Lots of figures being bandied about here:
Silverbike: 600+ at a site on the south cost (if you mean a DF site) is an exaggeration. The largest DF site on the south coast is Southampton and the max they cater for on a Saturday in the summer is 400, about 250-300 is normal for this time of year. We've never had 600 players at Southampton.
Baby Dave: Total DF sites at present is 20 not 26,
Gurkha, you need to do your sums again based on 20. I won't divulge our spend per head tho, you can guess at that
Re the Co2 cylinder: We only have pin valves at DF and we don't fill players own cylinders due to H & S reasons. Therefore i think it perfectly reasonable that our gas filler didn't recognise your G/F's on/off valve, he wouldn't need to know what one of these was in order to do his job properly.
And Robbo, yes, 300 is an average sized DF centre. You can choose to believe it or not, but it doesn't alter the fact.
For those of you looking at setup costs vs profit, you also have to take into account the costs of replacing the equipment regularly too: Goggles pots and hoppers all need replacing every 3-6 months (and lenses more often than that) and the guns have about a 2.5- 3 yr lifespan (considering how much we use them) before they become less economical to repair than replace.
Re the Ticket sellers, lets put that into perspective too. Most complaints that hit these boards about IPG sellers go something along the lines of 'They didn't know anything about tourney paintball and didn't recognise the paintball clothing i was wearing'. Whether or not the ticket sellers know anything about tourney ball or recognise your Eclipse hoody means bugger all. They are selling tickets for a woodland, rental -only site and therefore only need to know what those sites have to offer. They don't masquerade as paintballers, they do what it says on the tin, sell tickets to a rental public.
I totally agree their knowledge of tourney-ball or electro markers is zilch. From reading this and other DF threads on here, i realise that's about as much as most P8ntballer posters know about Delta Force. But that's OK, that's not a diss... Why should i expect you to know about what hoppers/goggles/guns/cylinders DF use, what colour jackets the marshals wear, what we serve for lunch and how much it costs, how many games of paintball are played in a day and how long they last, what scenarios there are etc etc. If you're only into tourney ball It would be a waste of your time finding out this info as you'd never need to use that knowledge at the Masters, Millennium, NSPL or whatever league you play in.
Of course from time to time there are genuine complaints about ticket sellers and i'm not saying these never happen, but how many genuine complaints do you think there are? 20 a year? 50? 100? Let's be really generous and say there were 500 genuine complaints a year (and i have no idea). 500 complaints would only represent 0.01% of tickets sold, meaning that 99.9% have not resulted in a complaint and so, one would presume are happy customers. Also remember that most complaints are amicably resolved anyway.
With regards Health and Safety, i believe DF have a (fully implemented) H & S Policy which far far exceeds many other operators, including some who are affiliated to the UKPSF. I have marshalled at other companies sites before joining DF and only at DF have i seen health and safety implemented. Let me fill you in on DF Health and Safety: My work is closely related to the H&S side of things, in relation to Co2, and now branching into compressed air.
5 years ago we withdrew all of our DOT cylinders. MANY paintball operators in the UK still use DOT cylinders today! I know this because i have personally seen them at their sites in the past year. This doesn't hit the boards, does it?
We have scrapped ALL of our Pi marked Chinese TUV cylinders because we realised 6 months after getting a batch of 1500 of them, that there was a possibility of valves coming unscrewed on a percentage of them. We didn't scrap the few that were dud, we withdrew the lot and dumped them, without a refund from the suppliers. Some UK Operators are still using TUV cylinders. They aren't flamed are they and marshals continue to work with these bottles oblivious to the dangers.
We have scrapped all of our CATALINA cylinders (although they were all in test and valid specs) because we saw evidence of a couple of other paintball operators in the UK who had Catalina cylinders rupture under pressure. We spoke to the experts who examined these cylinders and then made the decision to withdraw them, as a result. Catalina cylinders have a thinner bottle wall than Luxfers, which are the only cylinder we use now. This didn't hit the boards tho did it -'Delta Force invest £££££'s in new co2 cylinders to make sure staff and customers play in safety', no i think i missed that thread.
We have a withdrawal programme for our co2 cylinders which means they are pulled out of service after just half of their initial test period. We never re-test cylinders, we just send them to the scrapyard. I can tell you exactly how many of each batch of cylinders we have. I have records of each cylinder i have fitted a valve to and when. I have records of every damaged bottle and from what centre it came from. How many other sites even care what date their bottles are? Do they care for their marshals or players safety? Isn't this an example of profit over safety?
