The call came in on a Friday, right as I was pulling up that week's rejection log. Our Ohio distributor was on the line, and I could hear a contractor in the background—fast questions, one after another. First one: "Who actually makes these Apollo valves? The casting says Conbraco. The box says Apollo. Which one's real?"
Fair question. We've gotten it for years.
The Short Answer on Who Makes Apollo Valves
Conbraco Industries is the parent company behind Apollo Valves. We've been manufacturing out of Matthews, North Carolina, for decades. Apollo is the brand on the box and the spec sheet. Conbraco is the name in the casting and on the corporate filings. Same facility. Same quality program. Same people. You're not looking at a private label or a value line.
According to MSS SP-25, the standard marking system for valves requires the manufacturer's name and the pressure rating to be cast into the body (Source: Manufacturers Standardization Society, mss-hq.org). So when that contractor saw "Conbraco" on the casting, he was looking at the manufacturer's mark. The Apollo logo on the box is the brand. Conbraco is the company that stands behind the warranty.
I assumed that would settle it. It didn't.
Then He Asked About the 77FLF
Once we got the name sorted, he moved on to the valve in his hand: the 77FLF ball valve. He wanted to know what it could actually do.
The 77FLF is one of the workhorses of our product line. It's a three-piece, full-port ball valve in lead-free brass, which makes it a standard choice for potable water systems. It's certified to NSF/ANSI 61, the health-effects standard for drinking water system components (Source: NSF International, nsf.org). Every valve in the series gets a shell test and a seat leak test before it ships. Blowout-proof stem, PTFE seats, and a body rated for 600 psi CWP and 150 psi SWP per the current Apollo catalog. Pressure-temperature ratings follow the ASME B16.34 framework, which ties valve ratings to material groups (Source: ASME, asme.org).
It's a solid, boring, dependable workhorse. I told him that, and he laughed.
"Okay," he said. "So could I use this for flow control?"
I paused. Because that wasn't the question he really wanted to ask.
"Are you thinking about a butterfly valve?" I said.
Silence on the line for a second. "How'd you guess?"
Can a Butterfly Valve Be Used for Flow Control?
This is one of those questions that sounds simple until you've seen a few hundred installations. Here's the long version.
Butterfly valves are isolation valves. They do an excellent job fully open or fully closed. Using one for flow control—throttling, in industry terms—is possible in limited situations, but it's rarely a good idea.
Why? First, at low opening angles, the disc sits directly in the flow stream. That creates turbulence and makes accurate flow regulation genuinely difficult. Second, in high-pressure-drop applications, you can get cavitation on the downstream side of the disc. That's not just noise. It destroys the seat and disc over time. Third, the flow characteristic of a butterfly valve isn't built for precision. You get a lot of flow change for a small movement at certain angles and almost none at others. That's the opposite of what you want in a control valve.
I'm not a hydraulic engineer, so I can't get into the full fluid-dynamics modeling. What I can tell you from a quality perspective is that in my years of reviewing failed-valve reports, misapplied butterfly valves show up far more often than properly applied ball valves.
"Look," I said. "If you need to isolate an 8-inch main, a butterfly valve is a legitimate choice. If you need precise, repeatable flow control on a 3/4-inch branch line, you're better off with a globe valve, a needle valve, or a ball valve with the right actuator—like the 77FLF in your hand."
That's when he told me the part that made my stomach drop.
The Gate Valve F 617 0 Problem
"I already ordered a gate valve F 617 0 for the same line," he said. "I was going to use it to balance the system."
No.
Just... no.
Gate valves are full-open, full-close valves. They are not throttling devices. A partially open gate valve disc chatters, erodes the seat, and gives you zero proportional control. The F 617 0 is a bronze gate valve with threaded ends. We build it for isolation duty on water systems up to its rated pressure. If you install it halfway open and try to balance flow with it, you'll be rebuilding the line within a season.
"Who recommended that package?" I asked.
He named a supplier I won't repeat here. The bottom line: someone had put together a "flow control bundle" with two shutoff valves and passed it off as a modulating solution. That's a red flag, plain and simple.
As we were talking, I heard his apprentice in the background, dropping tools. I recognized the distinct clatter of a GS-50 5-piece pliers set hitting the concrete. We don't make those, but I knew the kit. Every pipe fitter I've ever met has one in the truck. "Tell him to keep those," I said. "That part of your order's fine." He laughed. It loosened the mood. But the lesson we were working through wasn't about tools. It was about which valves do which jobs.
Walking Through the Whole Mechanical Room
We spent the next twenty minutes going through the project's bill of materials, line by line. In final inspection, I sign off on a couple hundred valves a week. When you see that many units, you start recognizing patterns—including which valves get bought for the wrong reason.
The butterfly valve stayed on the incoming main. That's an acceptable isolation application.
The gate valve F 617 0 stayed on the supply side where it belongs—fully open or fully closed.
The flow-control duty went to a second 77FLF with an actuator, which gives you positioning capability in a compact package.
And we added a dedicated globe valve for the bypass line. If you need accurate throttling at small diameters, a globe valve is hard to beat.
The contractor didn't argue. He just asked me to read the catalog numbers back slowly so he could write them in his field notebook. His apprentice read them back to confirm. Twenty minutes later, the distributor emailed me a revised spec for the project.
Here's the part I think about now, months later: he submitted the revision the same night. No dispute, no return, no "let me ask my guy first." He had been sold the wrong tools for the job. All he needed was someone to walk him through the difference.
What That Call Taught Me
I've thought about that call a lot, and not just because it had a satisfying ending. It made me realize we don't spend enough time explaining the "why" behind valve selection. We hand out spec sheets, but we don't always teach people how to think about applications.
Part of that is on me. I still kick myself that our packaging doesn't say "Apollo is a brand of Conbraco Industries" more boldly. That one-line fix would have saved the first ten minutes of that call. But the deeper lesson is that an informed customer asks better questions and makes faster decisions. That contractor went from confused to confident in under an hour, and all it took was a respectful explanation.
So, can a butterfly valve be used for flow control? Yes, in some applications, with proper engineering and actuator selection. But always ask whether it's the right tool before you commit. And one more thing: the specs I referenced here are accurate as of the 2026 Apollo product catalog. Product revisions happen, so verify against the current technical literature before you spec anything.
If you've got questions about which valve suits your application, a good distributor will walk you through it. Or call the manufacturer. We have people whose entire job is having these conversations. I'm one of them.
