Valterra Bladex Waste Valve Body for RV Black Water Tank - Aluminum Handle - 3" Diameter

Video Transcript for Valterra Bladex RV Black Water Tank Waste Valve Body Review

Hi there camper and RV owners. Today we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to replace your waste valves with Valterra's three inch with metal handle valves. And this is what our replacement valves look like when they're installed. These are gonna be three inch diameter valves. So they're gonna be great for your black water system. They are offered in two different versions.

This is the Blade X with the die-cast aluminum handle but you can also get this same Blade X model in a plastic handle if you're looking at a more economical version. These are gonna be great though for replacing your valves if they become damaged, if you have leaks and stuff that occur over time, you will get everything that you need included in your kit to replace the valve. So that's gonna include your valve body, your seals, one for each side, as well as all the mounting hardware to get it installed in there. So you have everything that you need with this little kit here to do the replacement. These are Valterra Blade X versions, but they will work with other brands such as Bristol or Ananda.

So if you've got those style installed on yours you can get some Blade X ones here just like this that will work in your system to replace those other brands. The main purpose of our valves here is to prevent flow from our tank out the outlet when we are just driving around, just kind of using our motor home like normal. But when we are ready to empty out our tank, get it all cleaned out, the valve here is opened up by pulling the handle. And of course, you would wanna have this hooked into your system so you could drain everything out. Ours has already been pre-drained.

So that way we're able to do the replacement here. But that's the main purpose of our valves here is to separate off the drain port on our system from the tanks. So that way you can keep those completely separate. If you've got multiple tanks, you can install multiple and you can actually even have them completely separate. We got this little Y pipe here.

So this tank and this tank are separate from one another. You could drain one separately from the other one. So if you wanna follow along with us the customer here had a valve that had kind of a loose handle that would get a little bit of a trickle down the rod. So we're gonna be replacing the old one. So you can follow along with us here and we'll show you how to get them installed. We'll begin our installation in our compartment that has our drain valves. Here we've got three valves here. Now the customer here has installed this macerator and this is, he doesn't normally use this anymore. This is his typical drain over here. So we're not gonna be replacing this one since he doesn't really use it. Just those. And before you start this make sure that you've already drained the system. So our customer's already went and flushed out the system to make sure that it's gonna be empty for us. So that way we don't have to worry about getting any kind of black water or gray water on us and being able to replace these safely. So we did also open them both up here just to make sure that they're draining. We put the hose down there at the end. So he did actually drain them. We just, good to verify that and make sure. You do wanna make sure you dispose of your waste properly though. So our customer took care of that first and then we're just double checking to make sure that it's empty here. So our doors, this one here is a little bit, you can see it's a little bit loose and that's just due to the close angle that it's in here and stuff. So we're gonna be replacing it with a little bit, upgraded with the metal handles, a little bit heavier duty version of this one. It's not too much different but it is a little bit heavier duty. To get these outta here, we're gonna remove the fasteners that hold it in place. There's gonna be four. It's kind of easier to see here on this one. You got two there and there's also two at the bottom. We'll use a seven 16th socket and wrench or an 11 millimeter's also very close. So you can get away with either of those. We're gonna be replacing these two though. Again, not this one 'cause our customer doesn't use this anymore. So when you're replacing these, I recommend starting with the hardest bolt to get to 'cause that way your seals are still compressed. So if there is gonna be any drips that's gonna get on you. It's gonna happen when you're trying to reach around to the backside of the difficulty to get to bolts so let's get that one out first, that way everything's tight and then we can get our easier bolts out from there. Which doesn't look like I'm gonna be able to get on that one there. Probably need to put our wrench on the other side to hold it. All right. So we've got that one loose. There we go. Both of our bolt and knut, we've got slid out of there. So now we're just gonna repeat that with the remaining ones. I'm gonna do the other side real quick on the inside. Just 'cause again, those are difficult to get to and don't want to have to be reaching my arms around the top or bottom of these pipes while I'm trying to get the rest of them removed. We can work more towards the outside here. So then we're just gonna remove the rest of our bolts the same way we remove those inner ones there. Get that off of there. You can see here that the collar here, we can slide back. Now on the other side though, this collar here is fixed in this position. So that means we're not gonna be able to change the angle that this is in other than these set places that the holes are gonna line up there. So we're still gonna be having ours come down like this. We we're maybe gonna try to make them a little bit easier to pull, but if it's glued you just can't move the glue. So we're just gonna have to leave it how it is. So now we can kind of pull apart just a little bit on our pieces. We're probably gonna have a little bit of drippage come out. So we're gonna put some napkins and stuff down or if you're doing this at home you could have a kind of waist towel that you can sacrifice. And that'll just slide out of there. And then you just get rid of that. I would recommend cleaning this up and then you can get your new one installed. We can now open up our new one here. Our gaskets are going to install like this. So the larger end will slide over the pipe there. Same on this one. The larger end will slide over the pipe. So go ahead and slide your gaskets into position over your pipe. Once you've got both your gaskets on your new valve will simply just slide in between them Make sure your gaskets stay in place. So you can see that when there's popping off on us. All right. And that's it. You just get it slid in between there and then secure it with the included hardware. And then just repeat this for as many as you're going to be replacing. And then we're gonna do the other, do this one. After you get the old stuff out of the way, just slide your new gaskets on there. Kind of use the pipes to push it in place there. And do the same thing on the other side here. All right. Once you've got both your gaskets on this will just slide in between the two. Just be careful not to knock your gaskets off when pushing them in place. There we go. And then we'll just secure it with the included hardware. And we'll now go back and snug down our hardware. It is gonna be the same size as the previous hardware we removed. So we'll still use our seven 16th socket and wrench or 11 millimeter, either one will work out fine. And right now I'm just snugging them down by hand here kind of using my wrench in one hand and on the other side, I'm just holding the socket in my hand 'cause these don't actually snug down that tight. You don't need to go too crazy. It's all just plastic. As far as the housing is, the metal is to your handle here the working mechanism, but this is still all plastic. So just be careful, just snug it down. If it's starting to spin the socket in your hand then you probably got it plenty snug and you can move on to the next one. All right. Once you have your hardware snug down, that will complete our installation. You can now use your system like you would and clean it out and verify you don't have any leaks, but as long as all of your seals we're inserted appropriately when you slid your piece up there they didn't fold over or anything, you shouldn't have any problems. And that's why I also recommend tightening it down by hand like we we're doing there, 'cause if your seal is fold over or something, you'll usually feel that it's cocked a little bit. And if you're tightening it by hand like we were, then you're probably not going to over tighten it. You're probably gonna catch I, be able to adjust it and straighten things out. After that though, you can check to make sure that everything seems to open and close. And then you can clean up your area If you do have any leaks from any of the previous residue in the system, you can clean that up. And that completes our installation of Valterra's three inch waist valves with metal handles..