Testing your breathing Gases Prior to Diving

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There is actually a semi-DIY CO tester listed in a thread here on scuba board. I think total cost would be about $150-$180.

Link here: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/co...relatively-inexpensive-co-detector-setup.html

Still, at $180 per gas, how many of these DIY testers are you going to need and/or use? I'm most concerned about the CO poisoning as I'm never deep enough to worry about an MOD on Nitrox and don't any other mixes.
 
Shops do the darndest things: who was the guy who got a tank full of He and nearly died from hypoxia? You'd think they would have caught such an expensive mistake before sending it out the door, but no. Will your nitrox be closer to 90% O2 than 36% O2? Probably not, but it sure could.
 
A thread with equal and opposite trolls... interesting.
 
The whole point of this silly thread is somebody thinks that paranoia is a solution to safe diving.

Now that is funny. Analyzing your breathing mix has nothing to do with paranoia. It has everything to do with being able to control the “controllable’s”. Knowing exactly what your breathing medium is at the time of the dive.

It literally takes no extra time to analyze my mix as I set up my rig, When I set up my regs, prior to attaching the lp inflator I plug in my analyzer and as I set the rest of it up, it verifies my mix. I mark my tank and I am done. Ready to dive.

Of course, prior to entering the water I breath off my octo and primary to make sure both function, but then again, you know how silly and paranoid I am.
 
To me, the word "paranoia" implies fear of things that aren't real, or excessive fear of things that aren't dangerous. Diving the wrong gas is more than possible, and it has happened to people who DIDN'T dive a tank that clearly stated it wasn't supposed to be breathed where it was. Avoiding that danger is extremely simple. Analyzing a tank takes about 30 seconds; labeling it maybe a minute more, if you have to look for the marker pen. Don't have an analyzer? If the shop, resort or boat where you got your tanks pumps anything but plain old air, they should have one. (Maybe not in Mexico . . . )

I guess I'm paranoid. I do a full gear check before I dive. I analyze my gas. I don't breathe a marked tank below its MOD. I wouldn't let a buddy take a tank marked 20 underwater with the plan of breathing it below 20 feet. I am a FIRM believer in controlling the risks I can when I dive; I like to swim into dark holes in the ground, and that's risk enough for me. Getting rid of the ones I can address on land just makes sense. It isn't paranoia. It's prudence.
 
There is a difference between complacency and paranoia.

then by all means, dear Chrpai, please explain difference.

---------- Post added August 12th, 2013 at 09:27 PM ----------

When I travel overseas, then I'll worry about analyzing rental tanks.

The whole point of this silly thread is somebody thinks that paranoia is a solution to safe diving.

May I know your definition of paranoia in this context?

---------- Post added August 12th, 2013 at 09:32 PM ----------

Overkill and sensationalism for standard air fills in rental tanks. I mitigate the risks by getting my fills from reputable shops and renting from reputable operators on trips.

You can analyze if you want too, but I think it is overkill for a miniscule risk.

May I query, are you equating "reputable" with "error-free"? If so, may I know the make and model of the error-free robots your 'reputable' shops are using? I need a few to command as slave-bots here at my general locale.

 
For those of you say it is not needed, I dont see why not spend that 2 minutes for the peace of mind 99.9999% of the time, but for that 0.00001%, it saves your life. And it is just 2 minutes at most.

If you don't have tanks with different mixed in it, you can just analys it when you pick up from the shop, label the content. If you have 10 sets of double with different trimix mix, the cost of the analyzer is peanuts
 
When I travel overseas, then I'll worry about analyzing rental tanks.

The whole point of this silly thread is somebody thinks that paranoia is a solution to safe diving.

No the whole point of this thread is that someone made the mistake of not analyzing his tanks bc for one reason or another he didn't think it necessary. Sound familiar?:). Oh, and then he paid for that mistake with his life.

I couldn't tell you the last time I rented tanks... Maybe on a trip to NC for a couple of days where I snuck in a dive? Oh... now i remember- Mexico. At any rate, it's not a norm for me to tent unless I'm traveling. I have plenty of BG tanks, snd stages and deco bottles with perm. markings. And although I trust the dive shops near where I dive (that bank eanx), I STILL analyze every time.

All machines are created and worked by *people* - compressors are no different. I've caught high and low o2 percentages. (explanation -sometimes tanks are filled off the compressor instead of the bank and o2 mix can fluctuate more quickly.) BUT I caught the mix *before* it became a problem. If you want to call that paranoia... I wonder what term you would use to describe full-blown paranoia!!!
 
I have two shops I get fills from 99% of the time. One does not do nitrox at all. If I get fills from him I do not analyze. The other does partial pressure blending and has a dedicated O2 whip that is not connected in any way to the panel from the compressor and banks. If he fills them and I am not standing there while it's being done I analyze when I get home. That happens maybe once every 20 fills. Otherwise I am filling them or right there when the tanks are being filled. Those don't get done. They do get marked though with a piece of tape as they go in the truck.

If I get fills on the road at the quarries I travel to it depends. Sometimes I am there, sometimes not. After my rebreather experience a few weeks ago I have decided to start taking my analyzer or use theirs to verify what's in them. Had nothing to do with the accident that inspired this thread. That was a personal decision after seeing how easy it is for something to go wrong.

And my checklists are getting revised to include analyzing before I go out the door now even though I have no tanks with nitrox in them.

Just don't use it as there is no benefit with the dives I am doing now I have a number of tanks marked for it with those ugly green bumper stickers that came on the tanks when I bought them.

My O2 bottle and one 50% stage also have permanent markings but sometimes get used for other mixes since I have not done a dive that required 100% in quite a while. In that case the markings get covered and even though I know there is air in them they get analyzed before I take em out and a current analysis label slapped on.

Analyzing gas is cheap, easy to do, and adds a measure of safety. It is not always necessary. But if we are diving together and you ask me to check my tanks I will. By the same token if I ask you to do it I expect the same courtesy.

The incident that inspired this thread resulted in a dead diver. That dead diver set a very bad example for some new cave divers that were on the trip with him by refusing to check the mix in that stage.

That is not to be taken lightly.

Whether it be hero worship, a fear of questioning a more experienced diver, a failure to recognize that this time the guy was being a friggin cowboy, and therefore a danger to the whole team and perhaps other teams, or just being simply overloaded with the whole experience of getting a full cave cert, they did indeed screw up almost as bad as he did. They just didn't die. But they could have.

So for most recreational dives I agree that analyzing MIGHT be overkill. But when entering any kind of overhead, real or theoretical, a failure to analyze may kill the entire team.

A failure to insist the diver analyze may kill the entire team.

A refusal to analyze may kill the entire team.

A failure to refuse to dive with the person that will not analyze may kill the entire team.

That refusal might be the only thing that gets the cowboy to check his gas and possibly save his life.

If that still doesn't get him/her to do it and they go alone - they get what they asked for.

And still it's ignorant because someone else has to go in and pull their sorry dead butt out and put themselves at risk to do that.

That is also what I am taking from this.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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