every year, but there aren't any standards as to who can perform this function or even what should be done during the VIP process.

I have failed cylinders during the VIP process, about 6 this year (that is a high for me). One was a steel that had chunks of rust fall out and the others were very old luxfer 3AL that showed the beginnings of issues in the threads. For the record I am a PSI certified inspector.

 

[boulderjohn]

More on the content of the training and its related cost...

I had my initial training a number of years ago in a full day session. I then unfortunately went past the three year renewal and had to attend another full day session to get renewed. I remember in the first session thinking that if I have to look at another picture of an exploded tank, I am going to scream. During the second session, we students all talked during lunch about how sick we were of hearing stories about how great PSI was, and it got even worse after lunch. In both sessions, we spent so much time on topics that could have been covered in a matter of minutes or not at all that we had to squeeze in the relatively little time left for practicing inspections at the very end of the day. If we had doubled the amount of time spent on practicing and spent the rest of the time on details we really needed to know, we could have finished the class in half a day and been much better for the experience. I don't think it is any wonder that so many shops choose to skip these classes and just show their employees what to do themselves.

 

[Wookie]

Great for you with all the work you do with it. Not so great for me with my much lesser numbers of tanks being inspected. The fact that it is relatively cheap for you does not mean it could not and should not be cheaper.

I am PSI certified, and I am current with that certification. I think training is important, but I also think that the training is overpriced. As a consequence, because there is no real legal requirement that people receive such training, a lot of shops will balk at spending that kind of money to get their employees properly trained for something they think they can do themselves. How many shops slap stickers with their own shop's name on them or with no identifier at all? How were the employees who did those inspections trained? I bet that if the cost of continued certification were less, more shops would be willing to have their employees get that training, and PSI might fill more classes and make more money.

The summer 2014 issue of Alert Diver includes the story of an O2 deco bottle explosion that occurred just after its owner, who nearly died, had had the tank O2 cleaned and inspected. The analysis of the tank remains showed lots of silicone. The resulting investigation showed that the employee who did the O2 cleaning and inspection had had no official training and had no real clue what he was doing.

If another agency wants to offer competent training at a more competitive cost, I have no problem with it. Maybe we'll all be a little safer.

And there I am thinking that almost all if not all training in Scuba is priced way below market. When a Scuba instructor is making less than minimum wage to teach a class, we're below market. I'd rather ask if someone wants to supersize than teach a scuba class for minimum wage or less. At least there is no liability for packaging a burger.

 

[redacted]

And there I am thinking that almost all if not all training in Scuba is priced way below market. When a Scuba instructor is making less than minimum wage to teach a class, we're below market. I'd rather ask if someone wants to supersize than teach a scuba class for minimum wage or less. At least there is no liability for packaging a burger.

Have you ever seen a "Scuba instructor wanted" ad? Supply and demand.