Adding an Automatic Drain Valve to My Shop's New Air Compressor

I bought a new air compressor for my basement workshop, and decided to add an aftermarket automatic drain valve. I used the same brand and model as I had previously had good luck with on the larger air compressor in my garage. In this brief video, I show the parts I bought, and how they go together, and I demonstrate how it works.

[@howardhiggins9641]

I would reorient the elbow at the bottom of the tank so that even the smallest pools of water will drain faster.
Here in a fairly dry area of CA, I like my tank to drain about twice a day, for about three seconds a shot. I also have moisture traps on the output side of the tank.
An alternative, for these hard to access drain valves, is a manual remote control cable made especially for the purpose.

[@youtuuba]

Howard Higgins, I am curious what you meant by "reorient the elbow at the bottom of the tank".....? How would one do that, practically? The compressor tank is not adjustable in its position within the overall frame, so its drain port will remain where it is, slightly rotated forward from true bottom of the tank. The user's manual instructs to simply open the manual drain valve while the compressor is sitting flat on the floor; apparently no need to tilt the compressor frame to get it exactly at the bottom. As for the elbow, the only orientation for it that makes sense to me is to have it facing forward so that it becomes accessible.....that, after all, is its whole point.
I did some tests, where I ran the compressor outdoors for while on a fairly humid day, then quickly turned the original manual drain valve to 'open', and some water came out. The sudden, almost explosive, rush of air from the tank must surely carry quite a bit of the condensed water, pooled at the bottom of the tank, out with it, even though the drain port is not precisely at true bottom.

[@Rebel9668]

Cool! I had no idea automatic drains were even available. I recently added an upright 60 gallon 2 stage air compressor to my garage and added an extension hose to the manual drain under the compressor to make the valve easier to reach The hose in fact looks like yours but I don't remember who made it. I may look into getting one that works automatically as being 53 and 6'8" it's a long trip down to that valve as the blood rushes to my head bending down, lol. It's funny, every accessory I've bought for the compressor, like the line dryer, the whip hose, the automatic hose reel, etc, etc, all came with a roll of teflon tape...I bet I have a dozen rolls of that stuff now, LOL!

[@ScottPC]

I had no clue these were available

[@ardabeats2025]

Thought those were for heavy duty compressors like 60 gallons and up

[@adamw1944]

Pity that recorded in such a low resolution. You should record at 4K res.

[@youtuuba]

There is absolutely no reason to record an instructional video like this in high definition. NONE. And even if I did record the original video at hi-def, I always render the final video down to 'standard' resolution (same as on a DVD) before uploading to RUclips. And even if I uploaded to RUclips at a higher resolution, RUclips uses their own algorithm to adjust resolution before making it viewable. And finally, different viewers may see any given video at different lower resolutions depending on their download speed and other factors. Now, for THIS video, a lot of it is simply out of focus, since my camera was acting up when I shot it originally, but it was still good enough to show what I was doing, so I used it.

[@bae__hyorin1905]

@@youtuuba o1

[@NavinF]

@@youtuuba Personally I almost always filter search results so I only see >=1080p. Much easier to read model number, see what kinda fitting is used based on the threads, etc. RUclips also uses a very low bitrate so you need to watch at 4K just to get the same quality as uncompressed 1080p