Dive truck Tank Rack??

[murphdivers286]

Our team has the pleasure of redesigning a new (very old) truck. We were given a choice.....(should I say forced) in taking the truck. It is an old bread truck. In the older truck we stored our tanks in a bench style holder. the ranks were stored upright side by side. We want to make a more efficient rack system. The old bench style was too high to really sit on and it was very difficult lifting the tanks above the sides.

I was thinking of a rack alone the wall which would hold the tanks at a 45 degree angle. The old rack would only allow us to store 12 tanks.

Any ideas would help. We need to save as much space as possible.

Thanks,
murphdivers286
St Lucie County Sheriff's Search & Recovery Dive Team

[NorthWoodsDiver]

Our team had some aluminum tank racks built for our bread truck. they cost over $3k and allow storage for up to 24 tanks between the 2 racks.

a better bet in my opinion is a rack made from 8" PVC. road construction crews use it all the time and waste it by the truck load. I am working with the construction crews to get scraps for my own use but its likely your team could contact the local crews and get scraps donated. then all you would need is an angle iron frame to secure the pipe and a method of preventing the tanks from sliding out the ends.

The only catch with the PVC is you cant have tank boots. Just my $.O2

[lfrd126]

We did something very similar but got the pipe from our water dept. We then cut old fire hose and glued it inside of the pipe rubber side up to keep the tanks from sliding. If you elevate the front of the pipe your bottle aren't going anywhere.

[ohmdiver]

Not for nothing but 8" PVC will not work for tanks with boots on them. (as noted above) However if you cut them in half length wise and some bungee cords it works just fine.

If you are looking for some scrap pieces try a local mechanical contractor, it my not be free, but you will probally get a good price.

[NorthWoodsDiver]

If you are a public safety dive team then I shouldn't have to mention that tank boots shouldn't be used in our line of work. The PVC works nice and like stated if you have them laying at a bit of an angle they wont slide out however there should be a redundant system of preventing a cylinder from coming free.

a simple fix would be to drill a hole in the sides of all the pipes and running say a 1/2" rod through. if you had say 9 tanks (3x3 stacked) then you would need 3 rods.

[bridgediver]

I agree with Northwoods. We don't need boots unless you have a very clumsy team working from fibreglass boats (or we're searching pools and want to save the tile work). Boots may hide corrosion and damage to the tank and also may interfere with weight belt ditching

We store ours vertical using the PVC pipe. See my photos for some shots of the racks

[murphdivers286]

Thanks so much for the input. I will take it back to the team.