I'm in business. I appreciate it when people tell me how they feel about our service and pricing. On the other hand often I must explain that out in the sticks where we are it just costs more to get things done. We can't do the volume needed to keep prices where we would like to and if we want to keep providing services we must charge a lot for them. So if you want a scuba fill at my car dealership/repair shop it costs $12. You want nitrox its $3 more. I promise that it is cheaper than the drive to the next fill station.
Nitrox Pricing Question...
- Thread starter Brandon
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Learn to mix your own. I invested in the DSAT / Trimix class, VIP and the Oxy Hack book and it just makes thing easier and I find it fun. Maybe invest in a digital gauge or send out a gauge to a calibration lab.
You may be getting a hot fill, they set the regulator to 3400 and blast the fill in and when it cools off it would be allot lower. Maybe introduce them to a slow fill and a water bath to keep the tanks cool.
You may be getting a hot fill, they set the regulator to 3400 and blast the fill in and when it cools off it would be allot lower. Maybe introduce them to a slow fill and a water bath to keep the tanks cool.
Never heard of Nitrox being charged by the CF.
I pay USD5.69 per tank for PP mix irrespective whether I have EAN32 in an AL80 or EAN50 in an AL30. For doubles I pay for two tanks.
Trimix is a different story, I pay per CF for He.
I pay USD5.69 per tank for PP mix irrespective whether I have EAN32 in an AL80 or EAN50 in an AL30. For doubles I pay for two tanks.
Trimix is a different story, I pay per CF for He.
scagrotto
Contributor
I'm certainly not going to pretend to know everything there is to know about filling tanks, but here are a few thoughts.
There's a lot of overhead that's exactly the same whether you're buying 1CF or 260CF. Their labor (even if you do most of the tank lifting) is pretty much the same: there's paperwork, connecting the tank, opening and closing valves, etc. I expect that the only labor that will vary will be compressor maintenance, and even some of that is probably based on time intervals instead of how much gas is pumped. Heat, lights, phone, rent, insurance, marketing? All the same.
The only thing I expect changes is the electricity required to run the compressor and some of the maintenance costs. Even some of those don't vary as much as you might think. If the tank is completely empty the first CF goes in at barely over ambient pressure, and the last CF goes in at about 200 times ambient. In terms of the energy cost that means the charge for the last CF should be about the same as for the first 100 CF. To a lesser extent that's true of the overall workload and wear and tear on the compressor.
I expect that their actual cost isn't significantly different whether they give you 130 CF starting from 1500 PSI or 217 CF starting from 500 PSI.
There's a lot of overhead that's exactly the same whether you're buying 1CF or 260CF. Their labor (even if you do most of the tank lifting) is pretty much the same: there's paperwork, connecting the tank, opening and closing valves, etc. I expect that the only labor that will vary will be compressor maintenance, and even some of that is probably based on time intervals instead of how much gas is pumped. Heat, lights, phone, rent, insurance, marketing? All the same.
The only thing I expect changes is the electricity required to run the compressor and some of the maintenance costs. Even some of those don't vary as much as you might think. If the tank is completely empty the first CF goes in at barely over ambient pressure, and the last CF goes in at about 200 times ambient. In terms of the energy cost that means the charge for the last CF should be about the same as for the first 100 CF. To a lesser extent that's true of the overall workload and wear and tear on the compressor.
I expect that their actual cost isn't significantly different whether they give you 130 CF starting from 1500 PSI or 217 CF starting from 500 PSI.
R
redacted
Guest
I seriously doubt if the price of a fill is very dependent on the providers fill costs. It is almost entirely based on what the market will stand.
DogDiver
Contributor
Again. The perfect fill station. You fill your own cylinders to what ever PSI your comfortable with. Banks usually carry 4000 PSI. Love them Florida cave fills.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
OP
Lots of good points in this thread - having run a compressor on a remote island in Alaska, 780 miles away by plane from the nearest other dive shop - I certainly understand the economics of the situation! Amigos is also a pretty nifty system - saw that when I was down in Florida in April for cavern training. Love the infrastructure you guys have in place down there!
It's not so much about the price, but more about the policies. The old price of $.175 per CF is fair in our market. It would cost me $.09 per CF to do it myself, and I don't have to pay for labor or the overhead of a storefront. But if you're going to charge by the CF - you MUST have a way for your customers to confirm the CF that you filled. There needs to be a gauge, accessible to the customers, that allows them to check their in and out pressures and make certain that they were charged correctly and are leaving with a fill at their desired pressure. The very absence of that ability at our local shop is the source of this entire issue.
