Posted by TDI_2 on July 23, 2002 at 16:10:33:
In Reply to: I disagree with some of your comments. posted by Ed on July 23, 2002 at 15:41:26:
Youre right, its very nice to have your own tanks.
I now own 11 tanks, to be specific. And I would not trade any of them for the world.
I keep them practically empty all the time, with only about 100 psi in them, and so I have to go to the dive shop to have them filled anyway whenever I go diving, which on average is every two weeks.
That is no inconvenience. It would be a minor additional inconvenience to drop off a rental tank when I was finished with it, but not very much.
The most damage that can occur to a tank would be on a boat dive when the boat crew refills it for the second or third dive, and through carelessness they push water into the tank. Thats why, on a boat dive, I would rather use the boat's tanks rather than my own.
6 of my tanks are steel, and the other 5 are aluminum. And steel is very unforgiving of any moisture pumped into it during a boat fill.
The best reason I can think of to buy your own tanks is to be able to have high pressure small sized steel tanks. My recreational non-decompression diving steelies are HP 80s, and they seem very light to me, especially compared to the twin HP 100s that I wear while tech diving.
The HP 80 is a pretty good compact sized tank, as are also the HP 65 and HP 50. And they are hard to find, for renting.