Our club has looked at buying a compressor and it's actually not that easy to justify the investment, if you can get your cylinders filled at a reasonable cost. If the club filled members' bottles for a fee, say £3 to £6 a time, is there a liability on the club's part for safety and so on? I bet that isn't covered by the usual insurance, let alone the moral dimension.

Then you have to think about powering the machine, do you choose electric or diesel? The electric ones usually have a running current of 16 amps so there's no way you can just plug them in, they need to be hard wired to a hefty supply. That pretty well negates the idea of members "borrowing" the compressor or taking turns to house it.

On top of that there is the regular servicing and the components for that have to be paid for.

We believe we are better off putting some money into more 300 bar bottles and make sure we always have a couple of full ones in stock. Our air demand is quite substantial as we have at the moment 72 members and we don't charge for air, it's part of your subscription package. I know many clubs charge per fill or a fee per visit for air.