Company History

The History of Halogen Valve Systems

Halogen Valve Systems was founded in 1996 by Bob Carsten in his Orange County CA garage, and was the first company to build emergency chlorine shutoff systems in the United States. Bob was a former Navy fighter pilot whom saw combat in Vietnam, and after his stint in the Navy worked as a mechanical engineer for various private sector companies. After a number of years working for a chlorine re-packager called All Pure Chemical in 1990’s, Bob was perplexed by the safety devices that existed at the time. The standard at the time was to install an “Emergency Scrubber” that would contain the leak to the chlorine room, but still required the operators to “suit up” with an SCBA and enter the toxic environment to shut the valve. Bob saw that if you could simply close the cylinder valve quickly at the source without exposing personnel to the toxic environment, that this was truly the “A” safety answer.

Bob worked hard on designing a product that would be easy to use and that could survive the very corrosive chlorine environment. With his neighbor Stan Shivers whom was a retired tool maker, the two built the first mechanical prototype while an acquaintance of Bob’s worked on the electronics. The three formed a partnership in 1996 and set out to sell the product knowing nothing about the water industry. In February of 1997 after putting a press release in Water and Waste Digest, Bob met Mark Nelson of Force Flow when Mark responded to his press release. With his knowledge of the marketing and distribution of the water industry, Bob asked Mark to join their partnership and board to give them guidance on the marketing and sales of the product.

After his death from cancer in late 1999, Bob’s wife Jane Carsten retained ownership of the company and hired Tom Kincaid in 2001 (a former co-worker of Bob’s from All Pure Chemical) to run the company. After Jane died unexpectedly in 2009, partners Mark Nelson, Tom Kincaid and Paul Burdick bought out the company from the family and continued to grow. When Tom decided to retire in 2014, Mark took over management of the company and now markets Halogen alongside their sister company Force Flow.

To this day, Halogen Valve Systems is considered the gold standard of emergency chlorine shutoff systems. Halogen has global distribution in over 50 countries and offers chlorine shutoff systems for virtually every type of chlorine valve used around the world.