I Take Cars
2500 Club Member
I am in the plumbings phase on my 90....
Gate or ball valves? Any reall difference? Tia
Gate or ball valves? Any reall difference? Tia
Plumbing.. valves?
- Thread starter I Take Cars
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ZJedi945
Active Member
Yes there is a difference. It depends on what you will be doing with them. If you need to control the drain line to fine tune it to run quiet, thats a gate valve. If you just want something to turn off flow from your return line when you are doing maintenance on the pump or something connected, thats a ball valve. I am currently using both in my setup. My drain has a gate valve and I have a manifold coming off of my return with 5 ball valves on it.
True but I just added 2 unions to ether side to make it easy. It's something you have to do when you spend $56 on a valve....
john.m.cole3
cyclOps
+10 that's it!
Just to throw this out there, I wouldn't put any flow restrictor/ball or gate valve on a return pump that would impede its flow. Plan ahead and make sure there is enough extra volume in your sump to accommodate a power outage.
aaron23
Valuable Member
why would you not put a ball valve on both sections of the pump so you can easily dismantle and clean it ... ball valve would not impede the flow if its open
john.m.cole3
cyclOps
I have my return plumbed with a barbed fitting. I just turn off the pump, wait for the water to finish draining, and remove the pump. The ball valve will restrict flow a bit even in the open position. It's the way I learned. That's also the reason I don't hard plumb my return, so there are no corners to push water through, just head pressure.
john.m.cole3
cyclOps
I;ve been reefing almost 2 years now so I'm no expert. I also am running only 1 return. Not sure how I would handle a split return yet...
As already stated, gate to control and ball to turn on and off. however, if you get ball valves I would recommend true unions. it's a ball valve with unions on either end.
Both of my high end gate valves leak and I have taken them apart and thoroughly cleaned them and they still drip, I hate them0!!, I am happy with using the high end ball valves CEPEX to stop and restrict my flows. I use the blue handled ball valves for just shutting things off for cleaning and such, they work better than the red handled ones to save money but on the returns and important adjustment lines I would use CEPEX ones.
ReeferBob
Valuable Member
Impeding (restricting) return flow on a pump does not hurt it. It has the same effect as a lot of head height. Frequently this is done if the return flow is too much.
you either have bad valves or your plumbing work isn't up to par. not sure were the leak is from but they should not leak.
Broadfield
Red Sea Reefer Consultant... Non Affiliated
As cromag stated, no valve should ever leak... especially if you have an expensive one. On my current setup, I'm using 2 high-end gate valves and 10 high-end ball valves. As stated earlier, the gate valves allow for WAY finer control of the flow. I use them on a couple of reactors for GFO and bio pellets. I would never use ball valves for anything but turning flow on or off. And I have never had a single valve leak in all of my years.
