Solenoid valves for water supply

HankBrandenburg · 01-14-2009, 05:49 PM

I have a small vacation home where the pipes are routinely drained to prevent freezing. I'm looking for a solution that would allow me to flip a switch that would close the water supply line and open several valves to drain the pipes under the building.

I'm looking for suppliers and advice on solenoid controlled valves for this application. I see a wide variety of capacities and costs out there and am hoping to keep the budget fairly tight.

Any advice or source recommendations would be much appreciated!

Nestor_Kelebay · 01-14-2009, 10:47 PM

Asco is probably the biggest name in solenoid valves in the US and Canada with their "Red Hat" line of electrically operated valves. Look in your yellow pages under valves and see if any of the companies there advertise that they sell Asco.

I'd recommend against what you're wanting to do. You're just adding more potential possibilities of a malfunction into a critical operation. It's critically important that you drain water pipes to prevent them from freezing in winter. If you stand there and open a valve and see the water draining out, then you KNOW the pipe is empty. If you flip a switch, you don't have that 100 percent confidence any more. The motor might not have operated cuz a badger gnawed on the wiring, or whatever.

If it was me, I'd still be going around to check that everything that needs to have been done was done, and that's going to take almost as much time as doing it all manually anyhow.