Rebreather - Cost of Ownership

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Ouvea

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Location
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Hello All:

I completed GUE Tech 1 some years ago and have done a fair number of decompression dives, enough to qualify for GUE Tech 2. With the rising cost of Helium and that I see a number of divers within my group using rebreathers, I'm interested in possibly going that direction.

While paying Helium for twin HP120s is quite expensive, what are the cost of ownership for a rebreather? What parts must I replace on a regular basis? What are the intervals at which these parts must be replaced? What are their costs? Does the rebreather require service, in the same manner that an open circuit regulator requires?

Personally, I do somewhere around 20 technical dives per year. All of my tech dives were on 18/45 with 50% deco gas. Filling my back gas and deco gas averages anywhere from $120-$140 per dive. Gas wise what savings in gas expenditure can I expect?

Thank you,
O.
 
This is kind of an open ended question and has a lot of variables. Depends on what kind of diving you’re doing, what unit you are looking at buying, do you plan on furthering your diving carrier (going deeper, longer dives, maybe cave, wreck, overseas travel etc.) Also it’s hard to justify a rebreather only off gas savings. I think most of us that dive CCR's have more reasons than just the gas savings, yes it’s a big bonus but there are countless other reasons for diving a CCR.


First thing to remember is the initial cost, this can very a lot depending on the unit and if you buy new or used. Also next is the training CCR courses generally are a lot more than OC courses.


Once you own the unit they are actually very inexpensive to own assuming you don’t brake anything on it. Once again this is all depends on the unit you buy but lets just keep it simple. Most manufactures have you change O2 sensors and replace ADV, DSV, and T-piece o-rings. Every year and every 1-2 years replace all other o-rings. I would say just ball park you will be spending $200-$350 a year. This is unit dependent, some units have cheaper aftermarket o2 cells you keep the cost down, other you must use manufactures cells and some have CO2 cell as well. Also most manufactures recommend on average every 5 years (this number is very unit dependent) to send the unit in for a manufacture service. For now will just leave this out since it’s such a long period of time.

Also as usually most manufactures recommend servicing your regs annual as well.


Now if you are just doing this to save gas cost then all you need to do is find out how much your local dive center will charge you for a diluent and o2 fill (depends on the tank size you go with most people dive 3L’s) now times this by your 20 dives (in reality you should get a couple dives off one dill and o2 fill) a year and compare that to your 20 OC dives a year. Then subtract the maintenance cost and sofnolime cost and you have your savings per year. You will really start seeing a difference when you are doing deep dives with very high % He diluents vs OC twinsets and travel gases.


But the catch is you still have to divide the annual gas cost savings by your unit cost and training cost then this will tell you how many years you will have to dive be for you break even between OC vs. CC obviously the more you dive the quicker you reach this point and that is when you gas savings start kicking in meaning that is when CC become cheaper than OC


Also remember if you travel a lot like I do have to do a little more research on dive destinations to make sure they can support CCR diving, general remote areas charge a lot for sofnolime and He, also I have found a lot of remote places can not fill 100% O2 I get a lot of 93%-98% fills. You will also be traveling with 2 full checked bags (assuming you have a full size unit not one of those little around the neck lunch box Tritons) and nowadays most airlines only let you have 1 checked bag and pay for the other and by pay for the other I really mean bend you over can you feed you the pineapple for the other bag, especially in Europe my friend gets charged 150 Euro for a second checked bag on Lufthansa. I am lucky and I fly so much that I am United 1K so I never have to pay for additional baggage on any Star Alliance flight around the world. But I have friends that spend around $400-$600 a year in extra baggage charges. This will actually be your largest cost of ownership is travel. On a side note myself and lots of my friends fly Turkish Airlines and if you have scuba diving gear they allow you 2 free checking bags, and if they give you a hard time about it pull it up on their website.
 
i dont think 20 tech dives a year is a good justification for getting a ccr - at that rate itll never balance out - get a ccr because theyre awesome and they open up bottom times and depths you wouldn't really consider on OC
 
I spend £230 on cells. Now and again I service the first stages, say £50/year. I have had two things break if 5 years, a HUD at £250 and head electronics which cost £600 including a complete service. I have about £250 in random spares such as owing sets, a spare cell. Batteries are maybe £20/year. Worst is cylinder testing and o2 cleaning for two sets of dil/o2 and three bailouts. I suspect two of my bailouts are out of test.

