SpudFiles

What are the general reactions to the mauler family of valves? I am looking at a smaller sized one and I am curious to see if anyone has bought one.

Talk to sgort87, he made and tested them.

I wanted someone else's opinion, I would think that he would have a somewhat biased opinion.

I remember someone saying/giving rav reviews about it in a post but i cant remember who, or even what the thread was about, i think maby rmich???

I'm sure they are well made and work good, but I think he exaggerates performance a bit. Unless he made something fundamentally different than any piston valve seen before there is no way the 1" valve has better performance than 2 (modded) sprinkler valves.

A strait flow valve or burst disk can hit about twice the flow of a sprinkler, but I've never seen a tee valve get close. Still, if price wasn't an issue I would suggest one of those over sprinkler valves.

I could kind of see a 1" piston valve beating two modded sprinkler valves. From what I have heard, the flow through a sprinkler valve is equivalent to the flow through a 9/16" hole. So 2((9/16)/2)^2 = 0.158

If a piston valve had a 1" SCH 40 port, the ID of the port would be right around 1" (1.029", I think, but I'll stick with 1" for clarity). ((1)/2)^ 2 = 0.25. Now this does not mean the 1" sprinkler valve is 1.5x better than dual sprinkler valves; you would need to take into account things such as opening time, flow paths, pilot volume, etc. But still, I believe it is certainly plausible that a single, very well made 1" piston valve could outperform dual 1" sprinkler valves. If I made an error, please tell me.

The sprinkler I have has a 1" port and flows at a little less than 30% efficiency, 28% according to my measurements. To flow twice as much as that trough a 1" port you would need 56% efficiency. The tee valves that I have seen figures for are around 40%, to go up to 56% is quite a leap. The strait flow valves that I have gotten figures for are 60%. I would expect a 1" burst disk to be around 60% as well, maybe a little higher.

Clide, how can what is essentially a hole be only 60%?

I am not entirely sure, if you go to the trouble to make nice smooth contours I think you can increase it, but there is always some pressure drop across orifices. I remember hearing something from D_Hall (the maker of GGDT) and that is where that number comes from. And it seems to be programmed into GGDT as well. If you make a barrel and valve the same size and go above 65% efficiency you get a "valve flow optimistic" and "barrel choking flow" error. Which means he expects that the air just flowing into the barrel will have an efficiency of 65%.