tanks and nitrox stickers

[Davidstealey3]

well you all are crying ablout it bring a made up rule, so here is where it comes from

CGA C-10 this publication deals with the guidelines on the procedures for changing cylindersw from one gas source to another, including the inspection and contaminant removal

furthermore here is an excerpt from the inspecting cylinders book " an essential concern is whether the cylinder will, or might, recieve a high percentage oxygen durring any of several filling or gas blending methods. since your partial pressure blending methods include transfering 100% 02, only dedicated, marked cylinders should be filled weith gas blends. no dedicated nitrox cylinder should be filled with normal SCUBA air unless the specialty markings are removed. typically, dedicated cylinders will have a 4 to 6 inch green band with yellow lettering.

so here it is. in plain english for all of you to go look up. you asked and now you haved recived.

so next time the dive shop refuses to fill your tank with out removing stickers, or insisting your tank be cleaned again before they fill it you know why. IT IS A LIABILITY ISSUE. it is not a way to just generate money. yes it does add income, but it also the correct and SAFE way to do things.

once again, i try to just inform the masses of why you might be told the things you are whining and crying about, and you dont like the answer or reasoning behind it.

 

[rstofer]

And I suppose this all depends on how you define the term "normal SCUBA air" because I have my Nitrox tanks filled with 'safe' air which is the very same air the shop uses to make Nitrox. It is not that oily crap that you get from some shops and boats.

I DO NOT have my tanks filled at just any station I happen to pass.

I don't think I going to make any changes in my process. I don't use "normal SCUBA air" and I keep the tank wraps in place. My tanks are O2 cleaned and are never filled with other than 'safe' air by the very shop that fills them with Nitrox.

Richard

 

[Pearldiver07]

At the shop I managed if a tank came in with an O2 clean sticker and the mix didn't match the last fill in our log, and/or didn't match the fill sticker we didn't fill it. We also insisted on filling any O2 clean cylinder from the same appropriately filtered air source that we used for PP blending.

Personally, if I didn't know the customer well enough to KNOW that the tank was only filled from us, or other O2 compatible sources, I wouldn't fill it either unless it was cleaned. Did it torque a few customers? Yes. Was it our rule that was posted and discussed with all customers? Yes.

While I agree with much, if not all, of what you started this thread with, you reference the CGA document reference in the most recent post as though it were some regulatory statute from a government source. It is guidance and recommendation. Nothing more.

The CGA is a private association of companies (my employer included), with no more regulatory power than the RSTC.

 

[WD8CDH]

CGA C-10 this publication deals with the guidelines on the procedures for changing cylindersw from one gas source to another, including the inspection and contaminant removal furthermore here is an excerpt from the inspecting cylinders book " an essential concern is whether the cylinder will, or might, recieve a high percentage oxygen durring any of several filling or gas blending methods. since your partial pressure blending methods include transfering 100% 02, only dedicated, marked cylinders should be filled weith gas blends. no dedicated nitrox cylinder should be filled with normal SCUBA air unless the specialty markings are removed. typically, dedicated cylinders will have a 4 to 6 inch green band with yellow lettering.<snip>

I ALWAYS mark my cylinders with their contents but prefer not to use the generic Nitrox stickers. Because of the word typically I still meet the CGA guidelines.

 

[Davidstealey3]

so you dont use a nitrox sticker. but in a way you are still changing the markings on the cylinder by relabeling its contents. so in effect you are adhearing to these recomondations.

is it the ones who do the backyard gas blending off the homemade systems, that we the dive shops have to be worried about.

like pearldiver said, if it does not match what the log they have says, they didnt fill it. it is a big safety issue that you just dont seem to understand. if we didnt adhear to these guidelines that the cga has, and big brother steped in, it would be a lot different.

think of this when you took your open water course you all learned the number one rule of scuba "never hold your breath". is this a law. no. will it save your life if you remember to breath all the time . yes. same as the tank markings. no it is not a law, but it is a safety idea based behind some fact that could potenitaly save someones life.

what you guys need to understand is that we do this stuff for a reason. if you only bring us one tank and tell us it has air, but really has 02, and for some god awfull reason it blew, the shop would more then like be out of business, and the lawers would have a field day over it.

so before you start to whine and cry about how the dive shops treat the customers like s**t, stop and think for a minute about this. you can continue to go to leisure pro, scubatoys and the such, but if they dont do all of the filling that normal shops do, they dont have that insurance liability to pay for.

so take from this what you like. i am not on here to make friends, and if you dont like being informed on the issues that you complain about, go find another sport to get into. otherwise suck it up and understand that we do this as safety measures, not as a revenue generator.

and you know if i only influance one person with this info then it is worth all the hassel.

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

There's made up rules to generate revenue, and then there's reality.

I was buying a couple of tanks once and they refused to put VIP stickers on them because I told them not to bother filling them. (I don't normally frequent sporting goods stores for tanks, but they were selling the same tanks $25 cheaper than the dive shops.) They start quoting a well known training agency telling me that if the tanks were empty even for a moment, the VIPs were void and they had to be reinspected so they couldn't put stickers on them.

Since I was taking them for O2 cleaning anyway, I said okay no problem. They couldn't understand why anyone would buy tanks and pass on the free VIP. But, the dive shop would have just scraped them off anyway to put on O2 stickers, so I figured why not have a little fun with them. Besides, I would have had to wait for them to fill them, put stickers on them, and then just bleed them back down anyway. A huge waste of time.

