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 glassbox
 
Location: Vancouver Area
Gender: Male
I'm only human.
 |  | Confined Spaces and equipment for such
< on 9/20/2005 4:41 PM >
|  | | | Hey, I'm new here and just starting out. I'm wondering if anyone has ever entered a confined space when they've gone exploring. I have a family member who is a paramedic and he says that he's seen situations when people have gone into enclosed spaces, especially ones made of metal, ie: large tanks and such and the metal has oxidized. The oxygen in the space depletes. One would then need a small oxygen tank to get out.
My question is: Is there anything available that is easy to carry and doesn't way a whole lot?
"What people believe prevails over the truth."
~ Sophocles, The Sons of Aleus |
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desmann
 
Location: NJ
Gender: Male
| |  | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 1 on 9/20/2005 6:25 PM >
| | | | I don't recommend going into unkown confined spaces esp. large tanks. There's too many things in there that an kill you before you even know you were affected. But if you must this may help:
http://www.spareair.com/
I know the voices aren't real... But sometimes they have really good ideas. |
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glassbox
Location: Vancouver Area
Gender: Male
I'm only human.
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 2 on 9/20/2005 7:16 PM >
| | | | Thanks for the info. Just want to be prepared for anything.
"What people believe prevails over the truth."
~ Sophocles, The Sons of Aleus |
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Corvid
    
Location: Oxford, UK
Gender: Male
Master of Illusion!!
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 3 on 9/20/2005 7:54 PM >
| | | | He he, does going down a silo in a rusty winch count as entering a confined space?
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SilentSearch
Location: Cowtown
Gender: Male
My rebellion against the santa cursor! HoHoHo
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 4 on 9/21/2005 4:10 AM >
| | | | Post by desmann
I don't recommend going into unkown confined spaces esp. large tanks. There's too many things in there that an kill you before you even know you were affected. |
desmann is absolutely correct. Confined spaces can be very dangerous whether they are above or below grade. The oxygen can be displaced by gasses that can be neither seen, smelled nor tasted. Just something to keep in mind.
Be safe
SS
Official UE Safety officer and rescue specialist. |
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Random
Location: Richmond, Virginia
Gender: Male
Partially Retired
| |  | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 5 on 9/21/2005 2:00 PM >
| | | | What kind of air mixture would be best for getting out of a situation like that?
I'm considering getting a small tank of air to keep in my pack, considering most of what I do is considered confined spaces. Not metal tanks like mentioned above but it would still be good to have emergency air.
[last edit 9/21/2005 2:02 PM by Random - edited 1 times]
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Ronin House
Gender: Male
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 6 on 9/21/2005 11:09 PM >
| | | | It may be expensive, but a lot of medical supply stores carry oxygen tanks. Almost all of these come with a valve that is numbered 2 to 15; those numbers being the liters of oxygen released per minute. Set at max, one of these could almost certainly save your ass in a bind. But as has been said before, best not to push your luck.
Eternal Flamewar |
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ArmchairExplorer
Location: Vancouver
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 7 on 9/25/2005 4:38 AM >
| | | | Suggestions to improvise gear or go cheap come up far too often on safety-related threads. Sure, you might be able to save a few bucks by improvising free climbing gear, using gas mask filters of dubious reliability, or improvise an emergency oxygen supply for confined space escape, but the ultimate question must be asked:
What's your life worth?
If you're doing confined spaces and you want safety gear, buy a SCBA designed for the job and spend the time to learn how to use it. The life you save may not only be your own but also the life of someone else who has to rescue you in an emergency.
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Dokk
Location: Lewisville, Texas
Gender: Male
| |  | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 8 on 9/25/2005 12:01 PM >
|  | | | Try not to carry oxygen, it can be explosive and dangerous in the wrong situations. Ask any firefighter what he carrys in his tanks and he'll tell you it's air just like what's compressed into scuba tanks. When working on aircraft fuel tanks and I've had to crawl inside the to inspect or seal leaks, we had a mask with an air hose attached to a small motorized pump that would supply outside air. An idea would be some type of tube that would lead to outside the confined space kind of like a super snorkel or something like that.
