A hundred fills at the dive centre £700, it would be cheaper to throw away the compressor and buy a new one if it went wrong!!!!!
ps that £700 dues not include fuel to get there.
A hundred fills at the dive centre £700, it would be cheaper to throw away the compressor and buy a new one if it went wrong!!!!!
ps that £700 dues not include fuel to get there.
Like anything else your personal circumstances are what makes or breaks the cost, by the time I pay for fuel it costs me about £12-£13 per cyl fill but I probably only fill it once a year.
At that rate even the cheapest on the bay would take 10-15 years to break even, & that's allowing for cylinder test costs,
OTOH for someone who's getting their cyl filled every other month It might pay for itself in 2-3 years, assuming it lasts that long
if you have facebook this is the group to look at PCP Compressors & Tanks, "The Good, Bad and Ugly"
I based that on 60 fills per bottle with is about what I expect for my gun, it's only an estimate though so yes, the maths is a bit iffy, but there's a lot of variables and it doesn't need to be that accurate really.
I just worked back from the compressor price. Say £300 inc P&P
I pay £7 a fill for 300Bar 12L, some people get it for £3, some have to pay £10+ then there's fuel, so £7 seems to be a happy median.
£300 / £7 = 42.9 = 43
So you can at that estimate fill the 12L tank 43 times for the cost of the compressor.
At 60 fills per tank you get 43 * 60 = 2580
Even if you estimate for 45 fills per tank you still get 1935
So given the number of assumptions & estimates I think 2000-2500 refills of the rifle is a pretty fair figure for the purpose of this discussion.
It gets better if you compare to a manual pump, which would be £80-£150 and exhausting work, certainly not recommended for the start of a shooting session. Coupled with the manual pump giving a comparable quality of air it's a lot more tempting.
Do you have to fill a Bottle then use that to fill a rifle?
If you can directly fill the rifle cylinder, then you save the price of a dive bottle.
I will let other work out the maths for that.
The cost of the cylinder has not been included
It's comparing the cost of refilling a cylinder you already own, to buying a pump which then saves the refill costs.
Some people DO need to fill a cylinder because they only shoot away from home & need to refill the rifle during the day (& in that case the cylinder still needs to be tested)
What I do not know is whether these pumps provide DRY air, certainly they don't have filter packs built in, although they sell them at about £160,
so I suspect they might just use a centrifugal/cyclone moisture trap which will reduce moisture content, but is far from DRY.