I did take a moment to explain that it's often necessary to drain tanks for one reason or another, a PP Nitrox fill for example, and it really isn't necessary to redo the VIP each time. It's just a scare tactic and revenue generator for rental tanks: "Don't bring those rental tanks back with less than 500 PSI or I'll have to charge you for a VIP!" But, if you own the tanks, there's nothing they can do. Sometimes they forget the rules are different depending on who owns the tanks.

I've had different dive shops try to require that I put Nitrox bands on my tanks. My response is always, "That's okay, don't worry about it. If you can't fill them, I'll take them somewhere else." They've always backed down and filled them. But, you have to mean it because they might call you on it. However, I'm not bluffing and really would walk.

If you really want to confuse the issue just for fun, tell them they can't put Nitrox stickers on them because you also use them for Trimix (in the case of doubles). If they're not a tech shop, they don't know what to do with that... so they just go ahead and fill them. None of my tanks (12) have anything but a VIP sticker on them for going on 10 years now and it's going to stay that way (with the exception of deco bottles of course).

A lot of people make too much of a big deal out of Nitrox. But, you have to know the difference between real world and the company line. That's what these types of discussions are about. For example, while I use Nitrox very casually myself. I would never get a Nitrox top off at a shop that only has Air without letting them know. Sometimes they don't have check valves on each whip (you can usually tell from a distance if you know what to look for) and your Nitrox could backfill into someone else's tank. Granted they would get a very minimal Nitrox fill that could probably be used at almost any recreational depth, but their still entitled to know.

 

[Scott L]

Oxyhacker has it correct. Simply do not offer your life story when dropping off your tanks for fills. I have been using nitrox since 1995 and have never been asked about the contents of a cylinder's previous fills...

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

so you dont use a nitrox sticker. but in a way you are still changing the markings on the cylinder by relabeling its contents. so in effect you are adhearing to these recomondations.

is it the ones who do the backyard gas blending off the homemade systems, that we the dive shops have to be worried about.

like pearldiver said, if it does not match what the log they have says, they didnt fill it. it is a big safety issue that you just dont seem to understand. if we didnt adhear to these guidelines that the cga has, and big brother steped in, it would be a lot different.

think of this when you took your open water course you all learned the number one rule of scuba "never hold your breath". is this a law. no. will it save your life if you remember to breath all the time . yes. same as the tank markings. no it is not a law, but it is a safety idea based behind some fact that could potenitaly save someones life.

what you guys need to understand is that we do this stuff for a reason. if you only bring us one tank and tell us it has air, but really has 02, and for some god awfull reason it blew, the shop would more then like be out of business, and the lawers would have a field day over it.

so before you start to whine and cry about how the dive shops treat the customers like s**t, stop and think for a minute about this. you can continue to go to leisure pro, scubatoys and the such, but if they dont do all of the filling that normal shops do, they dont have that insurance liability to pay for.

so take from this what you like. i am not on here to make friends, and if you dont like being informed on the issues that you complain about, go find another sport to get into. otherwise suck it up and understand that we do this as safety measures, not as a revenue generator.

and you know if i only influance one person with this info then it is worth all the hassel.

This post is very informative....just not in the manner you think. Between the poor logic, bad spelling, ranting and general poor writing, it is pretty clear to me to discount any claim you have made.

 

[fdog]

so you dont use a nitrox sticker. but in a way you are still changing the markings on the cylinder by relabeling its contents. so in effect you are adhearing to these recomondations.

is it the ones who do the backyard gas blending off the homemade systems, that we the dive shops have to be worried about.

like pearldiver said, if it does not match what the log they have says, they didnt fill it. it is a big safety issue that you just dont seem to understand. if we didnt adhear to these guidelines that the cga has, and big brother steped in, it would be a lot different.

think of this when you took your open water course you all learned the number one rule of scuba "never hold your breath". is this a law. no. will it save your life if you remember to breath all the time . yes. same as the tank markings. no it is not a law, but it is a safety idea based behind some fact that could potenitaly save someones life.
what you guys need to understand is that we do this stuff for a reason. if you only bring us one tank and tell us it has air, but really has 02, and for some god awfull reason it blew, the shop would more then like be out of business, and the lawers would have a field day over it.

so before you start to whine and cry about how the dive shops treat the customers like s**t, stop and think for a minute about this. you can continue to go to leisure pro, scubatoys and the such, but if they dont do all of the filling that normal shops do, they dont have that insurance liability to pay for.

so take from this what you like. i am not on here to make friends, and if you dont like being informed on the issues that you complain about, go find another sport to get into. otherwise suck it up and understand that we do this as safety measures, not as a revenue generator.

and you know if i only influance one person with this info then it is worth all the hassel.

David, I am curious about the name of the shop(s) you represent.


All the best, James

 

[oxyhacker]

Not exactly. Rather than the feds rewriting regulations for everything under the sun from scratch, a lot of the standards and publication from various trade organizations are "incorporated by reference" into the CFR, and as a result have the force of law. The CGA tank inspection pamphlets C-6 and C-6.1 being good examples. However, just because a few CGA publications are so referenced, it doesn't mean they all are, and CGA C-10, the one that deals with O2 cleaning etc, is not.

The problem with this practice, BTW, is that anyone who wants to find out what the regulations are when it comes to such items is required to buy a copy of the publication from the issuing organization, and those organizations, knowing they have a captive market, really soak you - the CGA Pamphlets run about $5 a page, for crummy photocopies. Oh, and the incorporated version isn't necessarily the latest, since he CFR often lags behind.

The CGA is a private association of companies (my employer included), with no more regulatory power than the RSTC.