if these cycle stop valves work so good, why don't more people use them/get them?
I have been answering that question and fighting the good fight for 30 years now. It has made me pessimistic about everything. I no longer believe anything I hear. Settled science is an oxymoron. The bigger the advertisement, the less I trust the product. The more our government subsides something, the less value I think it has. The more adamant someone on youtube is that a product does or doesn't work, the more likely I am to test it out for myself to make sure.
I don't like being that way. I want everyone to tell the truth, do what is best, and not take advantage of other people. But that is not how it works in the business world. It is dog eat dog. Strangle, takeover, or shut down any good competition, so they can make products with even less quality, designed to fail in an even shorter time, so they can sell another one.
I say all of this just to warn people. I am amazed at how many people think a big company wouldn't say or do things to take advantage of them, or that the government is here to help. Many of these big corporations have big government in their pocket, paying incentives and giving tax breaks to help them promote their most profitable and shortest lasting products. Most times on the pretense of "saving energy" or being "green". When in reality the product that only cost $4K over 30 years is always more efficient or more "green" than the one that cost $12K over the same time period and was sold on false promises to save energy
Seems these days everything is backwards. What's right is wrong, and wrong is right. There are a lot of "opinions" about how pumps work. But that is one thing that is settled science. Every pump has a published pump curve that shows exactly what that pump can/will do. Yet there are people who think they are smarter and know more than everyone else that will tell you that is wrong, even though the pump curve in front of them shows that pump will drop from 1HP and 9 amps to a 1/2HP load of 5 amps when flow is reduced. You don't have to reduce the RPM of a pump to get the horsepower or amps to drop. As a matter of fact, variable speed drives or VFD's are just trying to trick a pump into doing something it already does naturally without reducing its speed.
Instead of making something more complicated and expensive, the Cycle Stop Valve has just reduced everything down to the simplest form that will solve all pump system problems. The data on the pump specification or curve is the absolute truth and shows how the pump works. Thirty years of flawless operations from close to a million Cycle Stop Valves still in operation without a single pump failure is further proof in the pudding. I can see why pump companies hate me. But I don't understand how some people, who claim to be engineers, can't or won't understand how pumps really work. They get angry when I try to explain it to them. This is the kind of things I hear from them.
"I understand everything Cary. I am a very educated engineer with degrees in math, physics and computer science, and you are trying to fool me. Good luck with that!"
I don't understand why they can't just look at a simple pump curve and figure out they are wrong. Some even double or triple down on their lack of understanding instead of ever admitting they are wrong. If you want to see how far they take it and how much I have to put up with, you should watch what one crazy guy is doing on youtube. He was so insulted that I tried to "teach" him something that he has made hours of videos calling me a liar, Snake oil salesman, disreputable, and all kinds of things. Even with 30 years of proof and showing him the pump curve he still calls me a liar. Just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished, what is wrong is right, and there is nothing we can do about it but to educate ourselves and try to weed through to get to the facts.