To boot or not?

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Paladin

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What is the current consensus concerning tank boots? As I've stated in other posts, I have recently gotten back into SCUBA after dropping out in 1996. I have two tanks, one steel 72 that was born in 1976 and an AL80 that was made in 1991. Both tanks have boots on them because I wanted to protect the bottoms of the tanks. Both tanks are in excellent condition, in spite of their age. The 72 is vinyl covered and I repainted the AL80 with three coats of Krylon polyurethane paint. The original Catalina paint was badly chipped and the tank looked ugly but had no corrosion. I painted purely for cosmetic purposes.

Recently, however, I have read (here on SB and a couple of other places) that tank boots are a source of hidden corrosion. Now, I am getting ready to purchase three more AL80s and I'm wondering if I should put boots on them to protect their bottoms.

What say you guys?
 
Pros:
1. Steel tanks, because the bottoms are round, will not stand upright without a boot.
2. Boots help protect the surfaces of swimming pools and fiberglass boats. Some pool and boat owners require them.

Cons:
1. Scuba tanks do not need any protection that might be provided by a boot.
2. Boots trap water and promote corrosion.
 
I am a no boot person especially on steel tanks. The tanks don't need the protection, I have 50 year old ones that never had boots and are fine.
 
If you leave the boot on it will trap water, grit and other stuff and the tank rust/corrode under the boot (not immediately, but faster than the rest of the tank)..

If you take the boot off, the guy running the fill station will hate you because your tank will always be in the way and looking for a corner to lean against.

Terry
 
I am a no boot person especially on steel tanks. The tanks don't need the protection, I have 50 year old ones that never had boots and are fine.

You do know the trick with that though: Steel 72s were made of a wonder steel that has never been duplicated. Talking about that with a friend, we were trying to figure out what was special about them. He said some tanks are just better than others, and we are just looking at the survivors, and thinking they all lasted long. I say they don't weigh much so they don't grind their glavanizing away as fast as say 100's.

When it comes to corrosion, I think it is fair to say I have more experience with it than other people. No one else thinks chrome regs die; I have worked at places that retired 5 or 6 per year due to corrosion. No one else has seen the square hole in old ScubaPro reg's inlet barrel corrode into a useless rounded off or notched shape; I use to retire four or five of those a year for just that problem.

Steel tanks lose their plating from abrasion just like any other material. And not surprisingly that abrasion is almost exclusively at the very bottom of the tank where the weight of the tank rests. (if you go no boot). If you have a boot, and there is a ring of corrosion "from trapping water", it's not from trapping water. It is the exact same sort of abrasion that comes from the weight of the tank resting on the very tip (in the unbooted tank case). It just comes down to this: do you want the wear concentrated at the very tip of the tank? or do you want the wear distributed in a ring around the bottoms of the sides of the tank? Concetrating the wear at one point will fail the galvanization at that point. Spreading the wear in a band will look bad but not cause failure.

Leaving a boot off will kill the tank, eventually. Leaving the boot on will kill the tank, eventually. Boot off will kill it faster because then the abrasion is concentrated on one particular point of the tank.

I am betting that no one who says boots off is good has had a tank fail due to corrosion, whether the boots are on or off. But in the tropics, steel tanks fail all the damn time. There is a reason why warm water tourist destinations use aluminum tanks. Tank failure is a race between the metal fatigue and corrosion. Steel tanks will win the metal fatigue battle, but still lose the tank failure war because corrosion will kill them, both internal and external. Personal tanks never see the abuse that rental tanks do, so steel looks durable. But I worked at a place that (for whatever reason) used 2640 steel tanks for rental, and they lasted about 5 years. More expensive up front, and did not last as long. Saved weight off the belt though.
 
No need for boots on Ali Cylinders. They can be useful on steel if you want to store them upright.

Not such a good choice if you plan to dive wrecks or caves, because the boot is just another entanglement point.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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