O2 Refill Cost

Geico266

Geico266

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Geico
How much do you pay to have an O2 bottle refilled?

This is one of those small ones, about 12" long, 3" in diameter.

What do you pay for larger tanks?
 
Geico266 said:
How much do you pay to have an O2 bottle refilled?

This is one of those small ones, about 12" long, 3" in diameter.

What do you pay for larger tanks?
Click to expand...
Thanks for asking this. I need to get my tank filled and it's harder than I thought outside of an airport.

What does it cost at an airport?

Where did you mount yours?
 
Bill Watson said:
Thanks for asking this. I need to get my tank filled and it's harder than I thought outside of an airport.

What does it cost at an airport?

Where did you mount yours?
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Getting 02 filled as a medical O2 is crazy expensive. No need to go there. :no:

On the back of the passenger seat. It supplies pilot and co pilot.
 
Depends on who's asking. It the guy a regular customer or one of the airport freeloaders who never spends a dime and is always looking for a free lunch?

QUOTE=Geico266;1263952]How much do you pay to have an O2 bottle refilled?

This is one of those small ones, about 12" long, 3" in diameter.

What do you pay for larger tanks?[/QUOTE]
 
wabower said:
Depends on who's asking. It the guy a regular customer or one of the airport freeloaders who never spends a dime and is always looking for a free lunch?

QUOTE=Geico266;1263952]How much do you pay to have an O2 bottle refilled?

This is one of those small ones, about 12" long, 3" in diameter.

What do you pay for larger tanks?
Click to expand...

What is the price for both?

BTW, I'm the one filling it. ;)
 
Geico266 said:
How much do you pay to have an O2 bottle refilled?

This is one of those small ones, about 12" long, 3" in diameter.

What do you pay for larger tanks?
Click to expand...

Local welder or hvac guy?
 
I have a Super-D. It's full of welding oxygen, and is $32.00 a fill. 79 cubic feet.
 
I am paying about $15 for a 20 cu ft R Type O2 Refill. Sounds reasonable to me.
 
I've usually gotten medical O2 just because the cost differential for me is insignificant. I don't go through much O2. Refilling my tank is typically about $20. It's something around 10" diameter and 2 ft tall.

When we get the O2 system in the 310 working again (we've left it inop since I'm typically solo at O2 altitudes and have my portable setup) then we'll probably do a bit different. Not sure what yet, either have big tanks of our own or just pay one of our friends to fill it.
 
I've paid anywhere from ZERO to $50 to get an oxygen fill. With the conserving regulatrors (mine are Nelson, but the MH ones look to work as well), I can go a long time on a bottle fill.

I've been toying with getting a transfill kit so I can think about a larger bottle (which at 1800 PSI and a large capacity for $50 or so will fill my 1100 psi d cylinder a bunch of times) but it hardly seems worth the effort.
 
flyingron said:
I've paid anywhere from ZERO to $50 to get an oxygen fill. With the conserving regulatrors (mine are Nelson, but the MH ones look to work as well), I can go a long time on a bottle fill.

I've been toying with getting a transfill kit so I can think about a larger bottle (which at 1800 PSI and a large capacity for $50 or so will fill my 1100 psi d cylinder a bunch of times) but it hardly seems worth the effort.
Click to expand...

Depends on your setup and needs. Because we don't usually "need" O2, there's not a huge benefit. But a friend of mine with a Turbo plane who spends time in oxygen altitudes regularly benefits from being able to top it off in the hangar before a flight.
 
You're really *supposed* to only use aviation oxygen. In our planes it doesn't get cold enough to make a different, but it's supposed to be aviation because it's more dry.

Anywho. I've paid as low as $50 and as high as $80. The $50 was at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway and the $80 was at Phoenix international. Had to get it filled on a Sunday so I had to go to Cutter.
 
Z06_Mir said:
You're really *supposed* to only use aviation oxygen. In our planes it doesn't get cold enough to make a different, but it's supposed to be aviation because it's more dry.
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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away the various oxygen standards were relevant. All oxygen is produced the same way these days so it's all the same and much drier than it must be. Once ya freeze the darn stuff out of the air there just isn't much else there but O2.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Depends on your setup and needs. Because we don't usually "need" O2, there's not a huge benefit. But a friend of mine with a Turbo plane who spends time in oxygen altitudes regularly benefits from being able to top it off in the hangar before a flight.
Click to expand...

To really be able to 'top off' you need a Haskell or other boost pump system, cascades give you a bit more serviceability, but if you use a lot of O2 and go on long trips where you want to start with a full tank, a boost pump is a good deal.
 
Henning said:
To really be able to 'top off' you need a Haskell or other boost pump system, cascades give you a bit more serviceability, but if you use a lot of O2 and go on long trips where you want to start with a full tank, a boost pump is a good deal.
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Agreed, it all depends on your mission.

We put 10 hours on the T310R in one trip, with all of it cruising in the flight levels. So that is nice to be full for. But in the straight 310, I've never had it above 15k and usually not for more than a few hours at a time, so my O2 demands are lower. May change a bit when we start having family trips at higher altitudes.
 
I've paid between $20 and $50+, depending on where I've had it done. I think I got one for $15 in NM, but that was at an FBO that could only provide half a fill.
 
I had the FBO in midland, tx once charge me $100 to fill my modest tank - vowed to never go back to that place.

Avion Flight Centre was the place.
 
DavidWhite said:
I had the FBO in midland, tx once charge me $100 to fill my modest tank - vowed to never go back to that place.

Avion Flight Centre was the place.
Click to expand...

Sheesh, for $100 I'd tell'em to keep their air and offer to dump it right there.
 
