O2 filling

With FBOs now charging $50-$100 to fill a tank I've started calling
around to see where else I can get O2 in the Sacramento area. It
appears that all the welding gas companies no longer fill bottles at
all. They exchange bottles and then send them off to a central plant
to refill. One company said they would not do it because they don't
have the equipment to provide some sort of "breathable" certificate
and would generate too much liability. The other welding O2 company
said it would take 3-4 weeks if they had to send my bottle out to the
main plant to be filled vs. exchange it for a welding tank.
I also called around for medical O2. Again, no one seems to fill
medical bottles. They all come to your house and exchange cylinders.

So has anyone successfully been able to fill an aviation bottle
anywhere other than an FBO? What about getting one medical bottle, and
filling from that everytime?

Interestingly, my grandmother uses O2 and she has an O2 generating
machine at her house (she fills her own portable bottles with medical
O2). However, the fittings for her cylinders don't look anything like
what I have.

-Robert

You can use welding oxygen- see aviation consumer as well as the articles in
Avweb for making your own system. Nelson and Mountain High make
transfillers.

On Nov 14, 1:15 pm, "Robert M. Gary" wrote:
With FBOs now charging $50-$100 to fill a tank I've started calling
around to see where else I can get O2 in the Sacramento area. It

Have you checked with a scuba dive shop? I had mine filled at a
shop in NY. The shop owner did have to look around for the right
fitting. If your local shop does not have the correct fitting, they
can always order it or you can ask them to order one for you and keep
it for future uses at other location.

Hai Longworth

On Nov 14, 11:18 am, Longworth wrote:
On Nov 14, 1:15 pm, "Robert M. Gary" wrote:

With FBOs now charging $50-$100 to fill a tank I've started calling
around to see where else I can get O2 in the Sacramento area. It

Have you checked with a scuba dive shop? I had mine filled at a
shop in NY. The shop owner did have to look around for the right
fitting. If your local shop does not have the correct fitting, they
can always order it or you can ask them to order one for you and keep
it for future uses at other location.

Do Scuba guys use O2? I thought they used air?

-Robert

On Nov 14, 10:58 am, "Viperdoc" wrote:
You can use welding oxygen- see aviation consumer as well as the articles in
Avweb for making your own system. Nelson and Mountain High make
transfillers.

I really don't want to give up my garage in having to house giant
bottles though.

-Robert

Robert M. Gary schrieb:

Do Scuba guys use O2? I thought they used air?

Of course they don't breath pure O2. However, some "advanced" divers
sometimes don't just use compressed air, but their own mixture. Even
more advanced divers sometimes use apparati which mix pure O2 with
whatever they want on the fly while under water.

So a specialized scuba shop might be able to provide you with pure O2.

Viperdoc schrieb:

You can use welding oxygen- see aviation consumer as well as the articles in

Be careful with welding oxygen. While it is true that all oxygen is made
in the same machine, it's treated differently afterwards. Welding oxygen
is just filled in whatever exchange bottle is brought back from some
unknown former customer without any control whatsoever. So you never
know what is *really* in the bottle.

If you bring and have refilled your own bottle and are absolutely sure
that is is really your own bottle which has been refilled, then welding
O2 should be fine.

What many glider operators do is to buy a big bottle of medicinal O2 and
refill their small bottle from it.

You could get a prescription and then use a medical bottle, which has a
different fitting. They tend to be steel tanks, and heavy, and getting a
four place regulator could be difficult. However, you could do the exchange
thing, and it likely would be a lot cheaper.

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in news:1195064132.130226.145610
@z24g2000prh.googlegroups.com:

With FBOs now charging $50-$100 to fill a tank I've started calling
around to see where else I can get O2 in the Sacramento area. It
appears that all the welding gas companies no longer fill bottles at
all. They exchange bottles and then send them off to a central plant
to refill. One company said they would not do it because they don't
have the equipment to provide some sort of "breathable" certificate
and would generate too much liability. The other welding O2 company
said it would take 3-4 weeks if they had to send my bottle out to the
main plant to be filled vs. exchange it for a welding tank.
I also called around for medical O2. Again, no one seems to fill
medical bottles. They all come to your house and exchange cylinders.

So has anyone successfully been able to fill an aviation bottle
anywhere other than an FBO? What about getting one medical bottle, and
filling from that everytime?

Interestingly, my grandmother uses O2 and she has an O2 generating
machine at her house (she fills her own portable bottles with medical
O2). However, the fittings for her cylinders don't look anything like
what I have.


Yeah, I was desperate for some O2 for welding one day and went up and took
my M in L's portable, but no dice. For a while, on one type I was flying,
the bottles had to be removed for refill, which drove engineering nuts.
I can tell you one thing, you need to be careful wit O2, there are all
sorts of cooties in a bad bottle and they can hurt you.



Bertie

On Nov 14, 2:33 pm, Stefan wrote:
Robert M. Gary schrieb:

Do Scuba guys use O2? I thought they used air?

Of course they don't breath pure O2. However, some "advanced" divers
sometimes don't just use compressed air, but their own mixture. Even
more advanced divers sometimes use apparati which mix pure O2 with
whatever they want on the fly while under water.

So a specialized scuba shop might be able to provide you with pure O2.

Enriched Air Nitrox (32 to 36%O2) has become more and common in
scuba diving. Divers at any level can get training to use Nitrox
since Nitrox certification card is required to get Nitrox filled
tanks. We got Nitrox certified at the same time with our Open water
(entry level) scuba dving training and prefer to dive with Nitrox as
much as possible. Diving with Nitrox especially in multiple days
repetitive diving trip makes a huge difference in fatigue level, and
of course increases safety margin with regards to getting the bend.
Nitrox is available in many if not all dive shops. Since the shop
does their own mixing of air and O2, they do have pure O2 tanks to
fill aviation bottles.

Hai Longworth