We refuse to buy cylinders from China at half the cost of British made Luxfers, because, amazingly, we DO give a toss about H & S. Hmmm.. how many chinese cylinders are on other sites? The Dive industry now refuse to use Chinese aluminium because it has so many flaws in the alloy. Did you know that? We bothered to find out, and here's a surprise, we take it seriously. The aluminium our cylinders are made from comes from Canada, which is one of the highest grades of aluminium available. I bet your site hasn't a clue what aluminium your cylinders are made from or why they should care??
No Df cylinder is more than 3 and a half years old. Every bottle is pi marked. Every month all df managers inspect their entire stock of co2 bottles for scrapes and gouges and return any damaged ones to me. I have a precision gauge, custom made for us by Luxfer which measures damage down to .01 of a mm. I don't know of ANY other site who has one of these. Luxfer tell me they have never been asked to make one before. How do other operators measure damage to the wall of thier co2 cylinders? I doubt that many can even tell you the piece of legislation that covers this or what the maximum allowable damage to a cylinder wall is, let alone have paid £120 to BUY the legislation form British Standards. BTW, the maximum allowable gouge damage to a bottle wall depends on the cylinders design spec minimum wall thickness, but it's about 0.5mm on average across all makes of cylinder, although for Luxfer it's 0.69mm. Can you gauge 0.5mm deep accurately by eye?? No, i didn't think so. I wonder how many potential accidents are waiting to happen on other operators sites?
Every Co2 valve is fitted by ME, no-one else fits co2 valves. I have top of the range torque wrenches and stop/go gauges which are calibrated at least once a year and i measure every valve thread and evey bottle thread for +/-tolerance before i fit every valve. I have SEEN other centres screw in valves by hand! I will work until midnight ( and often have) to get a batch of cylinders ready rather than send them out without measuring the thread tolerance.
This is JUST CO2 H&S. We have people like me working in every area of H&S to the same standards... So don't try to tell me DF is NOT one of the safest places to play paintball in the uk! How many accidents have we had in the past 5 years, apart from falls on-field?
Don't flame us for turning away your business when we say no to your air tanks, flame the people who take your money and don't give a flying fcuk that you might blow the guy's head off who's standing next to you because they want your money!
Silverbike: 600+ at a site on the south cost (if you mean a DF site) is an exaggeration. The largest DF site on the south coast is Southampton and the max they cater for on a Saturday in the summer is 400, about 250-300 is normal for this time of year. We've never had 600 players at Southampton.
Baby Dave: Total DF sites at present is 20 not 26,
Gurkha, you need to do your sums again based on 20. I won't divulge our spend per head tho, you can guess at that
Re the Co2 cylinder: We only have pin valves at DF and we don't fill players own cylinders due to H & S reasons. Therefore i think it perfectly reasonable that our gas filler didn't recognise your G/F's on/off valve, he wouldn't need to know what one of these was in order to do his job properly.And Robbo, yes, 300 is an average sized DF centre. You can choose to believe it or not, but it doesn't alter the fact.
For those of you looking at setup costs vs profit, you also have to take into account the costs of replacing the equipment regularly too: Goggles pots and hoppers all need replacing every 3-6 months (and lenses more often than that) and the guns have about a 2.5- 3 yr lifespan (considering how much we use them) before they become less economical to repair than replace.
Re the Ticket sellers, lets put that into perspective too. Most complaints that hit these boards about IPG sellers go something along the lines of 'They didn't know anything about tourney paintball and didn't recognise the paintball clothing i was wearing'. Whether or not the ticket sellers know anything about tourney ball or recognise your Eclipse hoody means bugger all. They are selling tickets for a woodland, rental -only site and therefore only need to know what those sites have to offer. They don't masquerade as paintballers, they do what it says on the tin, sell tickets to a rental public.
I totally agree their knowledge of tourney-ball or electro markers is zilch. From reading this and other DF threads on here, i realise that's about as much as most P8ntballer posters know about Delta Force. But that's OK, that's not a diss... Why should i expect you to know about what hoppers/goggles/guns/cylinders DF use, what colour jackets the marshals wear, what we serve for lunch and how much it costs, how many games of paintball are played in a day and how long they last, what scenarios there are etc etc. If you're only into tourney ball It would be a waste of your time finding out this info as you'd never need to use that knowledge at the Masters, Millennium, NSPL or whatever league you play in.