All that costs the same regardless of number of dives.

Sorb is £75/20kg, so about £10/fill. I usually use one fill/diving day.
Gas is gas BUT I almost always have trimix dill just in case. The trimix costs about £15/fill (3 or 4p per litre plus o2 plus £4 ish for the air top) and o2 about £9. These are vague because I have no real choice where I go and am often getting other fills etc so this can be lost in the noise.

What this means is that while deep dives are cheaper, shallow dives cost the same as deep dives, which is more than OC. I think I pay £20 for a twinset of 32% and £12 for air.

You do need to set aside some time each day to take it to bits and dry off cells, refill sorb. You might get away with that every other dive if shallow, relatively short dives. If diving several days in a row it can me more hassle or less hassle than OC as 3s are smaller than 12s or twinsets, but if you take the unit off the boat that is more hassle than just cylinders.

However, none of that matters.

For me the costs of the materials of diving are small compared to travel, time off work etc. The important thing is that it enables longer dives with much less time anxiety. It also means you can use trimix by default. I recently did a 33m dive on air dil and was surprised at how long sorting out simple issues can take.

I try to as much diving on my JJ as possible, except when teaching or hand holding entry level divers, you do need to have mental bandwidth for yourself and pay attention to the unit in a way you do not with open circuit.
 
Short answer: You can't justify it financially, but it's awesome.

Does the rebreather require service, in the same manner that an open circuit regulator requires?

You will have more regulators, cylinders and valves to keep serviced with a rebreather.

Cells cost 300 annually. O ring kits around 70. Add another 100 per year for shutter valves and other rebreather specific miscellaneous parts.




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Yup. Unless you are doing a LOT of OC trimix, don't do it for the money. But I'm SO glad I got my JJ, and I rarely go to depths where helium is a necessity. As mentioned upthread, lots of variability in ongoing costs, and lots of reasons for going CCR even if you don't do big dives.

One thing to keep in mind, though, on that front. Since putting helium in your dil is so cheap, and since there aren't logistical issues of filling tanks with trimix and then wasting them on shallow dives if there is a blowout, you are more likely to have helium even at moderate depths where you wouldn't bother with it on OC. That probably makes for a clearer head on your mid range dives.
 
I'm in the same spot as you. Helium prices are rising like mad and for the same price of a week of tech diving i can also fly to Mexico and cave dive for 2 weeks.

You say you make like 20 technical dives a year, but what if these tech dives become cheaper (cause of the rebreather)? Will you still make around 20 dives a year?
My idea of getting a rebreather is to reduce the helium costs and go out and tech dive more.
Prices will increase even more when you go and do tech 2 dives, the same reason why i didn't go beyond Normoxic trimix (while there are lots of things i wanne see at greater depths).
Ofcourse a rebreather is expensive to buy. But i know for sure when i got one, the step to go tech diving is a lot smaller.
 
Additional expenses above the unit and CCR1

Cells (3 annually)
Sorb (5lbs every tech dive)
Some extra orings/service kits

You still have the same amount of OC regs to look after (4 1st stages, 2 2nd stages), a few more LP/HP hoses.

Booster and storrage tanks


10K still buys slot of helium and O2...

I still prefer my CCR for 99% of my diving

_R
 
This is something that @victorzamora and I got into some pretty heated arguments for literally years about.