It's like going to fill your truck at the gas station, and not having the price per gallon or gallons filled displayed. When you're done, it just says "$61.25" and the attendant asks for your credit card. You ask the attendant how much the fuel costs, and he just looks at you blankly and says "$61.25". You ask how he came up with that number and are told it was sold by the gallon, but when you ask how much the price per gallon is, and he responds "Well, the pump does the math." If you push him for an answer, his response is that the Geo Metro in front of you has a 12.5 gallon fuel tank, and to fill it from empty to full is $35. Okay... you do the math yourself and come up with $2.80 a gallon. You must have purchased 21.875 gallons to fill up; yet when you climb in your vehicle the needle displays only 7/8ths full, and you were 1/8th full when you arrived. 21.875 gallons added to your 1/8th tank should have put you at full. The attendant insists that he filled your truck all the way, and that your fuel gauge must be wrong. You have no way of verifying the gallons dispensed yourself and are told that their pump's gauge is accurate and that's the only gauge they go off of. Your friends also tell you they have the same experiences at this gas station.
The gas stations owner gets annoyed with the truck drivers asking him to prove how many gallons he pumped, and decides to just go to a flat rate system. It's now $35 to fill up the car to 12.5 gallons; but $70 to put any quantity of fuel in the truck. If the truck driver only wants 10 gallons - it's $70. He's now seen his prices increase from $2.80 a gallon to $7 a gallon.
None of us would tolerate that at the gas pump; but somehow we're jerks for asking the dive shop to come up with a better system?
Another implication - what's the truck driver going to do in response? Probably coast around on fumes and ride the gauge on empty so that he can make sure he gets the maximum value from his fill-up. That has some serious safety implications if we were to start encouraging it in the dive community with stupid policies like this one.
This started over a Facebook post where a diver posted a 2900PSI pressure reading on a fill that had been sold as a 3400PSI fill, and it rapidly went downhill from there. I would very strongly recommend not friending shop owners or employees on Facebook - it's not worth the headache or drama.
-B
It's not so much about the price, but more about the policies. The old price of $.175 per CF is fair in our market. It would cost me $.09 per CF to do it myself, and I don't have to pay for labor or the overhead of a storefront. But if you're going to charge by the CF - you MUST have a way for your customers to confirm the CF that you filled. There needs to be a gauge, accessible to the customers, that allows them to check their in and out pressures and make certain that they were charged correctly and are leaving with a fill at their desired pressure. The very absence of that ability at our local shop is the source of this entire issue.
It's like going to fill your truck at the gas station, and not having the price per gallon or gallons filled displayed. When you're done, it just says "$61.25" and the attendant asks for your credit card. You ask the attendant how much the fuel costs, and he just looks at you blankly and says "$61.25". You ask how he came up with that number and are told it was sold by the gallon, but when you ask how much the price per gallon is, and he responds "Well, the pump does the math." If you push him for an answer, his response is that the Geo Metro in front of you has a 12.5 gallon fuel tank, and to fill it from empty to full is $35. Okay... you do the math yourself and come up with $2.80 a gallon. You must have purchased 21.875 gallons to fill up; yet when you climb in your vehicle the needle displays only 7/8ths full, and you were 1/8th full when you arrived. 21.875 gallons added to your 1/8th tank should have put you at full. The attendant insists that he filled your truck all the way, and that your fuel gauge must be wrong. You have no way of verifying the gallons dispensed yourself and are told that their pump's gauge is accurate and that's the only gauge they go off of. Your friends also tell you they have the same experiences at this gas station.
The gas stations owner gets annoyed with the truck drivers asking him to prove how many gallons he pumped, and decides to just go to a flat rate system. It's now $35 to fill up the car to 12.5 gallons; but $70 to put any quantity of fuel in the truck. If the truck driver only wants 10 gallons - it's $70. He's now seen his prices increase from $2.80 a gallon to $7 a gallon.
None of us would tolerate that at the gas pump; but somehow we're jerks for asking the dive shop to come up with a better system?
Another implication - what's the truck driver going to do in response? Probably coast around on fumes and ride the gauge on empty so that he can make sure he gets the maximum value from his fill-up. That has some serious safety implications if we were to start encouraging it in the dive community with stupid policies like this one.
This started over a Facebook post where a diver posted a 2900PSI pressure reading on a fill that had been sold as a 3400PSI fill, and it rapidly went downhill from there. I would very strongly recommend not friending shop owners or employees on Facebook - it's not worth the headache or drama.
-B
Lefty Writer
Contributor
Bob DBF
Contributor
Well, you keep complaining while obviously nothing was being done, you could have picked up on the owners attitude. I have found out that nothing good has come from continually complaining to someone who doesn't want to hear.
For a fill with 500# left the price seems to be in line with the previous price so I see no price increase, since the chance of my having more than 500# in a tank is slim to none. My dive shop charges this way for air and the shop in the next county sells air and Nitrox the same way. The price has gone up for you because of when you choose to fill the tanks.
Oh, by the way, the price structure is much simpler to understand, which is what you wanted.
Bob
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The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. ~Henry David Thoreau
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