[James28]

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Hi I was just woundering how much it costs to fill up on scrubber material everytime for the YBOD? Looking through various article (old ones) it seems to be about £3 a fill, which looks like the most expensive running cost (not servicing costs). Is it still the same price for the scrubber material, or has it come down in price?  Also if a few of you are clubbing together are you managing to reduce the costs (i.e. buy in bulk).

All things considered the pricing seems okay to super nitrox dive, but really comes into its own when squirting helium into your tanks. Not that I'm a tight fisted yorkshire man or anything!!  

James.

 

[Rob Evans]

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It works out £7-8 quid a fill on the scrubber, a 20kg drum of Sofno knocks out at around £55.
Unfortunately it doesn't get much cheaper if you buy in bulk - an instructor told me if you bought 14+ drums you can get them for £50 a pop. Then there's the shipping, which is why I always preorder mine from APD for pickup at the dive show.....

There are other grades of absorbent (larger granules etc) which are cheaper, but cos I'm a blouse I'll stick with the recommended product.

PS you're absolutely right about the Helium.  To quote Chasey's big deep dive as an example, gas costs for the 102m dive (excluding bailout) would have been about £4 as a garage-fill, £40 at Dahab prices  

 

[Laurence]

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<font color='#0000FF'>Hello there James, The cost of the scrubber fill is about £8. It costs £60 per 20kg tub adn you will get about 7-8 fills per tub.

3lt o2 will cost about £5 and 3lt air anything from £1.50 - £5.00. Sometimes the srubber fill is only enough for 1 dive, if your like me and like your bottom time then there may not be enough for the second dive, it should only be used for 3 hours.

Ive done over 2 hours and that was without bottom time, so if you like bottom time or have deco it may not be enough and then you have to bin it. £8.00 gone, dont push the scrubber, if you do it will kill you.

Then on top of that, besides the servicing which you would have to do on your OC anyway, there are the o2 cells about £150 per year minimum. And there life can be shortened if Helium is used.

So in comparison to twim set Nitrox diving it is more expensive but not by much, but the unit really comes into it's own when Helium is used. there are users who have recovered the cost of the unit in gas saving in less than 2 years. Thats a lot of gas saved.

However, dont look at the costs, look at the joy. It is a dream to dive. With that nice warm moist air and no noise its great i hate having to dive OC, yucky stuff.

Check out www.btinternet.com/~madmole/divemole.htm

I think the best Inspiration site on the web.

All the best

Laurence

 

[James28]

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Cheers for the info, I suppose when you add up the other costs of diving, such as getting there, boat costs, etc a couple of extra pounds is nothing. I am spending the next year researching rebreathers to make sure it is the right path for me, also to see where my diving is going (I think I will be requiring helium at one point [although I do like getting narked  

]), but it will proberbly be the case how much helium diving I will be doing.

Having said that if I have a go on a rebreather, I'll proberbly want one!  

 It seems like that will only be a matter of time as I keep bumping into rebreather guys. Will be changing diving clubs this year, to one where people actually go diving & don't moan at you for going deep (even though you're on a twinset, etc).

James.

 

[EBT]

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James,

Once your choice of mix stops being dictated by the cost of the helium, you tend to find that most people run their helium a lot shallower.

Its great for reducing the work of breathing and improving the old mental clarity (something has to offset the dogbolter from the night before

)

 

[Sandman]

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The only reason I am getting a YBOD is because of the cost of Helium.  I did a 70m OC trimix dive last year and the gas alone cost me £70 and that was a garage fill, from my LDS it would have been nearer £100 which is taking the pi55 a bit for one dive.  If I fill my twins with nitrox it would cost me £12 so for the majority of my diving it will work out about the same price per dive on OC or CCR and it will save me loads of cash when I start putting Helium through it.

