Hand Pumping To Fill A Tank? - Scuba Tech Tips: S12E04

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Published 2021-03-11
After the videos on mini scuba tank systems, viewers asked if a full size scuba tank could be filled by hand pumping? Alec shows the considerable effort and time to hand pump a 80 cu/ft tank to 3,000 psi (12 L to 207 bar), but is it worth it?

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All Comments (21)
  • @fathom493
    Never clicked on a video faster. One of these days you gotta show us how to make a DIY compressor, using only a bike pump and lawn mower engine.
  • @GIJOE573
    HPA hand pumps are perfect! you save on your air fills, you save on your gym membership and you get a nice long surface interval
  • @clays.8122
    My dad has one of those pumps for filling up the tanks on pellet rifles, and I can say that 20 minutes for that tank is very optimistic, even without exhaustion kicking in
  • Being a certified Master scuba diver and an assistant instructor I would have to say after listening to this YouTube the guy is correct. it's not wise because the filter is not the right one to scrub the air. It can be said that a four-stage hand pump can be used to fill a SCUBA tank in the event someone does not want to dive deep. The parts per million of noxious gases all depend on the atmospheric pressure. The deeper one goes the more dangerous even a small amount of noxious gas becomes. What is breathable at 20 ft can be deadly at 80 ft. It all depends on how one approaches it. It's not recommended and too risky.
  • @terl0th
    One thing you didnt mention, is that it gets harder to pump with rising pressure in the tank. Depending on your weight (and strength, but mainly weight), you wont even be able to get the tank to 3000psi. That goes for tanks of all sizes.
  • @paulclose5544
    4 hours so stretch it out to 3 or perhaps 4 days off and on hand pumping so you don't overheat your pump.
  • Have you ever considered doing a livestream? I think that would be really cool and would watch if you did one.
  • @ericsmith3298
    Love your work. need to cover more ways to build your own equipment. try DIY surface supplied air unit
  • @bradleykmdean
    I'm glad I found your channel. I'm in Niagara falls and you seem like the coolest guy
  • @nwced
    I've also read that the closer to full you get the more the resistance you will have as the pumping gets harder and harder as the pressure builds
  • @maxsands3861
    I read in the air gun digest that a king in England (17/1800s I forget his name) had an air rifle that he hunted stag with. He could get up to one dozen shots with one fill but he had a servant that took over 1200 strokes of the pump to fill it. AHA if I were only a king!!! Fun video Alec you've got a new subscriber.
  • @gramitall1776
    I have the smaco as a bailout rig, and have hand inflated it with the hand pump; IT IS BRUTAL WORK. I bought a small compressor to fill it. One thing that I will say is the smaco tank is soo much fun when I'm just hanging out at the pool for the day. I have probably had more use out of it by far than my actual 80cu tank
  • @maxtorque2277
    For those of us that dive with steel cylidners, you don't want to use a handpump for any sized cylinder! This is because high pressure is required in order to "squeeze" the water vapour out of the air, as the water vapour is effectively uncompressable. This means, the more you compress air, the drier it gets, ie for any water content in the intake air at 1bar abs, more water gets squeezed out and caught in the filters/water traps the higher the pressure. This is why commercial compressors include a fixed pressure maintaining (residual pressure) valve downstream of the pumping system and the filters/water trap. In effect, even when you connect a cylinder at 0 bar, the pump is still pumping against around 150 bar that the residual pressure valve is generating, so that the air actually filling your cylinder has the least water content possible. This is wasteful of energy, because the energy required to compress the air to 150 bar, which is then allowed to expand into the cylinder to less than that 150 bar, is mostly lost. It's therefore critical that dive stores and compressor owners filling steel tanks that can (and do!) rust internally ensure there compressors residual pressure valve is properly adjusted, and certainly not bypassed in an effort to reduce the cost and time to fill a tank. And it means that using a basic hand pump where the output pressure is only that of the tank at any particualr point in the filling cycle is a no-no as well!
  • @maccliff2115
    You did answer some questions. Yes you can, but No, its not practical to do so. Thank you for making this video and posting.
  • @shred_meister
    Looking forward to my next season with a mini tank still learning the basics so thankful I got an electric pump
  • @jake44575
    I built my own 3 stage compressor years ago using an old military 3 stage cornelius air force bomber compressor, hooked to a 120 volt motor and pulleys and I could fill my dive tank in about 15 minutes. I ran it through a carbon dive filter and ran it on compressor oil a friend gave me from his fishing boat dive compressor. It worked (and still works) extremely well. I have done many dives with no issues. If you dont have a knack for building things, I believe you can buy a "shoebox" style filler, but I think those run slow and its kind of an all night fill.