Excluding CO2 & disposables there are 3 main areas to choose from:
Steel 3000psi cylinders
Fibre wrapped 4500psi cylinders
Stako 4500psi cylinders
Steel ones can be bought new from £40, fibre wrapped & Stakos from £150
Stakos have been blamed for some accidents - but from the general evidence these cases may have been due to oil and flash explosions.
Stako cylinders can only be used for a 5 year period from manufacture.
Fibre wrap cylinders have a mximum 15 year life from manufacture, but have to be tested every 5 years.
Steel cylinders have no final use date, but have to be tested every 5 years.
Testing a cylinder costs about £25, but gets more expensive when adding on postage if you cannot hand it over and collect it afterwards. It is easier to handover to HPAC at an event and collect at a subsequent event. It may be possible to arrange testing through a painball retailer or your local site. Dive shops can usually also arrange testing.
If you add the price of testing and work out the lifetime cost then steel cyliders become the best value of air to the £.
Provided you can get cylinders tested without the cost of postage:
A fibre cylinder at £150 in 2010 will require testing in 2015 and 2020 and will end its life in 2025. (Life cost = 150+25+25 = £200, or about £13 per year)
A 2010 steel cylinder tested until 2025 would have cost 40+25+25 = £90, or about £6 per year. It can continue to be tested and the average cost drops.
If you decide to not bother testing you can buy a new steel bottle every 5 years at an average cost of about £8 per year. This is cheaper than a fibre cylinder, and has the option of testing a cylinder enabling you to have a spare or passing to another player.
In the 'credit crunch' steel cylinders win. But the advantages of fibre wrapped cylinders are they are lighter, hold more air than the equivalent sized 3000psi when pressurised at 4500psi, and have the option of being a bigger cylinder which also means more air. The value in each of these can vary by the individual. An important thing to remember though is to try and match the air capacity you carry to the paint you carry. (Unless you can borrow paint in game)
At many sites you can only fill at 3000 psi, and if playing games for about 15 minutes you should not exhaust the air.
I in fact have a fibre cylinder and two steel cylinders. These give me the ability to fill all 3 and if there are queues at the fill station I can swap them and get straight into the game - or I can lend them out with markers.
As I play in the woods as opposed to speedball, and with a remote line then weight is not an issue to me. What I can do though is at a scenario game is not worry about my air level
im a girl! im weak! hahaha
