Episode: 4262
Title: HPR4262: DIY C02
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4262/hpr4262.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:10:42

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4262 for Tuesday 3 December 2024.
Today's show is entitled DIY.
It is hosted by Operator and is about 10 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, quick chat and update on DIY C02.
I'm a little bit nervous that I wrote a radio with your host operator.
I'd actually had a check to see if I hadn't already uploaded this, but I did the whole DIY
CO2 thing.
I'll talk about that.
Post, COVID, buying sodas.
We usually buy the leader.
We don't necessarily buy the cans all that often.
But man, Coke went, everything went up, and it hasn't really come back down.
Doing some chores here, so I'm just going to be trying to be as quiet as I can.
But yeah, just way too expensive.
The whole setup is like 60 bucks.
You can get them used off of a junk yard or something.
You can get the CO2 tank or any kind of tank used in the Philadelphia CO2.
I just bought one that was food grade ready.
You never know.
You can get some military surplus, you know, crazy tank that's got, you know, God knows
what it is.
But I'll say you can get them for pretty cheap from a junk yard.
So anyways, it's like a three pound.
I'll see you this one.
And you start collecting two leader bottles.
The next step is to put it in line like a sodas dream.
Well, this is a seven pound, seven pound, three gallon, I think.
Seven pounds.
Five pounds, Jesus.
That's a five pound thing.
And I have gone through, where is the pressure?
Oh, yeah.
Actually I've gone to a significant amount.
I've probably made, I don't know, 50.
Or so I've been burning through it.
Yeah, I bought it at a thousand.
And it's now at six, seven, eight, nine.
So six thousand, six hundred.
So I'm actually doing a lot more than I thought I could.
So I do a 45 PSI.
You buy the kit, you get the CO2 tank.
And then you get a regulator that's got the pressure.
And then it shows you how much it's in the tank.
You don't really have to have the whole full blown regulator with the...
All that you could get away with whatever.
But it's like, you know, 20 bucks for the thing.
And you can adjust the pressure easily.
And it's got a lockout.
Like a lockout tightening thing.
So you can keep it from whatever.
And then the other part that sold is the attachment for the top of the two leader bottle.
And that was a little bit escaping because I'm done.
And what you can do with that is you can cut off a piece of the tubing
and put that over the top.
So when you put it inside of the two leader bottle,
there is a tube going down inside of there to keep it from back drafting into the negative pressure.
And you're getting any kind of liquid or whatever back up into the line.
Because what I was having is like I was doing wiring.
And I was getting wiring inside of the attachment that goes on the bottle.
Because it was, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of travel vertical up in there.
So it was right at the top of the nozzle.
So I said, how can I distance the liquid that's in the...
That gets pushed into the...
Into the soda bottle.
And I was like, oh, I'll just put a little straw in there.
And it's, well, I can't even get it off.
It's on there now.
So now there's a five inch straw that goes around and you screw this.
This one's metal.
I got a metal one.
They come with ones that are plastic.
Fair day is the brand.
But they have ones that are plastic.
The part that connects to the inlet to is a piece of plastic, piece of whatever.
But so far, so good.
I've probably done like one a day, at least for the past two months.
So I've probably done 60 or more.
I would say that's a lot.
I've done a lot.
Because I burn through them.
Sometimes I'll do two liters of bottles of soda a day, which I need to do research to see.
If it's even healthy to consume fizzy water.
Sometimes I'll put me out in it. Sometimes I won't.
More often now I've been putting me out in it.
If I'm in a hurry or don't care, I just fizzy water.
And that's enough.
You can also just put a little bit of lime in there or lemon.
But I will say I am going through.
Actually don't turn off.
That's one problem is I don't when I'm done.
I do not turn off the air supply.
So that might help is probably slow leaking.
That might be in it and I'll check.
The way to test that is you tighten it up.
And then if you lose pressure over time, I got 45 psi.
It's about 50 is the max 35 to 50.
I do the 45 because I like it super fizzy.
And they use two liter bottles.
I'm waiting for one to explode in my hand and take a chunk out of my wrist.
And family comes home and sees me laying on the floor.
Because they can't cut you.
But I think it takes some insane amount of psi to explode a plastic liter bottle.
But some of these liter bottles I have are like spidering on the outside.
They're probably not made to be refilled over and over and over again.
So every time you fill it, you're probably breaking down stuff.
And then you got the whole BPA thing.
And it's like, you know, you wonder about that.
But anyways, so far so good.
I guess that my next step is to do the inline thing.
I do have a spout under the sink system reverse osmosis system.
And I thought about stealing the soap thing.
We'll see how the wife has to say about that.
But I'd like to do inline and also refrigerated.
But it's probably not going to happen because there's no room under the sink anymore really.
I have to hide it somewhere behind the bar.
And like a little box.
So I do have some area that I can drill hole through the wall.
And on the other side of our sink is a bar.
And I can probably put a little box under there.
And how is what I need to house if I wanted to do refrigerate.
Because there's power on the other side of this bar.
But that's me speculating on stuff.
But it would be nice to just walk up and get your fizzy water in.
Not have to worry about doing the shaking because you have to shake it.
I shake it about 30 times.
And then another 30 times.
So 60 times.
Or maybe even 120.
Yeah, 120.
So I shake it pretty good.
First of all, sometimes I did it.
And then I put it on there and then it filled up with CO2.
And then I took it off.
And there's no if it's not fizzing.
And then I watched another video and the guys like shaking it.
Oh, well, that's how you get the CO2 in there.
And it also helps that it's cold.
So I have two in the freezer refrigerator.
I always have at least two in the refrigerator.
One is usually not fizzy.
And the other one is fizzy.
So there's about a cup in here.
And I have no, I have a full one actually.
A full one and it's compressed.
But this is the one that's like spider than the outside.
Towards the top of the lid.
It's like, it looks like it's like trying to fracture itself.
It's pretty terrifying.
So there's also two-liter bottle of orbeez that's been in here for,
you've got no sound long.
So I got to get the kids doing orbeez to get rid of some of those.
Because there's another bag of orbeez in here that they didn't notice.
They already had orbeez.
So now we have a whole for the refrigerator full of orbeez.
They're divided, a gradeable, and led to me.
It's like a rice or something.
It does taste funny.
It's an all-change.
But anyways, I will let you know about the under the same thing.
Or if I go to the next step.
Because having to shake them and rotate them out and fill it up.
And kind of, I don't sanitize them.
I do wash them off.
I do rinse them before I put the thing back on there.
And you know, friends and family come over and there's just like arbitrary,
you know, the bottle of unlabeled soda.
And nobody wants to drink out of that.
But if I put it up to the soda stream and put it up to the faucet, you know,
people who are probably more likely to try it out with, you know, some mayo or some lime juice
or lemon juice or whatever.
So that might be the next step.
Because it is a pain to shake it.
You know, you want to have a drink and there's nothing healthy necessarily to drink.
And I don't feel like drinking water.
And I'll, like I said, it's like 120 shakes.
And then I have to do it again.
If that's not as I'm down, both, both the air bottles, which has happened.
So I do burn through them and it's good.
You know, we're drinking lots of water and liquid, but so we'll see.
I don't know if that helps anybody out.
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