The Craftmans Shop > New from Old
Compressor Automatic Drain Valve
jcs0001:
Andrew - that's a lot of fittings.
I don't use my compressor enough to justify an automatic system however I often forget to drain it so such a system may be a good idea :doh:
John.
awemawson:
John,
If I didn't need the timing bit visible I could have oriented it through 90 degrees and eliminated five fittings, but the strainer mesh would no longer have been correctly oriented.
My preferred solution would have been to anchor the drain valve to a wall, and connect it to the drain port on the tank by nylon flexible tubing. But the drain valve doesn't lend itself to wall mounting. Also when the compressor moves around the floor, which it sometimes does a bit, there is a danger of the tube being ripped out with a big whooosh !
A more elegant 'direct plumbing' job would have been to hard solder (*) a male and female fitting to either end of a bit of 15 mm tube, but as the fittings were there they got used !
(* ordinary plumbers solder would fail rapidly with the vibration of the compressor)
KB3RLJ:
I have a timer valve like yours on my compressor. To keep it from constantly blowing off or me forgetting to plug it in I put it on a motion detector. It only goes off when I'm in my shop. Fun part is it scares the begezits out of my wife when she goes in the shop by herself.
awemawson:
I like that approach but it wouldn't work for me due to the compressor being in a remote Portakabin (unless there's the odd rat wandering about :clap: )
David Jupp:
The purely mechanical auto drains (similar to steam traps) would be an elegant solution, but I suspect they'll cost a lot more than the electrically operated ones.
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