Of course from time to time there are genuine complaints about ticket sellers and i'm not saying these never happen, but how many genuine complaints do you think there are? 20 a year? 50? 100? Let's be really generous and say there were 500 genuine complaints a year (and i have no idea). 500 complaints would only represent 0.01% of tickets sold, meaning that 99.9% have not resulted in a complaint and so, one would presume are happy customers. Also remember that most complaints are amicably resolved anyway.
With regards Health and Safety, i believe DF have a (fully implemented) H & S Policy which far far exceeds many other operators, including some who are affiliated to the UKPSF. I have marshalled at other companies sites before joining DF and only at DF have i seen health and safety implemented. Let me fill you in on DF Health and Safety: My work is closely related to the H&S side of things, in relation to Co2, and now branching into compressed air.
5 years ago we withdrew all of our DOT cylinders. MANY paintball operators in the UK still use DOT cylinders today! I know this because i have personally seen them at their sites in the past year. This doesn't hit the boards, does it?
We have scrapped ALL of our Pi marked Chinese TUV cylinders because we realised 6 months after getting a batch of 1500 of them, that there was a possibility of valves coming unscrewed on a percentage of them. We didn't scrap the few that were dud, we withdrew the lot and dumped them, without a refund from the suppliers. Some UK Operators are still using TUV cylinders. They aren't flamed are they and marshals continue to work with these bottles oblivious to the dangers.
We have scrapped all of our CATALINA cylinders (although they were all in test and valid specs) because we saw evidence of a couple of other paintball operators in the UK who had Catalina cylinders rupture under pressure. We spoke to the experts who examined these cylinders and then made the decision to withdraw them, as a result. Catalina cylinders have a thinner bottle wall than Luxfers, which are the only cylinder we use now. This didn't hit the boards tho did it -'Delta Force invest £££££'s in new co2 cylinders to make sure staff and customers play in safety', no i think i missed that thread.
We have a withdrawal programme for our co2 cylinders which means they are pulled out of service after just half of their initial test period. We never re-test cylinders, we just send them to the scrapyard. I can tell you exactly how many of each batch of cylinders we have. I have records of each cylinder i have fitted a valve to and when. I have records of every damaged bottle and from what centre it came from. How many other sites even care what date their bottles are? Do they care for their marshals or players safety? Isn't this an example of profit over safety?
We refuse to buy cylinders from China at half the cost of British made Luxfers, because, amazingly, we DO give a toss about H & S. Hmmm.. how many chinese cylinders are on other sites? The Dive industry now refuse to use Chinese aluminium because it has so many flaws in the alloy. Did you know that? We bothered to find out, and here's a surprise, we take it seriously. The aluminium our cylinders are made from comes from Canada, which is one of the highest grades of aluminium available. I bet your site hasn't a clue what aluminium your cylinders are made from or why they should care??
No Df cylinder is more than 3 and a half years old. Every bottle is pi marked. Every month all df managers inspect their entire stock of co2 bottles for scrapes and gouges and return any damaged ones to me. I have a precision gauge, custom made for us by Luxfer which measures damage down to .01 of a mm. I don't know of ANY other site who has one of these. Luxfer tell me they have never been asked to make one before. How do other operators measure damage to the wall of thier co2 cylinders? I doubt that many can even tell you the piece of legislation that covers this or what the maximum allowable damage to a cylinder wall is, let alone have paid £120 to BUY the legislation form British Standards. BTW, the maximum allowable gouge damage to a bottle wall depends on the cylinders design spec minimum wall thickness, but it's about 0.5mm on average across all makes of cylinder, although for Luxfer it's 0.69mm. Can you gauge 0.5mm deep accurately by eye?? No, i didn't think so. I wonder how many potential accidents are waiting to happen on other operators sites?
Every Co2 valve is fitted by ME, no-one else fits co2 valves. I have top of the range torque wrenches and stop/go gauges which are calibrated at least once a year and i measure every valve thread and evey bottle thread for +/-tolerance before i fit every valve. I have SEEN other centres screw in valves by hand! I will work until midnight ( and often have) to get a batch of cylinders ready rather than send them out without measuring the thread tolerance.
This is JUST CO2 H&S. We have people like me working in every area of H&S to the same standards... So don't try to tell me DF is NOT one of the safest places to play paintball in the uk! How many accidents have we had in the past 5 years, apart from falls on-field?
Don't flame us for turning away your business when we say no to your air tanks, flame the people who take your money and don't give a flying fcuk that you might blow the guy's head off who's standing next to you because they want your money!