Simon

 

[Rob Evans]

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Oops - forgot to mention that. The reason I've got tons of O2 cells lying about is cos if you're sensible you change them every twelve months. And get a spare to be on the safe side.  So that's £200 down the swanny every year whatever you do.  
However the more dives you do, the less skewed the cost equation is. Truth be told though, you've got to get shitloads of dives in to justify the financial argument - you buy a CCR because it makes sense to you, not cos the numbers add up.
AFAIK Helium makes no difference whatsoever to O2 cell life but they don't like CO2.  My Dil tin always has a medium/strong Heliair mix in it for the simple reason... why not?   Though I do miss being narked at 35-40.  

 

[Angleseyskipper]

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we tried a few years ago to buy a pallet of sofna about 30 odd  20KG drums direct from the factory between 8 of us but were give a polite F--k o-f and told to buy from AP as they were the  sole agents for the stuff.
has anything changed as we never bothered to try again?

ps buying a YBOD just cos its cheap to dive on mix is a total bollocks reason for going on to CCR

 

[EBT]

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Really? interesting......

Everyone buys for a different reason, but if this chaps lead reason is cost, whats wrong with that?

 

[Sandman]

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If you (Yellow butty box) had read another of my posts with regard to how much I have been paying for helium and how much I could soon be paying you would see why cost is my main reason.  3p now and soon to be 5p a litre.

Who would pay £150 for gas to do one 70m dive when you could pay 10% of that?  When I get my YBOD it will have paid for itself in less than 2 years.

Cheers

Simon  

 

[Dominic]

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Quote[/b] ]Everyone buys for a different reason, but if this chaps lead reason is cost, whats wrong with that?

If cost is the big issue, just dive Deep Air and you'll be laughing

Is Helium really going to nearly double in price soon?

 

[Sandman]

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Without starting another deep air debate I have to say after doing both deep air and trimix dives I know which I would prefer to be using.  Doing 50m+ dives on air is no longer my idea of having a laugh.

When I got into technical diving I was told to use the right tools (equipment) for the job and in my case that is going to be an Inspiration Rebreather.  I had looked at several other options but the Inspiration always came out on top.

I only have one shop local (North East) to me that does mixed gases so I don't really have the option of shopping around unless I do about an 80 mile round trip twice for gas.

Cheers

Simon

 

[angleseydiver]

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<font color='#000080'>

Quote[/b] (yellow butty box @ Jan. 18 2004,23:49)]we tried a few years ago to buy a pallet of sofna about 30 odd  20KG drums direct from the factory between 8 of us but were give a polite F--k o-f and told to buy from AP as they were the  sole agents for the stuff.
has anything changed as we never bothered to try again?

Quote[/b] ]ps buying a YBOD just cos its cheap to dive on mix is a total bollocks reason for going on to CCR

I think what he meant to say was "buying a YBOD just cos it's cheap on mix suggests that you will fast-track through training, deep air and deco-diving to get to your end result- ie strap on a CCR and do the dives you do now without gaining the all important hours on the box."  

I think it sounds better but means the same  

ATB,
         Terry

 

[bang-on]

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i dont think paying £4500 pounds and having to build up your deep diving again is going to be a major consideration in buying a unit.
yea the gas costs on deeper dives are £3 or £4 quid but then you have the sofno thats about £4 pr hour so around £12 for 70+ for a couple of hours in the water.
it is the way to go for some,but not all and thats the choice along with having the £4500.
many instructors have units you can train and certify on,then if your hooked buy a unit.
i bought a unit to follow my strict conservation beliefs and as it appears only 25years supply of helium stocks remain:
conserve helium,dive ccr!
cheers
barrie

 

[Rob Evans]

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My point regarding the costs is  - they don't ever stop

