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I've been lurking on this great forum long enough - and it's now time to come out into the open and ask for advice on a gas mixing problem peculiar to tek diving in Japan. Sorry for the long introduction, but without it, the Q's won't make sense!
I'm a UK diver living in Japan and am active in the emerging tech diving community in Tokyo. Here in Japan, diving is popular - but very very different to the UK. The dive sites are stunning (really stunning but that's a separate subject) but the organisational constraints are restrictive.
As a result of lack of diver education, legislation and conservatism diving in Japan is about 10 years behind diving techniques and practices in the UK. Nitrox is only just becoming available, twin-tank manifolds are rare and deco-diving is frowned upon. Almost all the mainstream diving is done with dive-operators and most is PADI "crowd-control" style diving with DM shepherds.
This is not my idea of fun and, luckily, there is a small and independently minded group of Japanese and foreign divers doing things differently and doing some great diving - if you want to dive on virgin WWII wrecks or see some really rare deep reef fish come to Japan. However we need some help on mixing sensible deco gases.....
Problem - we need to mix EAN50 or EAN80 for accelerated deco - but without an air compressor!
Background - Here in Japan we have the "Japan High Pressure Gas Law" which includes restrictions such as the one that says that to operate a breathing air compressor you have to have a license and a concrete bunker to put it in. This means that you can only buy gas from gas companies or very large dive operators and nobody owns their own tanks - full tanks are rented for every dive. This is a pain but there isn't really any way to get round it.
But the real problem is that the gas companies will only supply air, EAN32 or 100%O2 and, personally, I am a bit leary about diving deep air and then using 100%O2 as a deco gas. So we are looking for a solution to allow us to mix EAN50 and EAN80 based on what's available.
We can buy bulk O2 and we have 5L AL cylinders and one possible solution to our problem would be to buy a Haskel or KISS booster pump and then to decant O2 into the cylinders and then to use rented tanks of EAN32 and a booster pump to do partial pressure blending.
Has anybody done this and does anyone have any opinions on whether this is a daft idea.
Thanks, in advance, for any help. And if any YD divers want to dive in Japan, let me know.
I've been lurking on this great forum long enough - and it's now time to come out into the open and ask for advice on a gas mixing problem peculiar to tek diving in Japan. Sorry for the long introduction, but without it, the Q's won't make sense!
I'm a UK diver living in Japan and am active in the emerging tech diving community in Tokyo. Here in Japan, diving is popular - but very very different to the UK. The dive sites are stunning (really stunning but that's a separate subject) but the organisational constraints are restrictive.
As a result of lack of diver education, legislation and conservatism diving in Japan is about 10 years behind diving techniques and practices in the UK. Nitrox is only just becoming available, twin-tank manifolds are rare and deco-diving is frowned upon. Almost all the mainstream diving is done with dive-operators and most is PADI "crowd-control" style diving with DM shepherds.
This is not my idea of fun and, luckily, there is a small and independently minded group of Japanese and foreign divers doing things differently and doing some great diving - if you want to dive on virgin WWII wrecks or see some really rare deep reef fish come to Japan. However we need some help on mixing sensible deco gases.....
Problem - we need to mix EAN50 or EAN80 for accelerated deco - but without an air compressor!
Background - Here in Japan we have the "Japan High Pressure Gas Law" which includes restrictions such as the one that says that to operate a breathing air compressor you have to have a license and a concrete bunker to put it in. This means that you can only buy gas from gas companies or very large dive operators and nobody owns their own tanks - full tanks are rented for every dive. This is a pain but there isn't really any way to get round it.
But the real problem is that the gas companies will only supply air, EAN32 or 100%O2 and, personally, I am a bit leary about diving deep air and then using 100%O2 as a deco gas. So we are looking for a solution to allow us to mix EAN50 and EAN80 based on what's available.
We can buy bulk O2 and we have 5L AL cylinders and one possible solution to our problem would be to buy a Haskel or KISS booster pump and then to decant O2 into the cylinders and then to use rented tanks of EAN32 and a booster pump to do partial pressure blending.
Has anybody done this and does anyone have any opinions on whether this is a daft idea.
Thanks, in advance, for any help. And if any YD divers want to dive in Japan, let me know.