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On Fri, 16 Dec 1994, Rod Farb wrote: > >> From: rodfarb@CE*.NE* (Rod Farb) > >> >Mike Pallone writes: > >> >You cannot use 100% O2 with standard scuba equipment. > >> NONSENSE: I have done this routinely for twelve years with Sherwood, U.S. > >> Divers, Dacor & Poseidon regulators out of the box. > > > >Yes, you and 100 other people started doing this twelve years ago. > >Unfortuneately, those 100 other people are no longer with us and dead > >men tell no tails. Congratulations on your luck. Just because you > >haven't paid the price for doing something widely considered to be > >dangerous, doesn't mean that it is safe. Now wisen up and get your > >regulators (and tanks?) O2 cleaned. > > > >Philip Weissman > > > I know dozens of people who have been using 100% oxygen in regulators out of > the box for years and I don't know a single individual who has ever had a > problem. Try it, you may learn something different from that which you have > been repeating as gospel. Ciao! I have found that I can save enormous amounts of money on regulator rebuilds by using O-Rings I buy at the auto parts store, diaphragms I cut myself from an old inner tube, and axle grease instead of silicone. :-) Rod, there have been fires. They aren't frequent, but there have been fires. Lots of us have only heard about these fires, because most folks who work with O2 don't screw around with not O2 cleaning their tanks and regs, using the wrong O-Rings, or the wrong lube. Except, of course, for dozens of folks you dive with you dive with and hundreds of others around the world who do the same thing. As opposed to the millions of folks who have been using O2 for welding, medical purposes, as aviation breathing gas, and perhaps the (guesstimate) thousands who have been recently certified in technical diving and use O2 in diving with clean equipment. Someone commented on 'greasy O2 regs' on welding bottles. Yep, but the grease is on the outside. On the inside, those pups are O2 clean, and made with the right hard parts, the right soft parts, and the right diaphragms. Think about using one of those as a first stage connected to an ordinary second stage for an emergency O2 rig - high pressure O2 in the cleaner area, low pressure O2 in the dirty second stage where it is safer. It works, I've seen one in use. But it is all a matter of relative safety: Rarely, the wrong materials will combust in the presense of high pressure O2, especially when heated by sudden gas inrush. Then again, rarely, bottles will explode upon being filled with air, and kill people doing so. We go through enormous expense inspecting bottles to lower the chance of such explosions. But I'm sure that if we didn't have our tanks VIP'd, after 20 years of bottle usage, most everyone could stand up and say, "I've used Faber, Pressed Steel, Kidde, Luxfer and Catalina bottles for 20 years, never had a VIP, and never had a bottle blow up. Have you?" Fills might be more expensive, though: Perhaps there would be higher insurance premiums for dive stores because of the chance of explosion. In any case, one might ask oneself, "The compressed gas industry spends lots of money using the right parts for O2, keeping things O2 clean, using different threads so that you can't hook things up backwards, and so forth. These people are in business. Do you think they'd spend a dime that they didn't have to spend?" How many incidents does it take to establish danger, anyway? One? Probably too few? Explosion every time you switched on the O2? Surely, that is dangerous. Not usually? Well, now we are somewhere on the risk-benefit curve. Like the joke about the woman who would accept a millon dollars to have sex, but wouldn't take $200 because she wasn't a member of the 'oldest profession', "We've established what you are, now we are just haggling over price." I think that there is risk is established, because the compressed gas industry wouldn't waste money over a non-risk. Now we are just haggling over how much of a risk that there is. Nick Simicich - njs@sc*.ga*.ne* - njs@bc*.vn*.ib*.co*
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