  • Cells-you don't actually need cells annually. You need cells when you need cells. Budget for them annually, but some may go 4 months, some may go 24 months. Don't replace cells until they need to be replaced, same as rebuilding regulators every year. Rebuild them when they need it.
    • Budget $250
  • Sorb/gas-need a full scrubber when you need a full scrubber. If you are doing 2 hour dives, that 2-3 dives depending on scrubber size. A recent study was done that says partially used sorb can just sit around for months and be just as good, if not better, than it was when you finished the first dive. Budget a pound an hour and you're saying 20 technical dives, but you'll use the CCR for most everything at least for a while. 20 tech dives@2hrs=40hrs so round up and say 100hrs/yr. Gas use is about a liter/minute of O2 and Dil which rounds up to say 300cf of each.
    • $400 in sorb
    • $150-300cf of O2 at rounded up Amigos pricing *$0.46/cf*
    • $200-300cf of 18/45 at rounded up Amigos pricing *50/50 of $0.17 EAN32 and $0.96 helium*
  • The o-rings and flapper valves don't need to be replaced annually, and if you're smart you'll find the sizes and buy them in bulk. Maybe $50/year if you over buy them, and then you'll have to service the two extra first stages every couple of years, so budget $50/year in reg rebuilds.
    • $100/year
  • $300 in miscellaneous fills for deco/bailout bottles or the random open circuit dives, etc.
  • I won't include any open circuit stuff because you will need it for both situations, so this list is "in addition to my normal OC stuff".
So roughly speaking, you'll be shelling out $1400 in consumables for the rebreather. You'll pro Ish, but that's for 100 total hours of diving. Right now you're saying 20 dives/year which is probably around 40 hours, and it's costing you around $2500/year in gas bills, not including any non-technical diving that you're doing. It will save you roughly a grand a year given your current diving habits *with a LOT of assumptions so don't quote me on any of it. Your gas pricing may be higher than Amigos pricing by more than what I rounded them up to which is the only one that would make it super wonky. Everything else is pretty conservative.

Saving $1k/year in dive costs then has to outweigh the buy-in price. You're in for $10k in a brand new CCR with Mod1 training. Probably $12k if you go the GUE route with the GUE-JJ *I have no idea what that actual cost is*. Add another $1500 for redoing normoxic trimix since you can't use OC normoxic as a pre-req for hypoxic *which is retarded, but whatever*, then another $1500 for hypoxic.
If that investment pays off, then you can justify the rebreather on gas savings. Saving $1k a year though doesn't do much for you. If you increase the trimix dives because it isn't so cost prohibitive and go from 40hrs to 100hrs, then you're now saving almost $5k/year in helium and it's a no-brainer. If you want to justify it based on other factors like extra warmth, silence, no tick-tock from the SPG, cool factor, etc etc. then do that. It won't cost you more/year than diving open circuit trimix, but it's a long ROI at 20dives/year
 
If you dive a lot and make a lot of multi-hour dives a rebreather can become a good option. Up front it looks like it'll pay for itself quickly, there are a lot of costs associated with it. The consumables used per dive is similar in cost to a doubles dive on Nitrox.

If you go the GUE route and buy new you're looking at about:
$9k for a new JJ
$600 for new wing
$1200 for tanks, lola valves, and O2 cylinder
$2k for the class
$150 for a keg of sorb (good for about 8 fills)
$200 or so fills and misc
$?? Entrance or boat fees.
$? Optional to reconfigure your oc BG regs or get dedicated RB regs.
$? Travel / lodging / meal costs

Used depends on several factors and what it needs replaced or changed to GUE setup.

Costs of ownership are about
$25 or so for the O2 and sorb per dive.
$? Diluent depends on mix but lasts a long time,
$350 annual for cells
$300-$400 in spares
$30 for batteries as needed (annual?)
$? Misc repairs
$? Additional training


I went with a new unit because when I factored in the total cost of used to make it compliant it wasnt that much more for a new one. I have a few friends who found better deals and theirs were GUE setup already.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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