Northwest Dive Club

Hello all!

I am slowly cobbling my kit together and am pretty much down to getting my very own tank. However, like most things in life I don't know much. Ive only ever dove with Aluminum 80's. I am trying to decide between a steel HP 100,117 or a 120. Painted vs galvanized. I dive with a Scubapro Hydros Pro, so have some adjustability.

Any thoughts and or advice would be appreciated.

Jon

Use steel in NW waters.
I use the 117's and 119's because they are shorter and I like longer dives. 120's are a pain in my ass.

Painted faber steel 117's are the best I've dived with! (Should look something like this: https://www.diversdiscountflorida.com/p ... mID=3247&6)

I also sometimes also use 130's or 133's just because of the extra gas. They're significantly heavier. Of those I prefer the 130, but I think they're hard to find now.

Have fun!

Steel tanks are definitely the way to go. The size really depends on a couple of factors: 1) your gas consumption rate, and 2) your physical size. HP100s are great in terms of size and weight for most people -- they're small enough and light enough that they are not too cumbersome and if your gas consumption is good, you can get some nice long dives from them. If you move to a HP117, HP120, or HP130, you'll find that they are a bit heaver (usually on the order of 8-10 lbs) and, in the case of the 120 or 130, quite a bit longer which can be a problem if you are short in stature.

Great! I appreciate you guys taking a minute to share your advice. It sounds like a 117 would make a good first tank. I'm a bigger guy at about 6' and have a pretty active job, so the weight wasn't a huge issue, but looking at the dimensions the 120 is a a fair bit longer.

Good stuff. Thank you!

It’s great we have so many options on tanks. Here is my input.

I love low pressure steel tanks. If I’m doing deep tec stuff my Faber steel LP85s as doubles are my favorites. For everyday cold water dives my LP 95s work well. I fill my own stuff so I’ll pump a LP tank past its 2250 up to 3000 and now I have almost 120cf of gas without the hastle of having a 120 tank on my back. ( cave divers take these to tanks to 3600psi all the time so I don’t feel I’m risking any safety stuff here. HP tanks are nice if you can get good fills from a shop. I like my HP 80s and 100s but I like the overfill option of LPs and I don't like pumping past 3500psi on my compressor. I get about a 1/3 bonus of air when using LP tanks. Most shops won’t overfill so this option doesn’t always work when I’m away from my compressor. The extra air underwater outweighs the tiny risk ( if any) of overfilling LP tanks.

I believe HP 117's are the exact size/weight as LP95's, so why not just go with the hp tank?
-Eric

YellowEye wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:39 pm I believe HP 117's are the exact size/weight as LP95's, so why not just go with the hp tank?
-Eric

Exactly. The HP117 and LP95 are both 15 liter water capacity tanks, so for a given pressure, they will effectively have the same amount of gas. Why go with an LP95 overfilled to 3000psi, when you can have an HP117 filled to 3300 psi (even if shops short fills it) and have about 10 cuft more gas in the same form factor?

Great feedback. Thanks. I believe my LPs are a few pounds lighter but the bottom line is I own lp95s and I don’t own 117HPs so that’s why I like them best? (Haha).

Like I said, it’s great we have so many options. A low pressure 95 is full at 2400. I usually don’t need more air than this on most dives this time of year because it’s colder and after an hour I’m getting ready to get out. My dive compressor is really happy filling to 2400-3000 and seems like it would prefer not to go into the higher pressures around 3500-3800. I also mix my own nitrox fills up to 40%. I like lower pressures when the O2 starts flowing into the compressor. That’s my main reason for not using HP tanks. I need more tanks so I can try them all and have more experience with them. Cheers!