Use the thinnest gasket your system is designed to accept. Thinner gaskets seal tighter, lower emissions and product loss, resist blowout better, and usually cost less. The exception is older equipment, worn or irregular flange surfaces often need a thicker gasket to seal properly.
Gaskets are designed for single use and should not be reused. Once installed and torqued, a gasket permanently compresses to seal imperfections in the flange surfaces. Reinstalling it almost always leads to leaks or failure.
Always install a new gasket when a flange is opened, even if the old one looks fine. The cost of a replacement is far less than the cost of downtime or a failed seal.
Contact us if you need help selecting the right gasket for your application.
Tongue and groove flanges confine the gasket on all sides, which limits how much the material can compress and flow. Because of this, gasket selection is more critical than with raised-face flanges.
Key considerations:
If you’re unsure which gasket is right for your tongue and groove application, contact us and we can help match the material and dimensions to your service conditions.
Most gaskets require a 125 RMS surface finish; however, always confirm with Stenzel to ensure the correct specification for your application.
Contact us if you’re not sure whether your flange finish is right for your application.
No. Stacking gaskets is not a reliable way to fill a large gap and almost always leads to leaks or blowouts. Each additional gasket adds another potential leak path, and the stack can shift, extrude, or lose compression under pressure and temperature changes.
If the gap between flanges is too large for a standard gasket, the right solution is a thicker single gasket designed for that thickness or addressing the underlying issue, such as misaligned flanges or worn sealing surfaces.
Contact us if you have an unusual gap or alignment issue and need help finding the right sealing solution.
There’s no universal answer, the right number depends on your system’s length, operating temperature, pressure, pipe material, and how much movement (thermal expansion, vibration, or settling) the piping needs to absorb. A short, low-temperature line may not need any, while a long high-temperature steam line may need several.
Contact us if you’d like help evaluating your piping system or selecting the right expansion joints for your application.
Age is a big one! Expansion joints are wear components, and they do not last forever. That said, premature failure can happen for a handful of common reasons, including but not limited to:
Commonly, internal liners are used in high-pressure or high-velocity applications to help direct flow through the expansion joint. They assist in minimizing turbulence and can also help protect the bellows from flow-related wear. Call Stenzel, we’re happy to help determine whether a liner is right for your system.
Limit rods protect the expansion joint by absorbing pressure thrust and restricting how far the bellows can compress or extend. This prevents over-travel that could damage or rupture the joint, especially in unanchored piping systems.
Contact us if you have questions about whether your expansion joint needs limit rods.
Some applications, mostly vertical ducting with upward flow, require an internal particulate deflector to keep particulate from settling into the cavity of the expansion joint. Without a deflector, accumulated material can damage or burn through the fabric belt over time and lead to premature failure.
Contact us if you have questions about deflector design or replacing a damaged fabric expansion joint.
Universal expansion joints are designed to absorb large amounts of lateral motion and are typically used in Z-bend or L-bend piping arrangements. The two bellows separated by a center spool allow the joint to handle offset movement that a single-bellows joint can’t accommodate.
Contact us if you need help determining whether a universal joint is right for your piping layout.
Generally speaking, metal expansion joints are far more popular than rubber joints, perhaps by 4:1, due to their resistance to temperatures and pressures. However, many applications can handle a rubber expansion joint, which can save users significant money. Where the application parameters warrant, rubber expansion joints perform better on:
Mechanical seals, when engineered for the system and installed correctly, will provide reliable operation for a very long time. Eventually they do wear out, but our experience indicates most seal failure is due to another issue in the system, such as:
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