Silicone Grease, inflator hose replacement

[Codeman00]

I have read here that when replacing an inflator hose, that the o-ring must be lubed with silicone grease.

1) Is this true?

2) Am I okay buying silicone grease at the hardware store since I don't have a dive shop close to me? Or is this silicone grease somehow different than diving supply silicone grease? I assume I'm okay, but I don't want to introduce anything that might interact with Nitrox...if I ever decide to use Nitrox.

 

[miketsp]

Normally any o-ring that has to slide into place should be lubed before assembly. Hoses are screwed into place and the o-ring has to slide so by lubing you reduce the risk of damage.
As for Nitrox and high O2 mixtures, go into Advanced search and look for oxygen clean.
You will find a host of threads on what may be a controversial subject.

 

[Codeman00]

Normally any o-ring that has to slide into place should be lubed before assembly. Hoses are screwed into place and the o-ring has to slide so by lubing you reduce the risk of damage.
As for Nitrox and high O2 mixtures, go into Advanced search and look for oxygen clean.
You will find a host of threads on what may be a controversial subject.

I remember all of the oxygen clean talk in my Nitrox class. I searched at LeisurePro under silicone grease... Neither of the products say anything about oxygen clean...nor do the products at Lowes. Hopefully I can make the assumption that silicone grease is silicone grease no matter where you buy it.

 

[Charlie99]

ChristoLube is a popular, but expensive, O2 compatible grease. http://www.scubatools.com/Universal.html

Fortunately, the LP hose on your reg set will never see high partial pressures of O2, so just a normal silicone should be fine for <40% nitrox mixes.

If you look more closely at the o-ring already on the end of the inflator hose, you may find that it already has a light coating of grease. You don't want to have a lot ... just enough so that the o-ring doesn't bind and tear or rip as you screw in the hose.

 

[Codeman00]

ChristoLube is a popular, but expensive, O2 compatible grease. http://www.scubatools.com/Universal.html

Fortunately, the LP hose on your reg set will never see high partial pressures of O2, so just a normal silicone should be fine for <40% nitrox mixes.

If you look more closely at the o-ring already on the end of the inflator hose, you may find that it already has a light coating of grease. You don't want to have a lot ... just enough so that the o-ring doesn't bind and tear or rip as you screw in the hose.

I'll check the o-ring out when the hose gets here via UPS. Thanks for the help!

 

[miketsp]

I remember all of the oxygen clean talk in my Nitrox class. I searched at LeisurePro under silicone grease... Neither of the products say anything about oxygen clean...nor do the products at Lowes. Hopefully I can make the assumption that silicone grease is silicone grease no matter where you buy it.

What I've seen is a tremendous price variation among silicon greases, more than 15:1 by volume.
At my local dive shops I can buy a big pot really cheaply or a very tiny pot really expensively. So I assume that there is some sort of difference and I'm not just being ripped off. Both pots just say "Silicon Grease". The more expensive stuff seems to be much more transparent.

So just being conservative I use the more expensive stuff on HP/IP o-rings and the cheap stuff for dive lights, cameras etc.

In practice I use so little on the HP/IP o-rings that even a tiny pot lasts for ever. There's no point skimping on the price.