Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Solo and Solomatic Valves from Aquamatic

Solomatic Hydraulically Operated Multiport Valve by Aquamatic
Over many years most water treatment equipment manufacturers utilized various types of multiport valves for their water conditioning equipment, including water softeners, dealkalizers and filters. One of these valves were known as Solo(R) Valves and Solomatic(R) Valves manufactured by Aquamatic(R) Inc., now a part of GE Water.

These Solo and Solomatic valves, once a staple in the water treatment industry, are now long gone, having been discontinued. For those not familiar with these valves, here is a brief description of the Solo and Solomatic valves:

Solo Valve: This was a manual multiport valve, three or four position, generally cast iron. The Solo Valve was also produced in acid resistant bronze for hydrogen softener and deionizer use. The three position Solo Valve was used for pressure filter applications; the four position Solo Valve was typically used for water softeners and dealkalizers.

The Solo Valve was produced in sizes ranging from 3/4" to 4". It may be nearly impossible to find the literature for the Solo valves. Here is a scanned copy of the Solo valve technical bulletin of the entire product line from our extensive archives.

Solomatic Valve: This was a hydraulically operated multiport valve designed to automatically control the regeneration and service flow through softeners, filters and other ion exchange systems. This valve was manufactured in sizes ranging from 3/4" to 2½". Here is a scanned copy of the Solomatic valve technical bulletin from our archives.

Now that Solo and Solomatic valves are no longer manufactured and parts are no longer available to rebuild or repair, what can be done should you have a system with good tanks and broken or non-working Solo or Solomatic valve(s)? Any of these systems can be retrofitted using a nest of Aquamatic Diaphragm Valves.
Valvenest using Aquamatic valves to replace a Solo or Solomatic valve
For automatic Solomatic systems, the controls can be upgraded to the current state-of-art electronic, programmable controls utilizing flow sensors, differential pressure switches, etc. For manual Solo systems, the multiport valve can be replaced with gate or ball valves for strictly manual operation or with Diaphragm Valves for manual, semi or auto initiation via a time clock or differential pressure initiation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this information.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this information and the tehcnical documentation !