Re: What Tank to Buy?

Grumman-581 wrote:
On 5 Jul 2006 14:44:48 -0700, "bullshark" <bullshark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No tank at all. You don't dive enough to warrant it.

It's easy enough to calculate whether one should purchase a tank or
Things he'll need to know:

1. Cost of the tank
2. Cost to fill the tank
3. Cost to get an annual visual inspection
4. Cost to get a hydro (every 5 years)

Cost of Storage.

It takes space. It may be no more than an opportunity cost, or it may
be quite real.
Judge from the national trend to PODs and the booming storage market.

The cost of the tank needs to be adjusted for the opportunity cost of
that capital.
PST's are running 325 a pop, and over the service life, the interest on
interest is
considerable...getting larger as life expectancy increases.

Just compounded annually at 6% for 20yrs, thats $1042.00

Even worse, a lot of the kiddies out there don't know that a credit
card balance
can actually be payed down to zero, so they tack 21% APRs onto the cost

of the tanks.

5. Expected number of dives per year

6. Cost to rent a tank

Cost to rent a tank needs to be reduced by the cost to fill, to put in
perspective.
Since you have it on the other side, it cancels.

7. Additional fuel / vehicle costs for returning rental tank after
local dive trip

You've got this one backwards (sometimes, anyway).

If you rent, you leave the tank with the boat. Zero Fuel cost.
This is also much less work than
house->car, car->boat, boat->car, car->shop, shop->car, car->house,
for each of the 40 lb tanks.

When the boat does not rent the tank, the transport cost cancels,
because if
you owned, you would have to transport for the fill anyway.

So this is a (sometimes) cost reduction for the rental case.

http://home.houston.rr.com/grumman581/nitrox-calc.htm

Dives/ year needs to be carefully considered. We dive ~200/yr, but only
half of
those are at home where they would be eligible.

For your Nitrox Calculator, you need a Bull***-Aggravation adjuster
for all the
freaks that won't fill your tank because:

They don't like your O2-clean sticker
You don't have a pretty green and yellow sticker/band
Your tank is O2 clean and they only have premix and won't fill
(Yes a shop here actually does this)
The shop fills your O2 clean tank with premix and then removes the
O2 clean
(Yes, the same shop)

Then you have to add the Shop-is too-slow-to-fill-while-you-wait
adjustment.
The PP blenders around here want you to drop off the tanks and pick
them up later.

Oh yeah, don't forget the
I-came-back-to-pick-up-the-tanks-and-they-weren't-done-tax,
and the I-came-back-to-pick-up-the-tanks-and-the-mixes-were-wrong-tax.

bullshark

.