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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Michael worden) ist
As reported (Rundbrief 05/2020), we've stopped buying bubbly water at the supermarket during Corona times and switched to a soda maker. Now, however, the scoundrels of the SodaStream company are demanding twenty dollars for their tiny CO2 cartridges, which only work for a month a and then go silent. I had already mentioned in a previous newsletter that ingenious tinkerers on Youtube have demonstrated how to convert the soda maker to use larger gas bottles, which can be bought in stores for welding supplies.
Due to the shortage in CO2 production during the coronavirus pandemic, welding supply stores had stopped selling their gas tanks to private customers. Fast forward two years, and production is now flowing again. So recently, I bought a five-pound CO2 gas cylinder from the welding store "Airgas" in San Francisco and quickly connected it to the adapter cable I had bought from Amazon in preparation. And it's flowing like crazy! According to my calculations, this gas cylinder will pump enough for our relatively low demand until the universe turns into a glowing fireball, so I'll never have to buy cartridges again.
You could also assemble the Amazon adapter yourself cheaper, from parts available at the hardware store, but I didn't care about a few bucks, and with pneumatic systems I prefer to play it safe. Incidentally, I also bought the gas cylinder at the Airgas store when I bought the gas, but only afterwards I realized that it is much cheaper on Amazon! Beginner's mistake! Anyway, as long as it keeps bubbling, that's fine.
If you want to refill an empty gas cylinder with new CO2 at some point, the welding shop won't do it like a propane gas station where you bring your own tank to be refilled. As everyone knows in the propane business, only fools buy those overpriced pre-filled Blue Rhino propane tanks! With CO2, however, you don't have a choice, the welding shop only sells already filled, and thus used, gas cylinders! This means that you bring in your own, shiny, newly bought but empty cyclinder, and receive a filled one, possibly used on plumber master Rührich on construction sites, pushed around for years featuring a thousand dents! But as I said, probably not in this life. If so, the newsletter will of course report live from the refill run.
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