What tanks are you using for your doubles and why?

[Cave Diver]

LP112's. After comparing the specs on various tanks, I found them to have the most desirable trade off in weight/bouyancy/capacity for me.

I have dove them as independent doubles, manifold doubles, and independent singles and been very happy with them.

I have also used double LP98's and AL80's, but I still prefer my 112's.

 

[Uncle Pug]

Shane and I both have double PST LP 104s and I just put together two more 104 twinsets today so now we have four between us.

Why? That is what my wife wants to know too.

 

[akforsyth]

Know the feeling Unclepug...Wife has been gone for 2 months now and I have been accumulating more dive gear now than ever before...unfortunately she comes back in 3 1/2 months so that is all the time I have left...

 

[scuubaadoo]

two 120 singles, a 30 for deco, just got a 13 for argon and enough 80's to make my wife wonder how I walked around the apartment before she made me put some of them in the storage room downstairs.

 

[TheRookMan]

I was concidering this very question just a few weeks ago. The first question I had to make a descision about was if I was going to change all my gear over to High Pressure (HP) or not.

After talking to several tech buddies I decided that I was going to keep my yoke connections as I am planning on doing my own mixing of gasses someday and it is much easier to do that within the Low Pressure (LP) arena.

With that decision made I only had to do the recearch in the LP arena. The following is a table of information I put together to compare the LP tanks I was considering.

Unit cu. ft. dbls lbs. Empty lbs full Leisure Pro $ $/cu.ft. lbs. emty/cu.ft. lbs. full/cu.ft.
LP-C85 170 62 75.4 $806.80 $4.24 0.36 0.44
LP-C98 196 76 91.5 $811.80 $3.70 0.39 0.47
LP-C112 224 82 96$ 861.80 $3.35 0.37 0.43


If you have problems seeing this in tabular format then just copy it and paste in an Excell spreadsheet. That's where it came from. I was trying to figure out the advantages between the different sizes of LP tanks based on weight vs. capacity vs. price.

I was also concerned about the weight of the tanks empty, as I wanted to be sure that I could climb a boat ladder in 5' swells while carring these things. That was the primary reason why I never considered PST tanks. The darn things are just too heavy for the capacity. I know WAY too many people who bought the PST 104s as a set of doubles but then couldn't actually carry them empty up a boat ladder, let alone full accross the deck! Don't believe me? Check out their web site and look at the weight empty of each tank then multiply by 2 and add the weight of the straps, manifold, and any other gear you might want on a dive....http://www.pstscuba.com/

Good Luck!


Oh, BTW I finally decided on the Faber 85s (sold by OMS here in the US) as the best value per cubic foot of air per lb. of weight empty. I will be getting the 112s next year when I start my TriMix classes. I've got the 85s set up for Nitrox right now.

 

[WreckWriter]

TheRookMan once bubbled...
After talking to several tech buddies I decided that I was going to keep my yoke connections as I am planning on doing my own mixing of gasses someday and it is much easier to do that within the Low Pressure (LP) arena.

You're not under the impression that DIN valves only work on HP tanks are you?

Regardless of tank type, doing technical level dives with yoke connections is very close to stupid. You should rethink this.

WW

 

[Padipro]

I'm using a set of AL 90's, 3300 PSI.

I bought two tanks from a friend a few years ago and didn't realize that one was an 80 and the other was a 90 cuft until the first time I had them hydroed. When I was ready to put my doubles together I either had to buy another 80 or another 90 to have a matched set. I figured that I might as well go with the 90 and have a few more cuft of gas. Only then did I realize that they didn't make these tanks any more and they were hard to find. It took me about 6 months to finally find one on ebay. I desided to go with AL tanks for the added bouyance. We don't need a lot of thermal protection down here in South Florida, even in the winter so steel doubles will make you sink like a lead weight. Even with my AL tanks and a 5 mil semi dry suit on I'm way heavy.

Scott

 

[IndyScott]

How do you guys like the al80's doubled. I thought this was a no no.. But it seams to be a cheaper way of doing it sence I are ready have al80 tanks..

Scott=-)

 

[Padipro]

ICUROK once bubbled...
How do you guys like the al80's doubled. I thought this was a no no.. But it seams to be a cheaper way of doing it sence I are ready have al80 tanks..

Scott=-)

A no no? I've talked to several highly trained DIR Instructors here in South Florida and they tell me that that is the only way to go, at least down here. As I said above, we don't need a lot of thermal protection here and the added weight of steel tanks makes a diver to negitive, the positive bouyance of AL tanks near the end of the dive helps during accent. Of course with all that gear on the diver is still going to be negitive even with the AL tanks but not as negitive as they would be with steel tanks.

At least that is what they tell me and I've seen a lot of divers here with AL doubles.

Scott

 

[O-ring]

ICUROK once bubbled...
How do you guys like the al80's doubled. I thought this was a no no.. But it seams to be a cheaper way of doing it sence I are ready have al80 tanks..

Scott=-)

...and I also use them in my drysuit. Never thought I would have a need for anything else, but if you are doing anything deeper than 150' they start to become useless unless you want to carry a ton of stages.