where did you call Doug?

depending on how long it takes to use the tank up, buying it is a lot cheeper. you figure if you have a high usage and use two tanks per year leasing it is going to cost you about 195/year for gass, if you own the tank and pay 50.00 which I think is high it is only going to cost you 100 per year. at one tank it is even worse. tank rentals only would work if you are using more than 7 tanks a year

Steve

Leasing for $125/year is pretty expensive. I bought my tank from Oxi-Pro, if you buy one of their tanks you can do the exchange option, you can rent too but they told me it's much cheaper just to buy it. I paid $200 for the tank and there is no additional charges each year.

Several different places.

Agreed sounds expensive. Im sure he said that the cost every year for lease plus gas but I had better check. I do like your deal.

Couple of years ago I had to get my bottle hydro tested since it was time expired. Took it to Kelowna to a 'safety' supply center that does mostly fire extinguishing equipment fill ups & is qualified to test the bottles. No one in Vernon could do the hydro test. Don't recall the cost, but with the hydro testing & fill up it was over $100. The Praxair guys here in Vernon would have shipped the bottle to the coast to get filled. Ridiculous. Before that I had it filled at a paintball supply retail shop in Vernon that has since gone out of business. Not sure that guy knew what he was doing since the paintball canisters are much smaller. I think he probably over pressurized it. Last fill up was here in Vernon at a local gun shop that has a qualified dude to look after it. He charged me $15 cash.

I don't have a calcium reactor, I use my CO2 bottle to carbonate water, soda stream concentrate for pop & rotgut home brew beer. Good for another 3 years before the next hydro test.

thats even pricy, a hydro and new valve is 35 bucks, heck I only pay 50 bucks for filling my 180 cuft welding bottle and thats a try mix which is more expensive than strait co2. I know the cost is jacked a little for smaller bottles as the hook up time is the same, i'll check and see what a couple places here charge. in victoria I used to get it charged at a fire extinguisher place for 30ish bucks.

Steve

Searched through my financial records and found the transaction. Outfit in Kelowna is/was Kost Fire Safety, now part of Mircom Engineered Systems. I remember the gentleman who looked after me saying that the price of CO2 had recently gone up (this was April 2012) and that his business was the only one in the Okanagan qualified to hydro test CO2 bottles. Total cost to hydro test & fill 10lb bottle was $103.04. Couldn't get same day service & had to leave it for pickup a week or so later, since it's a busy place. Maybe he was feeding my a line, dunno, but I did a lot of searching until I found that place. Thankfully I can get cheaper refills at the local gun shop here in Vernon until the next time the bottle needs the hydro test. If you can find a significantly better deal in Kamloops for hydro testing, I'd be interested. 40 minutes to Kelowna or 1 hour to Kamloops, fuel money pretty close to the same. With no apparent competition in the area, I guess they can charge what they want. I had to chuckle as well at the 'price increase' in CO2, thinking to myself I'm doing them a favour to take it off their hands since everywhere else large corporations are paying for their CO2 emissions & or buying carbon credits. It's a strange world.

hi Mike, I did some checking today, the place I bought my bottle and 2 others have closed up here in town, so that leaves only a couple places now so I have to look some more. another thing I found out is if you rent or buy a bottle from places like air liquid they stamp there name on the bottle collar which means you have to take it back to them for filling and othe shops can get finned for filling them. if there is no company name stamp on the bottle then you can go anywhere, but never let them exchange the bottle, always wait while they fill it so you get your bottle back.

KMS tools here sells unstamped bottles, but they cannot fill strait co2 (which I don't understand as they fill co2 argon mix) they figure a 20 lb CO2 bottle to buy (they have to bring them in) is close to 200.00 bucks and they can't fill it so you would be taking it to one of the other two places in town to get it filled, so I have to look into thoes yet also.

Steve

For &&^%$ sakes. You would think I could find a place t fill my co2 tank. Is that so hard to do. Type in for co2 and I get a 100 places to fill propane. Good gawd, what part does google not understand.

:bad-word:

So I guess anyone on Cannreef refills co2 in Kamloops?

I haven't read the whole thread, but aren't there any welding supply places where you are... like Barry Hamill?

Hmmm. Not sure. Will look for them. Thanks Warren