FOOLCiRCLE

Yup, I have gas, and lots of it too!

It’s kind of a weird picture, but hey, it works. Basically I just scored a third gas tank, for “free”. It is a sweet 50# aluminum tank. So now I have a 5# aluminum, a 20# steel, and a 50# aluminum tank. The two aluminium’s I own and the steel is on permanent borrow/exchange with the gas company.

I scored the 50# tank at work, it was empty and they were going to throw it out and I was like “can I have that?” And they said sure! So I took it to G&E Welding to get it filled. They admired my tank which I thought was funny (“man, that’s a really nice aluminum tank, man, where didja get that nice aluminum tank, man, I’d hold on to that aluminum tank if I were you” – it was too funny), and then told me it was going to be $25 to fill. Good deal I thought, my 5# tank is normally $10 to fill, so for another $15 I was going to get 10x the gas. Then he started looking at it and realized that the tank was out of date. Basically every 5 years the tanks have to get tested to make sure they can still hold the pressure from the gas. He said to get it pressure tested and stamped was going to be like $50, fine whatever. Then I get a call after they have had it for like a week, “man, what kind of gas was in here?” I told them I didn’t know. Basically the nozzle was fitted for a different kind of regulator than a CO2 regulator, so they were going to have to change out the nozzle too, another $50. So as of now my “free” tank was going to cost $125 – ouch.

When I went to pick up the tank, after quite a while waiting for it, I brought my empty 5# tank with me. They did charge me the $125 for the 50# tank total, but filled the 5# tank for free and threw in some nylon regulator gaskets. I was a little perturbed with the wait, but overall good results. I then realized how heavy a full 50# aluminum tank was, almost a 100 lbs., so I was glad it wasn’t steel.

After I got home I did some research and found out that a new 50# aluminum tank costs around $300 depending on where you go, some less, some more. So my “free” tank was actually a pretty good deal, though I put out a lot more money for it than I had originally anticipated. I was hoping I was going to be able to use the 50# tank to fill my 5# and 20#, and basically use the 50# as like a storage tank. I asked the guy at the shop about that and he basically said it is possible, but that I wasn’t really set-up for it, something about tubes being put inside the tanks and liquid CO2. I figured I might try anyway, they do have pressure relief valves on them. Who knows.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Homebrew. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.