Northwest Dive Club

Listed on Ebay. Bauer-Air-Compressor-FIre-Scuba-4500-psi-only-294-hours-Capitano-E-6-CFM setting at $1600.00 with 2 days left

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bauer-Air-Compr ... 1571233645

There you go Dusty. Have you ever considered getting into diving?

Considered it but it seemed like an expensive hobby!

Rjack -- what say you on this one? Good home compressor?

Yeah except you can't see it, run it, examine, and basically have to buy it performance unseen from WI.

I don't buy anything used and diving related off ebay because its mostly garbage and the gems are too hard to discern at a distance.

CaptnJack wrote:Yeah except you can't see it, run it, examine, and basically have to buy it performance unseen from WI.

I don't buy anything used and diving related off ebay because its mostly garbage and the gems are too hard to discern at a distance.

IF you were buying a new compressor, where's the sweet spot of value and capability?

I have done fine with 3cfm, but you have to be patient and willing to sit in the garage a bit. Takes about 25mins to fill an hp100 (its not completely empty most of the time).

If you are impatient and have more money 5 or 6cfm is about as big as I'd want to go. 12 CFM is frequently too big for single phase power. And will take bigger more expensive filters which need to be changed even if you haven't used them up. Personally I wouldn't breath gas that hasn't been double filtered so all of those bits need to be added in.

In part it will depend on how much power (and space) you have available via your panel and in your garage. I.e. if you have a heat pump, electric stove, dryer and hot water you might not have much panel space or capacity left in your house without a major upgrade. Also how noisy you can you be relative to your neighbors?

Having bank bottles allows you to pump when you want to and refill (much faster) at other times. But you need a whole suite of them, 2 bank bottles is not really worth bothering with. I have 7 with about 2700cf of 32% in storage, most of that is not even usable since you really only use the top ~25 to 30% of a bank cylinder (the bottom % is less than the pressure in the bottle you are filling). But it does make for quick top ups when I am pressed for time.

Wow, thanks for this great info. I've got to check how much power I have, but as far as noise and neighbors, no problem there. I suffered through them building not one but TWO houses next door, sequentially. Don't give a rat's ass what noise I make from here on out.

your 5-6cfm pumps will be in the 40amp range. If you donn't have the breaker space (all 42 used up for most), pull that one for the shop compressor or dryer circuit, and use that breaker space to make a sub panel (i.e. 1 240v 30amp breaker to a 60a, route the shop compressor/dryer and new scuba compressor through the sub-panel)... problem solved for breaker space.

You may or may not be able to legally put in a subpanel, depend on what else is taking up the rest of your typical 200 amp service. At my house I am super lucky to have separate 200 amp service with its own drop off the pole at my garage.

For one person, 3cfm fed by 240V 30amps is fine. If all your friends come over you end up sitting in the garage ALOT. And need to be mindful that smaller compressors in the 3cfm range are not rated for continuous multihour run times. More like 60-90 mins max.

That IS a great price so far. We'll see where it ends up. Shipping should be about $500.

This is a nice size for home use. It isn't available anymore in the US so to get a new version, you would have to go with the DiveMate = BIG BUCKS. My favorite home compressor is from Coltri (of course ) and is a 7CFM continuous duty machine. However, more of the little MCH6 and Junior II compressors are sold for home use because they are cheaper.