You Wont See Me wrote: A-5 08 wrote: just get hand warmers that have those penquins on them and duct tape them to your tank then put a tank cover over it, or a sock Not a good idea. The heat in those cannot be regulated.

What do you suggest?

Save yerself the trouble...get the smallest HPA tank 47/3000 and then you dont have to worry bout keepin yer co2 tank warm.

Kevin Z wrote: Not a Good Idea The pressure inside a CO2 tank is dependent on temperature. Not how full it is, but temperature. If you get the tank hot, you will at the very least blow the burst disk, maybe create a dangerous condition. If you want to play in the cold and are having problems with CO2, I recommend switching to HPA

But for those who can't afford HPA and/or want to stay with CO2, what would you recommend so that you don't have problems?

a battery powered sock over the tank will be like your tank on a hot day. as long as its not exposed to heat in excess of 100 degrees, its fine. i know those socks dont get that hot, and with the cold air, it wont be at its maximum heat.

a small hpa tank is great, but if you dont play at a field, your screwed with efficiancy.

Like I said before, get a 47/3000 HPA tank, the cheapest on the market is a 3A on Ebay.

And if you think bout it, if the person can afford to get a marker that costs over $100 then why cant he afford a 47/3000 tank that usually sells less than $70?

PBinfonater wrote: wait this co2 thing confuse me but why would this little bit of heat matter. i know it would expand, but... (now go with me on this here im not real sure) but wouldnt it work just like normal air... k u fill a tank up with normal air and lets say it is 20 degress well ur gonna get more air in there at 20 then lets say 80 degress if they were both filled up to lets say 1000psi. now heat that tank up ur at 80 degress and the air has majorly expanded. well that could be a problem... but lets say u fill that tank up at 80 degress and now u bring it down to 20 degress now the air has shrunk and if u warm it up it wont matter cause its already below what it was filled up at,,, and im sure that his co2 tanks arent filled in 20 degree weather but more like a 75 degree heated store right (god i hope that made sense and does co2 work like that or is it completly different than air?)

Ok, there are a couple of problems with your statement.

First, if you had some sort of regulated heat source that could keep the outside of your tank at 80 degrees, then everything you said is correct.  But these "hand warmers" and "electric socks" are not regulated.  If you put them around a 20 degree tank, it may bring it up to 50 degrees if you're shooting and cooling the tank down... or it could bring it up to 120 degrees if you're not shooting - even on a cold day (here's a chart that displays some of the dynamics of co2:  http://www.warpig.com/paintball/technical/gasses/co2pv.gif - http://www.warpig.com/paintball/technical/gasses/co2pv.gif

You can see that the pressure increases drastically with a little change in temperature.  Pure CO2 does react the same way as air, but just in different magnitudes.  Air (or pure Nitrogen - air is 70% nitrogen) does not react this violently to changes in "normal temperatures" (sorry, I don't have the phase chart of Nitrogen to show you).

Second, CO2 is filled by weight, not pressure - so they will put the same amount of co2 if filled in 20 deg or 80 deg weather (although, you are right, it will have different pressures - 400 or 900 psi respectively).

(something to think about...)

Ok, I understand that CO2's chemical properties of expansion are very touchy when you heat it. I've been thinking about using the hand warmers now for a long time and when i searched for it on here, i realized that the fact is that they probably get too hot and are unregulated which creates a lot of problems with using them as bottle warmers. (I read the package on one and it said the max temp was up to 140*)

Now, a few of my ideas. First, in order to monitor the temperature of the warmer & bottle why not use a small thermometer that can be attached to the tank or warmer. Or, use a pressure gauge on the CO2 tank to monitor the pressure inside. When pressure or temperature (Since they are directly proportional) reach levels which are unreasonable, you can remove the heater. Obviously this creates the issue of frequently checking pressures/temps all the time during the game which might be impractical.

To reduce the number of times you might have to check the temp/pressure, you might think about making something that will spread the heat from the heater all over the bottle through a conducting metal. I have to do some more research on this to find what might work the best, but placing the heater on the metal and letting the metal conduct the heat over the entire bottle might create better results. Also, if the temp always goes too high, you might be able to either switch metals to a less conductive one, or place an insulator between the heater and the metal or bottle to remove some of the heat energy there. I'm going to do some more research and i'll post my findings on it here later.

Another idea is to use a bottle warmer from an automotive nitrous oxide kit. They are made to keep a NO2 bottle around 85* which places NO2 at around 900-950psi. CO2 @ 85* is approx 1000psi which might be alright to use. This is what i'm looking at:

http://www.holley.com/HiOctn/ProdLine/Products/NOS/NOSCA/BttlHeat.html - http://www.holley.com/HiOctn/ProdLine/Products/NOS/NOSCA/Btt lHeat.html

Obviously, you would have to do some modifications to be able to use this on your bottle on the field and have a reliable powersource, but its just an idea. I don't know how practical it would be though.

evil_fingers wrote: Save yerself the trouble...get the smallest HPA tank 47/3000 and then you dont have to worry bout keepin yer co2 tank warm.

yeah thats an OK idea except that you will get as many shots as that from a 14 oz co2 bottle

jjclown23 wrote: evil_fingers wrote: Save yerself the trouble...get the smallest HPA tank 47/3000 and then you dont have to worry bout keepin yer co2 tank warm. yeah thats an OK idea except that you will get as many shots as that from a 14 oz co2 bottle

Agreed. I don't have all the cash to put into a decent sized HPA tank, and i don't play all that much in the winter to make it completely necessary. Plus i just like trying to figure out how to make the things i already have work better.

BTW, this is the thermometer i was thinking of using:
http://www.homedepot.com/prel80/HDUS/EN_US/diy_main/pg_diy.jsp?CNTTYPE=PROD_META&CNTKEY=misc%2fsearchResults.jsp&BV_SessionID=@@@@0922373702.1100969216@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdhaddddmhhddmcgelceffdfgidgmn.0&MID=9876 - Stick-on Thermometer

Cant we simplify this?

1.co2 is very unstable gas, dont add anything that cannot be controlled consistantly, such as heating.

2.there is nothing you can do to be able to accurately predict want co2 will do in your tank because of all the variables involved [temperature, rof-lets face it, you dont concentrate on what you are doing while getting shot at, ect.]

3. save your money and buy a hpa tank