CO2 and the lesson learned with trade in.

[Ego Archive]

I learned something new a week ago, and it just occurred to me to come here and mention it. This may not apply to your circumstances, or this may be old news to you, but I thought I would mention it anyhow.

I picked up a 5 lbs. CO2 tank off of Craigslist (very cheaply) awhile back, and have been trading it in at a local welding shop. It's close and the refill/trade price seemed reasonable.

While I was in the shop this last time I mentioned that I was looking to combine 2 regulators (One with a broken high pressure gauge, and a fully functional one) into a dual regulator, and I wanted to get their thoughts. The guy wasn't sure if that would work, so I elaborated on how I was going to be pushing 3 kegs of beer, and a keg of soda at a higher pressure, so what I was looking to do might make more sense.

At that point he looked at me and said; "your going to be trading out that 5 lbs tank quite a bit if your running that much pressure, you may want to upgrade to a 20lbs tank".

That stopped me. Honestly, it hadn't even occurred to me that they would just trade up...

In retrospect it makes sense, but it was just not something I had thought of. Of course there is a fee (something like $20, plus the cost of a 20lbs refill), but it seems more than reasonable to me. While I don't know if this is a universal practice, if your running a 5lbs tank, and thinking about upgrading, this may be an option to investigate, over buy another one.


Hope that's helpful to someone.

 

[Fingers]

Maybe just a matter of semantics, but what changes is the volume you use, not the pressure.

I rent a 50lb tank myself. I'll likely fill my 5lb tank for the summer so I can carry it around. You might want to keep that smaller tank and just get another, larger size for home.

 

[Ego Archive]

Maybe just a matter of semantics, but what changes is the volume you use, not the pressure.

I rent a 50lb tank myself. I'll likely fill my 5lb tank for the summer so I can carry it around. You might want to keep that smaller tank and just get another, larger size for home.

The term "pressure" was my misstatement, but I did mean (and he indicated), the volume I would be using to push several kegs.

I'm actually lucky enough to have received a second 5lb tank from a friend as a gift, so I will end up having both.

 

[conpewter]

Sweet trade-up!

I also found that you can sometimes get them to trade an old crappy steel tank for an aluminum one. That happened by accident at one welding shop, and when they raised their prices I switched to a new one, now I always ask that I get an aluminum in trade for my nice aluminum one. I'll have to try that with my 20 lb steel tank now...