Dokk
"If I'm gonna get blamed for it, I might as well do it!" |
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Random
Location: Richmond, Virginia
Gender: Male
Partially Retired
| | | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 9 on 9/25/2005 12:27 PM >
| | | | Posted by Dokk
super snorkel |
That brings back memories. I used to clean algae out of pools. We'd use snorkels with a long section of garden hose attached, which was weighted outside of the pool to keep it from sliding in. You'd have to take these crazy long breaths to get any fresh air in.
Someone pointed out the bailout bottles helicopter pilots use to me. They're compact, with five to ten minutes of air and have a built in mouthpiece. The whole package is about the size of a one liter coke. These can be had for sixty dollars on ebay.
[last edit 9/25/2005 12:27 PM by Random - edited 1 times]
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HillbillyHorus
Location: Charlottesville Virginia
Gender: Male
Im in ur government, killin ur d00dz
| | | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 10 on 9/25/2005 7:30 PM >
| | | | What kind of confined spaces you talking about? I go in small drains (like, crawling height) fairly often. I bring some kneepads, rubber boots, and a bike helmet. I've never had problems with oxygen in there because there are tons of side drains and gutter boxes that keep the air circultion decent. If they don't go to anywhere cool after half an hour, I turn back.
You can't fall off a mountain. |
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Hazmat_USMC
Location: Glendale, AZ
Gender: Male
9-11-2001 Never forgive, never forget.
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 11 on 10/4/2005 5:48 AM >
| | | | If crawling in a confined space... I wear a headlamp, gloves, kneepads, and elbow pads. I ususally carry a backpack, to pass this, just tie it around your ankle and drag it, like a drag bag so to speak. If its dirty or smelly, either wear a dust mask or you can put vicks vapor rub on your upper lip to help mask any bad smells.
I would stay away from any areas that lacked oxygen or give me any impression of being unsafe. If that's your game, then take what you need.
[last edit 10/4/2005 5:49 AM by Hazmat_USMC - edited 1 times]
No better friend, no worse enemy.
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Jonsered
Location: Back in New Mexico where I belong
Gender: Male
Dressed for a scarecrow ball.........
| |  | | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 12 on 10/12/2005 4:17 PM >
| | | | OK, I'm reaching way back to scuba diving classes (20+ years) but I seem to recall that oxygen can actually be poisonous under certain conditions. I think thats why scuba guys breath compressed air, and not oxygen. Going down into some locations far enough underground can bring about the conditions I'm trying to describe. I wish I was a little more clear on this one, but I'm sure somebody here can supply the answer.
Go with compressed air, easy to get, easy to refill and not as dangerous in terms of fire.
I have changed my personal exploring ethics code. From now on it will be: "Take only aimed shots, leave only hobo corpses." Copper scrappers, meth heads and homeless beware. The Jonsered cometh among you, bringing fear and dread.
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cpkangaroo
 
Location: Longmont, CO
Gender: Male
| | | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 13 on 10/12/2005 5:44 PM >
| | | | Posted by Jonsered
OK, I'm reaching way back to scuba diving classes (20+ years) but I seem to recall that oxygen can actually be poisonous under certain conditions.
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Yeah, oxygen toxicity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_poisoning)
Buy heroin, it's good! |
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Hobbes
Location: Finland
Gender: Male
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 14 on 10/12/2005 8:29 PM >
| | | | Some divers use Spare Air as backup. Spare Air is small scuba bottle with integrated regulator. Website claims that it gives 57 breaths at surface level (Based on 1.6 liters per breath. The bottle is 0.42 liter size, 200 bar).
I used to play paintball, and I still have my old high pressure air system (Air America Apocalypse) which has 1,5 liter kevlar wrapped alloy bottle with regulator. It's capable of holding 300 bar pressure vs. Spare Air is only 200 bar system.
If you know what you do, you probably could make breathing system out of paintball airsystem, which would give lot more air than Spare Air.
Still I would not recommend to go in any space you might encounter loss of oxygen / dangerous gases.
If you have the money, buy some kind of multigas detector like Draeger MiniWarn.
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SilentSearch
Location: Cowtown
Gender: Male
My rebellion against the santa cursor! HoHoHo
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 15 on 10/12/2005 9:55 PM >
| | | | One other issue if you find a bail out pack or some other compressed air breathing system is, what is the quality/contaminant level of the compressed air you are introducing into your lungs? Scuba and SCBA fill systems have several filters and are regularly checked for their air quality. And, can you get your system refilled?