Then again, I can't see me ever doing non-holiday stuff on anything other than the box for the simple reason that it's such a pleasure diving the thing.  Cards on the table, I'd not done any gas dives before getting the YBOD - I purely got it to extend my duration at the 40-50m depths.  However, over the last couple of years I've been tending to groove around the 60-70m mark and TBH there's no real difference from the 40-50m stuff - just that the deco's longer & the bailout's bigger. Wack a few quid's worth of He in to keep it sensible & away you go. For this sort of this thing, the box is ideal.  Did a couple of 60odd dives on OC recently - spent the whole time looking at my guages and was deeply depressed at the cost of the gas at the end of it.
Simon - if as you say you're doing 70odd gas dives a year then
A You're right, you will save money given a year or two - though not necessarily quite as much as you might think.  Then again, if He's going up as much as that then we're definitely quids in.
B I hate you

Does anybody have any hard info on the Helium situation?  All I've heard so far are (reasonably well-founded) rumours.

 

[Andy Phillips]

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Begining of a reply on the Helium cost question;

Aug. 25, BOC Gases announces global helium price increase



Murray Hill, New Jersey, U.S. (August 25, 2003) - BOC Gases has announced that it will increase helium prices by 10 to 15 percent, effective October 1, 2003, or as contracts allow.

The increase is necessary to offset the higher costs of purchasing and producing helium and will affect customers purchasing helium in liquid dewars, gaseous tube trailers and bulk liquid containers.

BOC has experienced significantly higher crude helium feedstock costs driven by purchases of crude helium from the US Bureau of Land Management. Purchasing the high cost crude helium from the BLM is necessary to offset declining production from lower cost private sources.

BOC operates one of the world’s largest helium refining facilities in Otis, Kansas, and also has access to helium produced by sources in Wyoming, Utah, Poland, Russia, and Algeria. From these facilities, BOC transports the liquid helium to a worldwide network of 47 local distribution facilities.

The BOC Group (NYSE:BOX), the worldwide industrial gases, vacuum technologies and distribution services company, serves two million customers in more than 50 countries. It employs 46,000 people and had annual sales of some $6 billion in 2002. Further information about The BOC Group may be obtained on the Internet at http://www.boc.com.



CONTACT: Renee Talian
BOC corporate relations
908-771-1490
[email protected]


Also,

try this link;

http://www.aps.org/public_affairs/popa/reports/helium.html

 

[James28]

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I think it is a sensible idea to really know what you are getting into when you're going CCR & the reasons you are getting one for. I know of a couple of people who do photographic work (so they are not going deep) who are getting a pair of YBOD's. They need they so they don't have any bubbles. No point in forking out 4 grand & discoving that you can't afford to run it either!!!!!!!

I think at the end of the day it will be case of can I afford to buy one as the diving I will be doing in the next couple of years will require one.

Why is the price of Helium going up?

James.

 

[Dominic]

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Gotta love it - Helium, the second most abundant element in the universe, and they're putting up their prices because they can't get enough of it

I seem to recall Vic and Mark Scott-Simons once did a comparison test of all the running costs of Inspiration vs OC for trimix dives. When you factored in all costs - buying & servicing equipment, sofnolime, O2 cells, etc etc, they worked out about the same.

Might be worth looking up that comparison before buying on a cost basis.

 

[Ben Harris]

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<font color='#8D38C9'>I heard people (dont know who) were looking into using neon instead of helium as it would be cheaper to produce / purchase. Anyone else heard that??

 

[James28]

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A lot of people say you can get closer to the wildlife on CCR which a like, so maybe small factors such as that will swing it for me. Before I actually started diving I've wanted a CCR as it made sense to me, so I think in a years time or so I'll have to go for one. Also the fact that there are more CCR divers out there (AP values are churning loads of units out each month) will make it easier to get fills, etc.

One thing about OC is the Wrasse hear you coming (its like a dinner bell for those things) & start pestering you for food.

so even on OC you can encounter wildlife up close.

Even though there is loads of helium in the universe, the earths gravity isn't very strong so when it gets released into the atmosphere, it just wizzes out! Maybe the resources of helium are running a bit low?  What about using argon? I can't remember where it is on the periodic table, but I'm guessing its a heavy gass than nitrogen.

James.