The valve drawer

Why this is a mess

IBC outlets were never standardised across manufacturers in the way that, say, drum bungs were. Different builders in different decades in different regions settled on different threads, and because containers last twenty years, all of those decisions are still circulating in the used market simultaneously. You will meet a 1990s European cage and a 2023 domestic one on the same pallet.

The practical consequence is that "a 2-inch valve" means almost nothing. The valve body might be 2-inch NPT, but the thread it screws onto — the one moulded into the bottle — is where the variation lives.

The five you will actually meet

Camlocks, and the four letters that matter

Cam-and-groove couplings are the standard way to get from an IBC outlet to a hose, and they come in types A through F plus DC and DP end caps. In practice, IBC work uses four.

• Type A: male adapter, female NPT thread. Screws onto a male pipe thread on the valve.
• Type C: female coupler, hose shank. The end that goes on your hose.
• Type E: male adapter, hose shank. The other half of a hose-to-hose join.
• Type F: male adapter, male NPT thread. The most common IBC fitting — screws into a female outlet.
• Type DC: dust cap for a female coupler. Cheap, and the difference between a clean valve and a wasp nest.

The usual IBC assembly is: S60×6 to 2-inch male NPT adapter, then a type F camlock adapter, then a type C coupler on the hose. Three parts, about twenty-two dollars, and it will serve every container on a mixed fleet if the first part is right.

Flow, and the garden hose mistake

The most common accessory we sell is an S60×6 to garden hose thread adapter, and the most common complaint that follows is that the container empties slowly. Both facts are our fault for not saying this loudly enough at the point of sale.

Necking a 2-inch outlet down to garden hose costs roughly 85 % of your flow rate. For irrigation that is often fine — drip systems want low flow anyway — but for transfer or decanting it is maddening. Run 2-inch layflat to where you need the water and step down at the far end.

Gaskets: the part that actually fails

We take more calls about leaking containers than about anything else, and the overwhelming majority are gasket chemistry rather than container defects. An EPDM gasket in a hydrocarbon swells, distorts and weeps. It is a four-dollar part and a two-minute fix, and it gets diagnosed as a failed container about once a fortnight.

Tell us what is going in the container when you order and we will fit the right one before it ships. It costs nothing extra and it prevents the most common problem in this entire trade.

The photograph that solves it

If you are unsure what you have: remove the valve, photograph the bottle outlet face-on with a tape measure laid across the opening, and send it. We will identify the standard, quote the adapter and you will skip a return shipment. We do this several times a week for people who have never bought anything from us, and we are happy to keep doing it.