DJ Gongol & Associates is proud to offer valves from the Vent-O-Mat line of air-release valves from RF Valve.

Every good pumping system needs to get the air out

Reliable, properly functioning air-release valves are essential to the long-term efficiency and dependable performance of almost every pumping system. Unless you're pumping a short distance that's entirely uphill, you probably intermittent high spots inside your pressurized discharge lines (whether they're wastewater force mains or potable water distribution systems). Any local high spot is a location where air is almost certain to accumulate, and the more air builds up, the less water gets through. A good air-release valve is critical in every local high spot.

What Vent-O-Mat gets right

The Vent-O-Mat design is a smart and elegant solution to the problem of getting air out of the pipeline. Everyone knows that metal tends to corrode in a humid environment, and there's no environment more humid than a water pipe. So instead of fighting the water, Vent-O-Mat works with it -- using nothing but simple, reliable, and easy-to-service HDPE floats to manage the flow of air into and out of the valve. No levers or hinges or working mechanisms are inside the valve's humid environment, where they could break down and fail. On sewage service, the Vent-O-Mat design uses a simple stainless steel rod -- durable and corrosion-free. The simplicity of the Vent-O-Mat design is what ensures its long-term dependability.

Air valves are not just for high points

But even when the pipe is rising smoothly from the pump to the discharge point, gases are going to come out of solution. With wastewater, you can count on biological activity generating gases that will bubble out of the water. With potable water, there's always some dissolved oxygen inside that tends to come out with changes in speed, changes in temperature, and friction against the pipe walls. In both cases, air-release valves are needed even with straight, smoothly-rising pipes. A good rule of thumb is to space them out no more than a third of a mile apart (1,000' spacing is even better, but don't go longer than 2,000').

Little shocks don't hurt

Vent-O-Mat's design accounts for those little pockets of air by separating the internal HDPE floats so that a little bit of air can get out without the valve spilling anything. It's rugged and trustworthy.

Don't leave the water hanging

And you'll want air-release valves in places where the water goes downhill for a while, too. That's when you'll need the valve to offer vacuum-breaking service, so air can get back into the pipe in case the pumps shut down abruptly or a wave of gas passes through. If you don't let the pipeline "inhale" when water is being suspended by a vacuum, you could collapse the pipe! Even without a dramatic pipe collapse, you run the risk of creating transient events that put stress on the pipe. After a few too many of these, the pipe can break dramatically -- often in the cold of winter, when it's hardest to perform repairs. Many water main breaks are the result of long-term air-related stresses that could have been prevented by air-release valves.

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