Owning cylinders - is it worth it?

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Hmmmmm.... 2019 version of Smokey and the Bandit, smuggling bootleg Aluminum 80's to Canada. I need an investor for a 78 Trans Am, A Peterbilt with van trailer (Wells Fargo-ish. western scene pained with water base paint so it could be washed off optional) a hound dog, a petite girl next door type brunette, and a truck load of Aluminum 80 tanks with valves. Oh...and half of everything I own for running off with a petite girl next door brunette...

Luxfer 80 Cubic Foot Aluminum Tank with Pro Valve

We can probably negotiate a much better deal for volume purchase and no shipping (we've got the truck) now we just need to get them to The Great White North. If we can't find a way to drive them across dressed as Boris and Natasha, I'm Thinking I can walk three across at a time in a fat man suit wearing a Rush or Moosehead t shirt with Poutine stains and gravy and cheddar on my chin. No body would question that, not even Moose and Squirrel.

Even if it goes wrong, we will have a shitload of tanks for our personal use, and everyone is so polite in Canada, how bad could Canadian prison be? Do they even have prisons in Canada?

If any of this is illegal, and I get reported to the RCMP, if they will let me know when they are coming to arrest me, I will have some really good alfalfa on hand for their horses. That's a long way to ride.

I'm thinking $250,000 will cover the upfront, if we deal my wife in I might save the divorce costs, and we split the rest? Who's in?

I have a Nigerian bank account set up to hold the money. Apparently I'm an heir of an African king that is going to leave me 9 gazillion dollars if I deposit $20k in the account to cover taxes. He hasn't died yet but I'm assured it's real.... If the deal goes bad, I'll pay you back when my great great great great great cousin uncle nephew twice removed dies.

Let me know of you're in...
Scuba Bandit
 
That $179.95 US is about $242.00 CAD so not much of a saving. I believe you have been misled, that money from the African king is coming to me.
 
I've recently been thinking of getting a pair of own sidemount cylinders but am not sure whether it makes sense. My local shop charges $20 to rent one, so each outing ends up costing me $40. They're Nitrox filled and I don't have to worry about maintenance and storage.

Aluminum tanks with valves would cost about $700 for the pair plus $15 each for the initial fill. That's a total of $730 to own. Within this $730, I'd get 18 rentals of filled tanks ($730/$40). If we then multiply this 18 by the $30 it would cost to fill my own tanks for this many dives, we get $548. Divide this by $40 again and we get another 14 dives. If we keep going until it zeros out, we arrive at 70 dives. If the math is correct, that's 70 dives until we get any ROI.

Does it then make sense to own tanks? If you're a proud owner, what benefits (cost-saving or other) do you get that you otherwise would not? Thanks in advance for feedback.

Hello, B.Elster

Welcome to ScubaBoard

I dive, two of my kids dive. I have accumulated a fleet of around 25 cylinders. With one exception they're steel cylinders that were purchased used.

My acquisition costs have been around US$250 each for the larger cylinders (HP100 and HP120), and around $125 each for the LP72s. This includes initial purchase, shipping, hydro, and a new valve or parts to overhaul the existing one, and an allowance for cylinders that fail hydro. I shop carefully, and obtain cylinders from local sellers, ebay, and scubaboard. Probably an accumulated spend of $5000 on cylinders. Some are made up into twinsets.

In my area the available diving is shore diving and so we use our cylinders. For example I have a trip scheduled to the Brainerd Lakes area over the 4th of July weekend. There are dozens of dive sites. We'll dive 3 days, 3 people in the water, probably average 2 dives a day, and go through 20 cylinders of air. The nearest dive shop is an hours' drive from the lakes and if we were renting cylinders there's no way we could get in that much diving (they wouldn't rent us 20 cylinders so we'd be going back and forth) and we would be stuck with AL80s.

We have been on other similar longer trips where there was not any local dive shop and we had to bring air for everyone who was diving.

More typically for my weekday after-work dive I can grab a cylinder when my schedule is open and the weather's nice and don't have to stop by the dive shop twice. No question that I dive more than I otherwise would.

I also find that larger cylinders really contribute to my enjoyment of a dive, in many situations. It is difficult to find 120 cf cylinders or larger for rent, for example, and they are expensive if available at all.
 
I'm a new diver - got my OW cert 7/2017 - and I purchased my own tanks in the spring of 2018. The cost difference between renting and filling is minimal... but the convenience factor, for me, is huge. I consider it money well spent for that reason alone. That said, I'm not sure how I ended up owning 7 cylinders (4 steel 100s, 2 steel 80s for the gf, and a steel 130)
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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