Factory O2 on mine... Cost about $60 to top off in Montana. I paid $75 to fill it in California. 50 cf tank at about 1850 psig.

I looked into getting tanks for the hangar, but requiring multiple tanks made it not economical. Now, some sort of Boost pump with one tank may be more reasonable. Where would I find such a deal?
 
skidoo said:
Factory O2 on mine... Cost about $60 to top off in Montana. I paid $75 to fill it in California. 50 cf tank at about 1850 psig.

I looked into getting tanks for the hangar, but requiring multiple tanks made it not economical. Now, some sort of Boost pump with one tank may be more reasonable. Where would I find such a deal?
Click to expand...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trk...Haskel+oxygen++gas+booster&_sacat=0&_from=R40

They aren't cheap, but they last a long time. We used to use them for oxygen and helium filling Nitrox and TriMix tanks for SCUBA. They also take a regular air compressor to drive them.
 
Z06_Mir said:
You're really *supposed* to only use aviation oxygen. In our planes it doesn't get cold enough to make a different, but it's supposed to be aviation because it's more dry.
Click to expand...

If it is clean enough to weld, it is clean enough to breathe.

All commercially available oxygen comes from the evaporation of liquid oxygen. Liquid oxygen by definition is 100% dry. Unless you have a contamination in your bottle, there is not going to be any water in it.

'Medical oxygen' is just as dry as welding or ABO when it is in the bottle, the humidifier (either ultrasonic or just a bubbler) is on the low pressure side of the system, between the wall outlet and the patient.

When medical bottles are being filled, they get evacuated and purged beforehand. When medical bottles are hooked up to anesthesia systems and run empty, there is a small chance of contaminants such as anesthesia gases being pulled into the empty bottle. This would be very very unusual as anesthesia equipment is usually hooked up to wall outlets fed from large liquid oxygen systems in the hospitals engineering plant. The only time bottles are used is to haul oxygen dependent patients around in the hospital (btw. the truck that fills up our hospital tank used to say 'B&Bs welding supply').

The vacuuum process is supposed to eliminate the small chance of contaminants in a medical or welding oxygen bottle. If you close the valve on your aviation oxygen bottle once it is empty and you are not working with anything nasty, your aviation bottle should not have anything but 100% oxygen in it and just topping it off is safe to do. Whether the paperwork that came with the tank it gets topped off from says 'oxygen USP, ABO, or 'Oxygen dry' makes no difference (there are some cleaner grades of oxygen that are certified to 50,10,1ppm of contaminants for analytic or synthetic chemistry purposes. But those bottles are separate from all the other oxygen streams).

YMMV, just my opinion, not medical legal or accounting advice.
 
Landmark at KOAK wants $150. I was like ???? They said it's the same price no matter if it's a gulfstream or a 6cf portable tank. Insane.

Does anyone have recommendations in Norcal? Can't find a place in SF that'll do it at anywhere close to a reasonable price.
 
KTEX charges $26. Not near you though. :)
 
frcabot said:
Landmark at KOAK wants $150. I was like ???? They said it's the same price no matter if it's a gulfstream or a 6cf portable tank. Insane.

Does anyone have recommendations in Norcal? Can't find a place in SF that'll do it at anywhere close to a reasonable price.
Click to expand...

If you use a lot of O2, it's not particularly expensive to build your own fill station. At those fill prices, a three tank cascade system will pay for itself in less than 10 fills.
 
Since it turned out to be an (expensive) major pain to get our oxygen tank refilled, here in our area, I thought about building a cascade system for our hangar.

I understand the idea behind it, I understand how the tanks are connected and how they are used. What I however don’t understand is if a special type of tank is used, which can be filled to a higher pressure than the tank which goes into the plane?

The regular industrial oxygen tanks are filled up to about the same pressure as the tank for our plane. While a cascade system would allow me to fill the plane tank pretty close to its ‘full’ pressure, I would never quite make it there. With every subsequent filling, the gap between the actually achievable max. pressure and the desired pressure would become bigger and bigger.

I this correct or are you using tanks which can be filled to a higher pressure, than the plane tank, for your cascade system? I found ‘high capacity tanks’ which can be filled up to 4,500 psi, they however don’t seem to be too common. I am also not sure if they can be filled at all welding supply stores.
 
You are correct, the normal way of doing it to cascade the tanks. You won't get full pressure and it will be less and less each time which is why you need to rotate a new tank into the cascade periodically.
 
The hydrotester who I got my large cylinders from filled them to 4000 psi.
 
My "K" bottles cost us 28 bucks. Go to the hardware store and spend 20 bucks on fittings and you can refill your smaller bottles many times for almost nothing.
4554637588.jpg
 
Acrodustertoo said:
My "K" bottles cost us 28 bucks. Go to the hardware store and spend 20 bucks on fittings and you can refill your smaller bottles many times for almost nothing.
4554637588.jpg
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$28?????
Really?
That sounds like a typo it is so cheap.
 
Acrodustertoo said:
My "K" bottles cost us 28 bucks. Go to the hardware store and spend 20 bucks on fittings and you can refill your smaller bottles many times for almost nothing.
Click to expand...

If it is a national chain - do you mind sharing its name? I assume they fill the tank to 2,200 psi!? Tractor Supply charges (IMHO reasonable) $52.99 to refill this size tank, but I believe that I would have to purchase the them.
 
20 Cubic Foot "E" Style bottle...$20 at FBO at KWVI with cascade system.
 
German guy said:
If it is a national chain - do you mind sharing its name? I assume they fill the tank to 2,200 psi!? Tractor Supply charges (IMHO reasonable) $52.99 to refill this size tank, but I believe that I would have to purchase the them.
Click to expand...
We use General Distributing, I believe they are headquartered in Great Falls Montana.
 
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