Plumbing your shop for gas

[Rambozo]

How much welding do you plan on doing?

I'd bet you will have way more headaches with a hard plumbed system than just having local bottles.

The only places I have ever seen hard plumbed welding gasses are large manufacturing facilities that have argon stored as refrigerated liquid in a central location.

If you are the only user and you aren't welding 8 hrs every day, I don;t see the benefits. Just opens you up for way more potential gas issues.

Your right it is not UV stable but most plastic are not UV resistant but up in the now cold part of the world copper pipe outside with water in it will split but the PEX will not. With this ice storm we are having and power out for a week the PEX will hold up but anyone with copper pipe will be calling the plumber. I still like the cart and the bottle with it, some of my carts I put two bottles one 25/75 and one 100% Argon.

I totally agree, unless it's a school, or multi welding station shop, I don't see much advantage, and lots of disadvantages. I do like to have a small bottle around for portability and large ones for economy.

I knew PEX would resist splitting from freezing, but the way the manufacturers talk, they make it sound like it's still possible. If it lasts where you are, I would say it's pretty much freeze proof. Since I'm not freeze proof, I'll probably never have a chance to test that out. Still 81° Christmas is kinda ODD. Unless your in Australia.

[RichardH]

If you are the only user and you aren't welding 8 hrs every day, I don;t see the benefits. Just opens you up for way more potential gas issues.

Yeah, I see your point. No, I don't plan on welding that heavily, and if I did it'd probably make sense to just roll out the large cylinder.

Thanks to all for the comments! This gives me something to chew on for a while. There are definitely some things I didn't think about.

Cheers,
Richard

[RichardH]

I do like to have a small bottle around for portability and large ones for economy.

Does it make sense to "refill" the small bottles from the large cylinder? I know you'd never get a true fill on the little bottle, since it's just equalizing the two tanks, but you'd only pay to fill the large bottle at the cheaper rate.

[Rambozo]

Does it make sense to "refill" the small bottles from the large cylinder? I know you'd never get a true fill on the little bottle, since it's just equalizing the two tanks, but you'd only pay to fill the large bottle at the cheaper rate.

I plan to do just that, one of these days. I believe Kempy has a transfer booster pump so he can get full fills from that setup.