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Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Spirit of Calypso / compressor question
Whether you can justify the cost and operation of a HP compressor
depends upon many things. At about $3000 cost for the compressor you
would have surpass 600 fills or 300 rentals (approximately) just to
break even. At todays prices (from what I can find on the internet), if
you dived twice per month year-round it would take 12.5 years to equal
the cost of renting tanks and 25 years to equal the cost of tank fills
assuming you had all the tanks you needed to operate. My guess is that
no compressor unit is going to last 12-25 years without some maintenance
costs and so you'd have to add that into the mix as well which would
lengthen the time to just break even on the purchase. From a financial
perspective I'm not seeing the advantage to purchasing a compressor.
While the specs claim that it can fill an 80 cu ft tank in 19 minutes
there is also a disclaimer stating that the compressor is not designed
or manufactured for continuous duty. So the question of duty cycle
would have to be taken into account to determine exactly how long it
would take to fill "x" number of tanks.
Convenience is the biggest attraction and it's too hard to put a price
on that. If finding a dive store and traveling to it for new tanks or
fills is bothersome, cumbersome, or just plain unattractive then that
alone might be worth purchasing the compressor regardless of the costs.
Being able to produce your own tank fills means independence and
sometimes that's enough to justify the purchase.
Jon
On 2/28/2012 4:47 PM, Douglas Suhr wrote:
Well HI everyone! Douglas Suhr here. Thank you again so much for the
warm welcome here at psubs! Just wanted to give everyone an update...
In taking the advice of several psubs members, I have decided to take
a little more time planning before I start the Spirit of Calypso. As I
discussed in my first letter, I was hoping to begin hull construction
around the beginning of summer. Now I am all for ambitious projects,
but I'm afraid this is just a bit too ambitious for me. For some
reason, my classes seem to be getting harder and harder as I get
closer and closer to graduation, so I have been spending considerable
time studying and doing homework. I am also working hard on my PPL and
hope to start my private helo rating soon (my PL instructor is a
professional pilot for STAT medevac air ambulance services, so this is
really his specialty!).
Anyway, this spring is a pretty busy time for me. I am still plugging
away at little details here and there, but I hopefully plan to start
the real design phase of the submersible this summer. My dad and I
will also be taking some welding classes over the summer, so hopefully
by the fall we will be ready to begin construction of the pressure
hull. As much as I like to have a "progress calendar," it seems that
I'm better off without one because busyness and complications always
mess it up! And I definitely side with you folks that spending some
extra time researching, learning and educating yourself is well worth
it when you consider the stakes (money, as well as safety).
In the mean time, I'll still be active here on psubs with questions,
as well as working on my model of the sub and experimenting with
design. Now here is my first official question on the psubs forum: Has
anyone here purchased/considered purchasing a high pressure compressor
of their own for the purpose of filling tanks at home? I know that
they are relatively high cost items, but when you consider a large
dive operation, including submersible operations and support divers, I
can't help but wonder if the purchase could be justified? You must
remember that you are not only eliminating the small fee of a tank
charge, but also eliminating the need for unnecessary trips to the
dive store (time & gas!!!), unnecessary transport of the tanks (bulky
& somewhat dangerous), and all the while eliminating the need for the
purchasing or renting of multiple tanks per person per dive trip.
There are several companies that seem to carry this equipment, the
best I've found looks to be Nuvair,
http://www.nuvair.com/compressors-hp-breathingair.shtml The
smaller and portable units listed on this site could be carried aboard
a boat and taken out onto your dive location. Any thoughts? ~ Douglas S.
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