Is Open Circuit Trimix dying a slow death?

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

"I'd rather get a CCR!" said one potential Trimix student. Since Helium prices are shooting up, I am hearing this line more often than a few years before. For those who have been teaching tech for a while now, do you see a steady decline in your Trimix students?

 

[tridacna]

I’ve seen a 30%-40% drop off in OC Trimix fills at the shop in NJ over the past eighteen months.

 

[michael-fisch]

My fillstation was filling trimix since 2000. The fills that I did for other divers paid for my own diving including gear+ vacations. At one time I had 3 compressors running simultaniously.
Eventually almost everyone was coming to me and asking could I add 200L of He to their diluent tank and refill their 3L O2 tank to 250Bar or higher.
Suddenly I wasn't making enough to pay the monthy rental on the converted garage so I finally got out of the filling for others business. Sold 2 compressors, a digital fillhose, lots of adaptors, 2 Oxychek He/O2 analysers, over a dozen 50L 300Bar tanks and terminated the lease.
I kept 10x 50L 300bar tanks, a digital fillhose, a divesoft analyser, the adapters that I needed and my smallest compressor that all moved into a corner of my garage as I transitioned to RB diving. Sold almost all my sets of doubles, many stages and around a dozen rigged OC regulators too.
I regularly dive my SF2, a FLEX converted to a bailout RB, and my XCCR. Still have to officially crossover to Cave CCR, and finally get a Cave scooter card for the 3 highly tuned LiFePO4 Gavin clones that are part of a small series that I made 15 years ago.

Michael

 

[doctormike]

I can certainly see why your average recreational diver wouldn't want to get involved with a rebreather - the cost, the complexity, the need for strict attention to procedures and planning. But people who dive to trimix depths on OC are already committed to accepting these things. Why wouldn't a significant number of them just opt for a CCR instead? If you do enough trimix OC diving, even the financial disincentive of a rebreather eventually goes away, as helium prices rise.

 

[Jay]

how many dives does it take for a CCR to pay for itself?

 

[michael-fisch]

how many dives does it take for a CCR to pay for itself?

Assume that your regular OC Trimix dive runs 150 minutes surface to surface with a max depth of 90M and you do it 2x per month.Your gas costs are going to be running $400-500 per month.
If you get your first rebreather used for $4000 to $5000 and invest $1000 in good training you'll have your money back within a year. Even if you buy new, you're ROI should be in the black after less than 2 years and your gas costs per dive end up running less than $15-20 per dive.

Michael
If you do what I did, which is buy used, buddy up with a rebreather diver and spend 30-40 hrs learning how to dive the RB properly before you take a course, you'll be able to learn a lot more when you finally take the course. Not recommended by any RB instructor but it worked well for me (I did already have O2 and PSCR RB experience).

 

[rjack321]

how many dives does it take for a CCR to pay for itself?

on 30m air dil dives? never Its more expensive than OC nitrox

A 1 hour bottom time cave dive at 75m is 280-300cf of 15/55 which is currently going to run you between 250 and 800 USD depending on location.

So somewhere between never and a couple of years of working up to long dives at hypoxic trimix depths

 

[JonG1]

Logistics plays a part too, in that you can easily do multiple dives on CCR with a set of resources you can take with you without having to visit a fill station, and 1 dil mix will cover a multitude of depths/dives subject to it's MOD under CCR gas planning.

 

[ls23]

Not for me. For going to Croatia or Italy once or twice a year for wreck diving in the Tech 1 range I'll be fine on OC for the foreseeable future.

 

[michael-fisch]

If you are not already spending a major part of your disposable income on Helium, a RB will not be the preferred way to save money. If on the other hand, you are already spending $6000 a year on Helium and you use it regularily (not just a couple of times a year) you will end up saving money with a rebreather.
As a DIR Diver you dive OC, RBs in the GUE world are reserved for those who really need them.
On the other hand, when your gas supplier gives you a case of wine as a christmas present every year, you need a RB.
Nowadays, all my gas supplier gives me is a calendar and a christmas card, but I'm only spending less than $1000 a year with him, instead of what I was spending 5 years ago, and I haven't done a dive without trimix in over 4 years.

Michael