"Your Nitrox will now be in everyone else's tanks..." HUH???

[Mo2vation]

So I'm off to Avalon today for a day of focused drilling and practice. Dive one I drain my cylinder, and upon exiting and doffing gear I schlep it over to the fill station for a fill.

Background:

* I've been using my same HP100 cylinder for ages

* It has the big huge green / yellow ANDI NITROX tank band, always has

* I've taken it to this fill station on Avalon for years without an issue - until today.


I don't want this to become a bash Ken thread for taking his O2 cleaned cylinder to an outdoor fill station of suspect quality - I know that issue and have to reconcile it. I'm getting a "public" cylinder in a few months for wet suspect boat fills and location fill stations like this one. I'd like to stay on topic, which is this:

This afternoon, the guy at the fill station tells me he won't fill my cylinder, "because he doesn't have a flambus (placeholder for some device or word I've never heard) and basically my Nitrox will back into his system and everyone else will be getting my nitrox...."

I tell this guy I've been getting fills here, on this tank, for years. He says no way, dude. I say, OK. What if I drain the cylinder to zip, then he fills...he says "then I'll need to do a visual..."

Huh and huh?

I've never been stoned at this place before. I was pretty pissed off, as I wanted to use MY rig for my drills. He ended up renting me an ancient 73 (thank goodness I brought my adapter).

Props to this guy for not jamming me for the tank rental fee, and only charging me an AirFill charge. I appreciated that - but what's the deal with my backwash Nitrox?

Please 'splain me.

Thanks -

Ken

 

[Aquamaniac]

ROFLMAO.....

C'Mon Ken, now whats the Punchline.?

 

[raxafarian]

he wants to do a visual because your tank is empty? Even emptying it in front of him????? We empty ours all the time...then get a partial pressure nitrox fill.


How much nitrox does he think will travel from your cylinder at low to no pressure into his storage bank at high pressure????????

It's impossible to argue with somebody like that.... they know everything and are not gonna budge.

Good luck.

 

[Mo2vation]

Aqua - The dude looked up from his Sun TZU "Art of War" book and spoke that exact phrase to me.

Doug (my buddy) wanted to give this guy some cylinder orthodontia after we schlep our tank all that way to drill and we get shut our by this limp story.

Rax - I didn't get the whole visual thing... so I just let it go and decided I'd take the mature, grown up approach and torch the slacker on Scubaboard behind his back....



k

 

[newdiverAZ]

was it a tall guy with a bunch of tattoos?

 

[Genesis]

This afternoon, the guy at the fill station tells me he won't fill my cylinder, "because he doesn't have a flambus (placeholder for some device or word I've never heard) and basically my Nitrox will back into his system and everyone else will be getting my nitrox...."

He doesn't have a check valve in the line, nor a bank, and is concerned that your enriched air will back up into his compressor (!) Of course he can control for that, by not opening the fill valve until the pressure in the line exceeds that in the tank.

Either that or he has been smoking too much ganga this afternoon.

Either way he should have let you drain down the tank.

What a buffoon.