The Proper Placement of Valve Tags

Pipe and valve with valve tag

Dating back to ancient Roman times and invented for the purpose of regulating water systems, the first valves were made of bronze. The word “valve” ultimately derives from the Latin verb volvere, “to turn or roll,” but later evolved into Latin valva, referring to the moving part of a door. In essence, a valve is a type of door. By definition, then, a valve is a device that controls or directs the flow of a substance (whether liquid, gas, or slurry) by opening, closing, or partly obstructing a passageway through which the substance is able to pass. The valve regulates the force of the flow of the substance through a pipe or other conduit.

What Is a Valve Tag?

In a modern industrial setting, a valve tag is a simple signaling device indicating at a glance the function or contents flowing through a given pipe or other conduit. If the substance flowing through the pipe is nothing more dangerous than plain, room-temperature water, the information conveyed by the tag is of minor importance. But if the pipe carries any substance that is extremely hot, cold, corrosive, or toxic, then the purpose of the valve tag can be characterized as mission-critical. Therefore, valve tags play an integral role in any safety system designed to reduce the risk to persons or property related to releases, spills, accidents, and injuries due to improper use of valves within a facility.

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Industrial Valve Tags Demystified
[Infographic]

Industrial valves and pipes

If you are an HVAC engineer or building maintenance manager, do you prefer to do things the easy way—or the hard way?

The answer should be obvious; yet the question is more than a rhetorical one.

In the masterful 1985 sci-fi comedy Brazil, filmmaker Terry Gilliam depicts a bleak, dystopian industrial society where everything is done the hard way. In this satirically imagined dysfunctional world, all machines are Rube Goldberg devices that function poorly, if at all. Electric wires dangle from shower heads. Individual telephones each have their own switchboard. Computers consist of bare cathode ray tubes from which big black hoses protrude. And—as seen in this clip from the film—the hardware innards of buildings are revealed to be an impossibly complex, hopelessly tangled muddle of unlabeled cables, ducts, pipes, valves, and rubber bladders. It is a plumber’s and pipefitter’s worst nightmare.
Continue reading “Industrial Valve Tags Demystified
[Infographic]”

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