Also I would highly recommend against a pure oxygen source. If you leave out the toxicity issues, it is also a wonderful support for combustion and your body wont absorb all of it during the gas exchange in your lungs, so you may be exhaling a higher percentage of the oxygen/co2 mixture. (Air is 20-21% oxygen) and you wouldn't want to up the oxygen percentage in the atmosphere of the confined space, just in case there is the occurrence of a spark. (remember the bus fire in Texas)
another $.02 worth of advice 
be safe
SS
Official UE Safety officer and rescue specialist. |
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Pravus
Location: Chicago Area
Gender: Male
Now the two key words for tonight - "caution" and "flammable"...
| |  | | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 16 on 10/13/2005 12:58 AM >
| | | | If your really serious about that I would say screw the air tank and get the multigas detector.. it'll save yer ass before you need an air tank.. and I could see you maybe not realising you in a bad area untill to late and not getting the tank out in time, especially if there are other things goin on
Live to Serve, Serve to Live.. |
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cpkangaroo
Location: Longmont, CO
Gender: Male
| | | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 17 on 10/13/2005 3:54 PM >
| | | | Posted by Pravus
If your really serious about that I would say screw the air tank and get the multigas detector.. it'll save yer ass before you need an air tank.. and I could see you maybe not realising you in a bad area untill to late and not getting the tank out in time, especially if there are other things goin on
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I agree. Unless you're wearing it all the time, an SCBA isn't going to do anything until you realize there's a problem. Which would require some kind of monitoring anyway. You might as well just leave when the alarm goes off. Then you also avoid having to lug around all that extra crap for "breathing". 
Buy heroin, it's good! |
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Rockin_Cj
| | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 18 on 6/3/2006 1:12 AM >
|  | | | I know this subject is dead but I work in a sour gas feild and with confined spaces. I'll post this so if anyone else looks in the future curious of such things this should help.
As said many times by people here, confined spaces are dangerous, I took a course on that (amungst other crap) for my training at my job.
Depending on the vessel, the most immediate danger is escape. A confined space is defined as "an area which regular meanse of entering or exit are not implemented and emergency evacuation may not be practical."
The secondary hazards (belive it or not) are the gasses inside the vessel. Likely if your entering an abandond vessel you wont have to worry about that stuff because when its abandond, by OSH&A rules they HAVE to flush out any hazardous gasses before its left, needless to say, this dosnt mean it could have an oxygen content bellow 19.5% (farther down suffocation will occur) or due to the chemical reaction of rust and certain chemicals chared onto the inside of the vessel, it could still create dangerous gasses.
In all honesty, its not worth your life just to satisfy your curiousity of going in there to check it out, theres a lot that can go wrong and in the workplace people still die even with all the saftey measures and rescue personal sitting there ready to dive in if something does go wrong.
About the personal detectors, those are nice 400+ up puppies so I wouldnt recomend buying one, however you can rent them at saftey stores. If you STILL wanna go in then look at some SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus) gear. Some bigger saftey stores rent this gear out too to personal contractors. You dont need to have a license, just about 30 bucks and youve got 30 minutes of semi-safe exploring. I say semi-safe because your not instructed in its use which is extreemly dangerous.
Either way, if you wanna go ahed with it, rent a gas monitor and some SCBA gear, it wont run you very much and with a little bit of common sense you can make it in, look around and then back out alive, just make sure your careful you dont rip the mask off your face, thats the #1 cause of fatality or injury on the job site while using breathing apparatus.
Either way, be safe and have fun! A lot of the vessels are kinda neat to explore in around and Ive been in a few vessels myself at the job.
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Pravus
Location: Chicago Area
Gender: Male
Now the two key words for tonight - "caution" and "flammable"...
| | | | Re: Confined Spaces and equipment for such
<Reply # 19 on 6/3/2006 7:11 AM >
| | | | Actually you could go the route of a closed circuit rebreather and get ALOT longer time per tank, I think I saw on hackaday or something a guy converted SCUBA gear into one for a few hundred or something..
Live to Serve, Serve to Live.. |
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