Technical diving with oc versus ccr gas requirements

[GF99/99]

Hardly worth the trouble and expense of a CCR and associated training - no? Unless kensuf's criteria are used

It is very much worth it if you do a lot of deep diving. Also not everyone lives in the US where helium is cheap. My local price converted into USD is $0.15 per liter. Lets say you want to do a 100m dive on OC. Off the top of my head you would need around a 12/60 back gas on twin s100's an s80 17/40 travel gas, plus a 50% and 80% (or 100%) Just the trimix alone your looking at 3144 liter of He in the twinset and 888 liters of He in the travel. Total cost just for He is $604. If I do this same dive on CC I would estimate I would use about 250 liters on He or about $37.5 Now since corona has happened I have had alot of free time and probably smashed out about 20 or so sub 100's in the last couple months. Now keep in mind these were sub 100's so really you would have need a lot more He on OC but for simple math lets just pretend they were all 100m so on OC that would have cost me $12,080 just in He however I only spent $750 on He using my rebreather. That right there just paid for my unit and then some in a matter of a couple months.

Also I see lots of people referencing Truk. I just looked at Truk Stops website and they are charging $0.20 per liter even more than what I am paying. So even more of a reason to dive CC

So yes it is worth the initial expense to go CCR. However yes if you just putting around at 30 meters taking photos then no its not going to be saving you money. But this is beside the point the reason you dive a rebreather is not to save money its because you want to enjoy the experience of diving a rebreather.

 

[Hartattack]

I heard $5/ft north of Chicago, not sure what the cost is around the great lakes area. Florida at Force E was I thought $1ish. Here in Cozumel it's 4ish, not sure what it is in Tulum.

I was looking at CCR training to go to Truk and Bikini on an extended vacation - I can't find the gas prices there but I thought I remembered 3k for a ten day trip was to be expected in Bikini.

That was my understanding of it - you guys dive it and are writing the checks!

He = $3.00 Cuft at DRIS

 

[PfcAJ]

It is very much worth it if you do a lot of deep diving. Also not everyone lives in the US where helium is cheap. My local price converted into USD is $0.15 per liter. Lets say you want to do a 100m dive on OC. Off the top of my head you would need around a 12/60 back gas on twin s100's an s80 17/40 travel gas, plus a 50% and 80% (or 100%) Just the trimix alone your looking at 3144 liter of He in the twinset and 888 liters of He in the travel. Total cost just for He is $604. If I do this same dive on CC I would estimate I would use about 250 liters on He or about $37.5 Now since corona has happened I have had alot of free time and probably smashed out about 20 or so sub 100's in the last couple months. Now keep in mind these were sub 100's so really you would have need a lot more He on OC but for simple math lets just pretend they were all 100m so on OC that would have cost me $12,080 just in He however I only spent $750 on He using my rebreather. That right there just paid for my unit and then some in a matter of a couple months.

Also I see lots of people referencing Truk. I just looked at Truk Stops website and they are charging $0.20 per liter even more than what I am paying. So even more of a reason to dive CC

So yes it is worth the initial expense to go CCR. However yes if you just putting around at 30 meters taking photos then no its not going to be saving you money. But this is beside the point the reason you dive a rebreather is not to save money its because you want to enjoy the experience of diving a rebreather.

You don’t use all the gas on deep dives. Maybe half.

Your break even point isn’t as close as you think.

 

[AJ]

Initial rebreather expense is high, but what if you consider resale value as a factor? Seems to me, that might change the break even point and make a rebreather a more viable option. Do you guys consider resale value in your calculations?

 

[helodriver87]

Initial rebreather expense is high, but what if you consider resale value as a factor? Seems to me, that might change the break even point and make a rebreather a more viable option. Do you guys consider resale value in your calculations?

Nah. I just embrace the debt. I didn't go CCR to save money. I did it to spend more time in cool places. And to be able to survive months without fills in the wasteland I currently live in.

 

[broncobowsher]

Damn...Helium in AZ/CA and other west coast states at a shop is around $2-3.50 per cubic foot. This adds up quickly when doing a 60M dive on 18/45 in doubles vs filling a diluent bottle.

This is part of the reason I now own a booster. The other part is the road trip time to get fills. Going to a shop, an hour away, drop it off, drive another hour home, drive another hour to pick it up, and another hour home. 4 hours of drive time to get fills. And have to plan that around when they are open, when the filler is present, and when I have time as well.

 

[NothingClever]

This is part of the reason I now own a booster. The other part is the road trip time to get fills. Going to a shop, an hour away, drop it off, drive another hour home, drive another hour to pick it up, and another hour home. 4 hours of drive time to get fills. And have to plan that around when they are open, when the filler is present, and when I have time as well.

That’s my logic for considering the purchase of a home compressor and a Tri-hunter blending stick.

 

[tbone1004]

Tom - what's this mean?

Pair of LP50's for Dil-Out. 3l on the right for O2, 3l on the left for inflation. Weighs as much as a set of double 104's, but it is self contained except for deco bottles and with a cave fill, you get over 120cf of bailout gas with "normal" doubles configuration.

Well, keep in mind that you now have loiter time. This is more specific to overhead diving, but say you plan a triple stage dive somewhere way back in a cave. You get there on OC and you have a few minutes to look around before hitting turn. On CCR, you get there and you have all day (figuratively, you're still limited by O2 and scrubber). As long as you stay inside your bailout range, you can poke around as much as you want. Detours on the way back are also easy as long as you're watching your deco and O2 pressure. There's way more time to work in remote places.

Who watches their O2 pressures? button gauge on the bottle. 1.5lpm consumption in normal situations, diving a 3l bottle is 2min/bar. Need to hold 20bar to keep the leaky valves working, but also just a good measure anyway, and a short fill is 150bar. 130bar usable is 260mins minus O2 flushes etc. Odds of you doing that long of a dive before you get back to your offboard O2 bottle are pretty small and at that point you can always plug the offboard in. Get a full 200bar fill and your O2 duration~= scrubber capacity=>no need for O2 monitoring other than making sure it's full before you plug in.

 

[rjack321]

Who watches their O2 pressures? button gauge on the bottle. 1.5lpm consumption in normal situations, diving a 3l bottle is 2min/bar. Need to hold 20bar to keep the leaky valves working, but also just a good measure anyway, and a short fill is 150bar. 130bar usable is 260mins minus O2 flushes etc. Odds of you doing that long of a dive before you get back to your offboard O2 bottle are pretty small and at that point you can always plug the offboard in. Get a full 200bar fill and your O2 duration~= scrubber capacity=>no need for O2 monitoring other than making sure it's full before you plug in.

All of us who watched or had a buddy get CPR on the beach because they went hypoxic and lost consciousness.

 

[tbone1004]

All of us who watched or had a buddy get CPR on the beach because they went hypoxic and lost consciousness.

what does that have to do with watching your O2 pressures? hint, absolutely f*cking nothing. Your O2 running out means you bail out. Why were they not watching their ppO2 for at least 10 minutes while it went from 1.0 down to less than .15? Sorry, not buying it. I feel for you having buddy's die, but that was their fault for not watching their ppO2, not for lack of an O2 gauge.