Steel or Ali?

[spankey]

what do you prefer to dive with? Steel or Ali, most people I meet say steel as their deco is easier than with an empty Ali.

What do you all say about it?

 

[Mo2vation]

what do you prefer to dive with? Steel or Ali, most people I meet say steel as their deco is easier than with an empty Ali.

What do you all say about it?

Depends on the diving you do.

When I travel to warm water drift diving locations, AL's are perfect. We burn the gas, get floaty and the boat picks us up!

For cold water drysuit diving at home, Steel is the only way to go.


Be sure to do a search on this. There have been TONS of discussions on this topic. Several are very active at the moment.

---
Ken

 

[Packhorse]

As of monday I will have 5 tanks. All are steel. I started will ali but I have seen the light.
Kilo for litre steel wins. Less weight on the belt with steel & they last longer. The only plus AFAIC with ali is the buy price.

 

[Jason Ooi]

I dive with aluminium tanks less weight

 

[rhyz]

I'm a new diver, only 19 logged at this point. About 1/2 are cold water ocean dives and I find I prefer the steel tanks. I think the biggest reason is the -bouyancy during my safety stops. Plus less weight I need, although still working on my trim alot. I also have been diving with my 19cf pony almost every dive too. Things might change as I become more experienced though.

 

[loosebits]

I use steel for my backgas and AL for my deco and stages. For the backgas, it's mainly a capacity issue. With my double 104's cave filled, I've got 280 cubes of gas on back, that's almost 4 AL80's. For the stages, it's a buoyancy issue; an AL tank will float out of the way, steels hang low.

 

[CompuDude]

Less weight on land, less weight on the belt... Steel wins every time except initial purchase price. Even that evens out in the long run, however, since steel lasts longer (properly maintained).

I can understand there are some slightly different considerations at play when diving the warmest of warm waters (i.e., no neoprene needed), and for their, aluminum's buoyancy characteristics, oddly enough, may be preferred. That comes at the cost of the lighter weight and greater capacity of steel tanks, however, so there's always a trade-off.

But for diving wearing anything thicker than 3mm of neoprene, steel wins every time. (Backgas, that is... deco bottles are a different story)

 

[eckybay]

Steel. The two dives that I used an AL80 on were horrid. . . .added more weight my weight pockets and still had problems staying down at the end of the dive. I'm sure they have theire place, but I'm sticking with steel for the cold water, lots of neoprene diving I do.

 

[tankboygreg]

Aluminum for sport diving. Aluminum 80s are 45% cheaper than LP steel 80s. I'll pocket the cash and carry 4 lbs. of extra weight. Everything else being equal both tanks will leave you 6 lbs. lighter at the end of a dive.

 

[spectrum]

Steel

As the original poster notes Aluminum has some niche applications where it has an advantage. My whole rant is here: http://home.gwi.net/~spectrum/scuba_al80.html

Pete