Solid Valve -vs- Easy Valve
The Volcano vaporizer comes with your choice of two valve/balloon systems:
Solid Valve – Click here for details at storz-bickel.com
- Durable construction of stainless steel and heat resistant plastics.
- You choose the size of the balloon.
- Extra balloon material is fairly cheap.
Easy Valve – Click here for details at storz-bickel.com
- Maintenance free design – no cleaning – just toss and replace.
- Pre-set balloon size.
- Did we mention no cleaning?
The choice is yours – the price for the initial kit is the same. Money wise the difference is over the long term. The solid valve will be cheaper, but you’ll have to take it apart and clean it. The easy valve, will be – well easier.
Tags: buying a volcano vaporizer, easy valve, solid valve
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
[...] Available with Solid Valve or Easy Valve [...]
February 28th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
[...] is a very capable vaporizer. It warms up fast and produces consistent reliable heat. I use the Solid Valve System instead of the Easy Valve. I did this for economy as well – I can clean and replace the parts [...]
July 10th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
This is the post that lead me to this blog. So I thought I’d give back now that I own a Digital with Easy Valve. I’ve used the solid valve on a friends too. There are some other things you should consider that don’t get brought up often when discussing easy vs solid, that IMHO make the easy valve the better choice:
0.) The first important thing to note is that you CAN change the bag in an Easy Valve, multiple times if you’re careful before they need to be replaced. There are multiple guides on this online, I like the prying methods best. This means you can get multiple uses of each valve, saving $, that you can clean them before reuse too so they’re like new, and that you can customize your bag sizes too just like a Solid valve.
1.) The width of the chamber and screens in the EASY valve is wider by around a 1/4″ – which is quite signifigant. This leads to greater exposed surface area and faster production of vapor. This also makes for an easier cleaning chamber.
2.) The Easy Valve kits give you multiple mouth pieces and valves. Each kit gives you more. With the Solid Valve, unless you by extra (that’s a lot of $), you only have one. What this means is that you can rapidly fill multiple bags – one for each person, or one right after eachother… great for having many people over.
3.) Having multiple bags and valves with an Easy Valve also means that you can have multiple bag sizes, ready to go immediately. Maybe a 1 footer for just yourself for quick sessions, a 2 footer for just you or you and one other, a turkey bag or two for pillow like bags that don’t crinkle for “stealth” or “quiet” times, etc. all the way up to having huge 10′ bags by using a whole roll of solid valve material at once!
4.) The chamber of the Easy valve is MUCH more simple and easy to clean. It has far less tendency to get sticky / gummed up. It’s much easier to take apart and assemble. No moving parts like the silly upper screen in the Solid Valve you have to remove and clean constantly each time you fill. Filling it is much simpler as you just twist and fill. It’s much smaller making it easier to clean too and completely disassembles. There are far less parts used too. It’s smaller and takes up less room. All in all, it’s a much better chamber design.
5.) The chamber for the easy valve clips onto the volcano very securely, so the bag and chamber don’t want to tip over or fall off like a Solid valve can/does. So you don’t need to hold it at all during filling.
Yes, the valves on the bag and mouthpiece feel less overengineered and “solid” on an Easy Valve. Yes they feel a little cheaper. Yes it’s not AS easy to change the bag… but to me the pros far out weigh the cons.