Bubbly Water

I drink a LOT of bubbly water. I used to buy it at the store, but the gigantic number of bottles soon became ridiculous. The best option is to make bubbly water myself, and I find myself making one or maybe even two bottles of soda water using my SodaStream every day. I like my SodaStream so much, I gave him a googly eye and named him Gassy Gus. He's a cyclops.

The only problem is exchanging the little SodaStream canisters when then run out. Since I'm going through the canisters so quickly, I find myself having to make trips way too often.

But it turns out there's a hack for that. Welding supply stores carry food-grade CO2 for extremely cheap since you are buying in bulk. And you can purchase an adapter that goes on a standard CO2 cylinder with a CGA-320 connector and plugs into your SodaStream.

So I did.

Installation

First, I attached the adapter to the Sodastream:

And then to the 20 lb CO2 cylinder:

Then I checked the whole thing for leaks using soapy water, and it was fine. Ta-da: and a seemingly infinite supply of CO2.

Economics

To cut to the chase, CO2 is WAY cheaper this way, and although there's a big outlay upfront, the system should pay for itself in a year. After that, I'm in the black. And if I can do it, so can you!

If you're interested in the specifics:

I purchased my CO2 canister from Airgas. Prices vary by region, but in my case the canister cost $190, and refills are $20 for 20 lbs of CO2.

The normal SodaStream canisters cost (after turning in the old one) $15 bucks for 14 oz of CO2, for a price of $1.07 per oz of CO2.

The Airgas price is $20 for 320 oz of CO2, for a price of $0.06 per oz of CO2. So the bulk CO2 is around 16X cheaper.

But the real attraction is no more frequent trips to exchange tiny little canisters.