Is it ok to have a rise in an air compressors drain valve

compressormaintenancetools

The designer of my compressor unfortunately didn't put a whole lot of thought into where to put the drain valve on it. It's on the back, and the compressor is against the wall, in a corner, usually with a mower or something backed up to it. Draining my compressor is a pain in the butt.

So I did something about it! I went out and get the appropriate adapters to have a hose coming out the bottom of the compressor and just loops around the top. Something like this.

   ________
   |      |
  /        \
 /   Motor  \   | |
 |__________|   | |
 /          \  ( x ) Drain valve
/            \  | | 
|            |  | |A
|            |  | |I
|    Tank    |  | |R
|            |  | |
|            |  | |H
|            |  | |O
|            |  | |S
|            |  | |e
|            |  | |
|            |  | |
|            |  | |
|            |  | |
|            |  | |
|            |  | |
\____________/\_//Connection to old
 []        [] \_/ drain valve location

As you can see the water travels "up-hill". At first this doesn't sound right until you realize that the water travels "up-hill with 40-120 psi of pressure pushing it". I can't see a problem with this, but would love to know if there is some evidence that this is acceptable, or if this is a bad practice, given the cost of a new compressor.

Best Answer

As long as you purge the tank until the moisture out you should be fine. I maintain some big compressors 150-200 hp that all push up into a separator tank to make sure any oil is removed from the water then the oil drains back to the compressor and this is a commercial setup. I am guessing you have a manual valve, when there is very little water vapor coming out you should be good.

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