Best Pee-Valve

[jcook]

I use the LM Balanced Pee valve, but I am thinking about turning it into an unbalanced one. The damn thing only works 50% of the time, I will get a little bit of pee outside of the suit, the rest goes down my right leg. Plus it always feels difficult to urinate out of the valve, which I know isn't supposed to happen. I saw some posts on Deco Stop about the LM ones having a bunch of delrin shavings left over in them and once cleaned out they worked perfectly. I may check mine out and give it one more chance as a balanced, if it still doesn't work, I am just going to plug the hole and make it an unbalanced one.

[FW]

There is no increased chance of a uti with an unbalanced IF properly used. The limited data regarding peevalve uti's showed that almost every case of uti was in a situation where someone opened the valve at depth without priming it first, or some similar scenario.

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I agree, but "stuff" happens

[PfcAJ]

Tl;dr - Balanced valve = pee on your leg. Unbalanced = no pee on your leg. Unbalanced>balanced.

[rddvet]

Quick question for my understanding on the balanced valve. If the check valve or duckbill is bad you get a leak on your leg because it comes out of the balancing port?

My issue is with the balanced valve it is often difficult to start flow. For the longest time I thought it was just me and I was just making a bigger deal of it in my head. So if my valve is tough to start flow with, I guarantee I don't get catheter kinks, and my leg isn't getting wet near the valve, then what part of the balanced valve is creating the pressure. It's been difficult enough that I blew the catheter off trying to start flow. Again I've always assumed it was a kink, but now this thread has me thinking maybe it's not.

[RN]

Yes, a bad check valve equals pee on your leg.

The pressure is created by the water around the exit port. You have to overcome the pressure to get flow going. The check valve is supposed to help overcome that, but as we have seen in this and many other threads, check valves are the main failure point in balanced pee valves and have a high incidence of failure.

[mdax]

I've had no issues with my halcyon balanced pee valve yet (about 1 year of use)...I almost always use it at the surface before the dive and hope for a dry future! UTI's are no joke; I don't look forward to that ever happening.

[a64pilot]

I plugged the port on my LM valve and it's still difficult to start "flow", I think I will do the bulkhead thing, or at least investigate it.

[RN]

That's because you still have the diaphragm in place that prevents backflow from happening. Remove that and you shouldn't have issues starting flow.

[ninjutzu]

Purchased LM balanced, leaking after few dives, removed the inside valve, replaced with a screw, from balanced became an unbalanced pipe and that's it. No issus so far.