CO Analyzer Users- how often have you found bad fills?

[ZombieZombie]

I am shopping around for a CO analyzer just now and I just wondered how often people find bad fills?

I realize that it will only take one bad fill to kill you but just curious if people find many borderline bad fills?

Looking through some of the accident & incident threads it does seem possible that many cases of feeling narc-ed or other accidents could be CO related.

I'm just interested if there has been any work done on estimating the real scale of this problem across the dive industry.

 

[DarkCoffee]

Just spend some time on SB or TDS or CDF. As more people use them, more cases are being identified *safely* and not ending in a fatality. The issue is that a perfectly safe local shop can have a momentary issue and a single tank is effected. Its not just the far off tropical sites. The only way you *know* is to test.
There was one documented just a few days ago by MA on CDF. The shop was very reputable but accidents happen. They responded in a rapid and professional manner.

I've been testing for almost 4 years now and have not found any. That makes me very happy.

 

[grf88]

Found one bad tank on a trip with my son. His tank had a reading of 80ppm which would have made for a bad day if it had not been discovered.

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

I'd be interested in knowing what people consider a bad fill. The standard limits seem to be anywhere from 10-20 ppm but the precision of readings for most of the consumer oriented units seem to be greater than that.

 

[Dive Right In Scuba 2]

I have yet to find a "bad fill" in the thousand's of tanks I have analyzed in my time as a diver. However, it only takes one to turn off your birthday switch. Which is why I cannot stress owning and analyzing your gasses every time as a part of your pre-dive checklist.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

For OC recreational dives, anything more than a 1 gets a comment to the tank filler; anything more than a 3 gets rejected. For CCR bottles and BO fills, it's 0 or it gets rejected.

 

[ZombieZombie]

I have yet to find a "bad fill" in the thousand's of tanks I have analyzed in my time as a diver. However, it only takes one to turn off your birthday switch. Which is why I cannot stress owning and analyzing your gasses every time as a part of your pre-dive checklist.

I'm going to buy one for my next trip (coming in Feb to Belize) but I kind of expect to go thousands of dives without ever getting a hit. We are paying a couple of hundred bucks for reassurance. It's a small price to pay on top of everything else we have to spend to dive.

It seems like an area that should be studied more formally and wondered if maybe DAN or similar had ever conducted a survey.




I would also be interested in the level when to not dive with a tank? I was planning on using 5ppm as my threshold. Any thoughts on this?

---------- Post added December 23rd, 2014 at 03:32 PM ----------

For OC recreational dives, anything more than a 1 gets a comment to the tank filler; anything more than a 3 gets rejected. For CCR bottles and BO fills, it's 0 or it gets rejected.

Thanks.

 

[manni-yunk]

On my garage compressor - never detected any CO. On my Boat compressor, havent detected any CO but still new and since Im rerouting the intake, Ill be watching it closely.


In Florida - on a boat, I found CO in several rental tanks. We refused to use them. I cant remember exactly but the readings were in the 10-20PPM range on 2-3 tanks. We tested EVERY TANK on the entire trip and had some measurable CO level in every tank. Some were as low as 1 -3, and we dove them (shallow dives) but we were ultra paranoid after we had readings as high as 20.

 

[ZombieZombie]

On my garage compressor - never detected any CO. On my Boat compressor, havent detected any CO but still new and since Im rerouting the intake, Ill be watching it closely.


In Florida - on a boat, I found CO in several rental tanks. We refused to use them. I cant remember exactly but the readings were in the 10-20PPM range on 2-3 tanks. We tested EVERY TANK on the entire trip and had some measurable CO level in every tank. Some were as low as 1 -3, and we dove them (shallow dives) but we were ultra paranoid after we had readings as high as 20.

I assume you had no ill effects diving with 1-3ppm? How shallow was shallow?

I can imagine a dive op getting very defensive if returning a tank for high CO. How did the Florida op react when you found these hits?
They should have halted ops for the day- but I doubt many would do this.

 

[Incident]

I can imagine a dive op getting very defensive if returning a tank for high CO.

Wonder how defensive they would get after learning of a serious injury or fatality caused by their high CO fills?

If I got so much as a grunt from a shop after reporting high CO in one of their fills that would be the last time they got my business and they would learn what bad PR really feels like.