Valve tips and advice

[Raul L]

Hi all! as I am attempting my first plumbing project and the stakes are high, I would greatly appreciate picking your experienced brains regarding valves. I am building an overland truck/motorhome and since I will be traveling to remote areas and underdeveloped countries I'd like my plumbing choices and parts to be as reliable as possible. Not only can a leak be catastrophic in a motorhome but also I rather not have to carry too many spares of everything with me.

I gather from online sources that using 1/2 - 3/4 inch PEX-A is the preferred type of pipe for what I am trying to do.

1- If I you were to choose one way to divert water flow with a solenoid valve and trust it to last long and without problems, how would your setup be? Perhaps one 3-way solenoid valve, or two 2-way solenoid valves and a tee, or something else?

2- What solenoid/motorized valve brands do you trust most (inside the 1/2 - 3/4 inch range of products)? How about manual valves?
3- I can find manual valves with Uponor/wirsbo type fittings, but not on the solenoid valves.

So I should assume everyone uses these threaded male adapters right?

Truly grateful for any tips and advice guys, I am quite out of my depth with this stuff!
Raul L

 

[ShaunCorbs]

A good quality ball valve / lever valve and just manually switch it over etc

 

[gmartine]

Indeed, why opt for an electro-mechanical solution which can fail rather than one that is completely manual in a mission critical environment.

What's the water transfer system for anyhow, switching tanks for general purpose use or potable?

 

[Raul L]

Thanks a lot Shaun and gmartine. I get from your responses that you don't trust a solenoid valve to be reliable enough. That's in itself a very useful answer to me. I did imagine that any manual valve would be better than any motorized one, and I do intend to keep everything quite manual, but as it is a system that would have several modes of operation and several valves need to be opened or closed to switch modes, the convenience of having some automations, prevent any oversight like leaving something open when it shouldn't, and perhaps include some timers too, was quite tempting.

For the ones feeling curious about why I'd need some solenoid valves here and there, the system should take care of things like water tank selection when filling up from outside the vehicle, remote operation of the hydronic heating system while driving (as it uses the excess engine heat through a heat exchanger), different shower modes (normal, recirculating, drain selection, and heating source selection (calorifier hydronic, calorifier electrical, diesel burner hydronic, or electrical hydronic). Might sound unnecessarily fancy to many, but this is a vehicle where I'll be living full time with my wife and a dog for many years, and it's all designed to have some level of comfort while saving a lot of water.

 

[gmartine]

That still appears to me to be an unnecessarily complex system and besides domestic heating controls run on 240v not 12/24v your vehicle electical system should be.

I realise you're starting from scratch but try getting advice from one of the many bug out or camper forums and they'll probably tell you the same, utilising domestic heating controls and materials is not the way to go.

 

[snowhead]

If you are going the electrically operated valve route, you need to be using solenoid valves not the pictured Domestic Electrically operated valves.
They're designed for a stable environment, they'll fail before you get to the end of the first road.
Presumably you'll be using an inverter to get 240v, if not 12v or 24v dc solenoids are available, probably more 24v than 12v

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[Raul L]

That still appears to me to be an unnecessarily complex system and besides domestic heating controls run on 240v not 12/24v your vehicle electical system should be.

I realise you're starting from scratch but try getting advice from one of the many bug out or camper forums and they'll probably tell you the same, utilising domestic heating controls and materials is not the way to go.

I think you guys are probably right about insisting on keeping things more simple than I previously intended. I am now leaning more towards keeping it manual after having received such one sided views on this from people that has a lot more experience than me. Regarding the electrical side, the valves would have been 24v, sorry if the pictures were confusing, I used some random ones from google images.

 

[Raul L]

If you are going the electrically operated valve route, you need to be using solenoid valves not the pictured Domestic Electrically operated valves.
They're designed for a stable environment, they'll fail before you get to the end of the first road.
Presumably you'll be using an inverter to get 240v, if not 12v or 24v dc solenoids are available, probably more 24v than 12v

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My bad, seems like I used the wrong pictures up there but the plan was to use 24v as you had guessed. Most of my appliances will work on 24v, except for a few 12v and AC units like the kitchen stove for which I need an inverter indeed. Sorry for the confusing pictures, they were just meant to be examples about the fittings styles.

 

[Raul L]

Thanks all for your advise! I am currently leaning more towards installing only manual valves, it'll increase the reliability of the system but it'll also increase the pipe length and number of fittings because I'll have to bring some pipes closer to where they are accessible and into a perhaps uglier than I expected control hub. But these seem like sacrifices worth making.

Before closing this thread and because I think it's a cool topic, I'd like to bring up something else. Perhaps other people visiting this thread, going the same valve rabbit hole as me, will also find it interesting.

I consulted with a friend that works in machine maintenance at a bottle filling factory and he recommended against using electrical valves and suggested I'd use pneumatically operated valves (since the truck already has pressurized air tanks and its own compressor). The advantages he mentioned were:

• More reliable/durable/robust
• Some can remain either open or closed as per your choice unlike some electrically operated ones that are normally closed or normally open
• They don't fail so suddenly but instead, they usually give some warnings and give you some time to find a replacement before they die
• And even when they die, you can still open and close the valve using a screw driver or a manual lever

Here is one from the brand they use at the factory:

Any thoughts on these? There is a chance I might have not understood my friend well enough about the pros and cons so feel free to disagree of course!

 

[ShaunCorbs]

There better and tbh you can service them in the field as just mostly o rings and Teflon seals so you could cobble something together

Your main issue / constraint is the required air pressure to open/ operate the valve under load your air system might not be able to supply the pressure or flow etc

 

[Knappers]

Search for:- JP fluid control
They do reasonably priced rotary actuated valves that run on 12 or 24v
They do 2, 3 and 4port valves
They will motor open or closed and won't draw current unless motoring (unlike solenoid)
They can be valve only with handle or actuator driven so if an actuator fails just take it off and operate manually.
Would prob only use for flow control and not isolation but recommend you take a look

 

[Raul L]

There better and tbh you can service them in the field as just mostly o rings and Teflon seals so you could cobble something together

Your main issue / constraint is the required air pressure to open/ operate the valve under load your air system might not be able to supply the pressure or flow etc

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Shaun. Glad to know you like these type of valves. The pneumatically operated valves I looked into have a normal operating pressure of around 5.5 bar with a maximum at 10 bar. The pressurized tanks on my truck have 8.5 bar when at max, and shouldn't drop below 5 or else there is some problem/leak somewhere. So I seem to be in the right range.

 

[Raul L]

Search for:- JP fluid control
They do reasonably priced rotary actuated valves that run on 12 or 24v
They do 2, 3 and 4port valves
They will motor open or closed and won't draw current unless motoring (unlike solenoid)
They can be valve only with handle or actuator driven so if an actuator fails just take it off and operate manually.
Would prob only use for flow control and not isolation but recommend you take a look

Very good products at JP fluid control as well. As you mentioned, they have the type in which the actuator can be removed and you can operate the valve manually, which is great. By flow control you mean allowing different flows in the either branch of a tee for example, instead of shutting off one branch completely? I wonder why you wouldn't use them for isolation, do you mind expanding on that a bit? Cheers!

 

[Knappers]

I have some 3 and 4 port valves from them and the ones I have just don't appear to be designed for isolation. They have tight tolerances but I don't see any silicone or delrin/nylon seals.