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Old 2007-12-04, 5:33pm
jgraff jgraff is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 29, 2007
Location: SF Bay Area
Posts: 213
Default First time buyer of oxygen tanks

I haven't seen this issue dealt with in depth and I thought I'd bring it up. I recently acquired a duel gas torch and I started out on my quest to find oxygen for the torch.

I had heard that you can get oxygen from medical supply companies and welding supplies. The first places I started calling were the local full service pharmacies, the one's that I knew supplied wheel chairs and hospital beds and such. They referred me to a medical oxygen supply place who told me that I needed a prescription to get medical oxygen. After contacting a few other medical supply places I concluded that medical wasn't the place for me.

I went to OSH and other hardware stores and other than the small tanks that are sold with oxy/acetyline setups they didn't carry any oxygen.

I then started calling welding supply places. None of them sold oxygen, everything else for welding but not gasses.

Then I did a yahoo yellow pages search for oxygen which only pulled up medical supply places.

Next I tried "gas" under yahoo. I found several places that supplied various gasses. Some to medical and some to the semiconductor industry (big here) and some for other scientific research.

When I called the semiconductor and scientific research places they told me that they sold 99% pure oxygen (I think medical is 98% pure), it was far more expensive than I probably wanted to pay and that what I was looking for was industrial grade oxygen.

The search that finally worked for me was
yahoo, yellow pages, Business to Business > Manufacturing and Industrial Supplies > Chemicals and Allied Products > Gases and the phone book yellow pages under

Gas - Industrial & Medical, Cylinder & Bulk

When I started calling the hits on the yahoo and phone book I found people who were perfectly willing to supply me with tanked oxygen. Of the two places I found one would deliver to my house and to my backyard! The other I had to pick up on site but they were nearby.

After finding a place that would sell me the oxygen I had two other things to think about.

How big of a tank do you want?
I have no idea where there is a chart for oxygen tanks. When I search for this information they talk about D-size tanks and E-size tanks. The oxygen places don't talk about the tanks in these sizes. I told them I wanted a tank about four feet tall (small enough for me to move around). The first place said that meant an "80" the second place said I needed a "125", 125 being the larger of the two tanks.

Rent or own?
When I first started this quest I thought, like my propane tank, I should buy the tank and keep refilling it. The one quote I got for this was to buy the "80" was $195 with $38 refills. When trying to get a quote from the second place they mentioned renting the tank. This is when I found nirvana. Both places said they'd rent me the tank for around $10 a month and refills were around $35. The place that would deliver to my house said the refill was actually a tank swapout.

The final hurdle that I have to jump is to get a credit application approved by the oxygen supply place. To rent the tank I have to have an account with them. The credit application wants my bank account number and social security number, but curiously not my credit card number. They claim this credit check for $10 a month will take five days (my gym membership for considerably more money was instant).

At this point I am about a week away from using my new torch but the end is in site (assuming I ordered the right hoses, regulators, clamps and flashback arrestors).

I can't wait to melt bigger glass!

jgraff

Last edited by jgraff; 2007-12-04 at 11:07pm. Reason: spelling mistakes
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