Watch out for old Gate Valves

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Jadnashua

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I guess I should have known better than to touch an old main water shutoff that hadn't been used in quite awhile on a weekend. I needed to swap out a leaking tub/shower cartridge, so needed to shut off the water to the house. That all worked fine, but the stem broke to the gate, and I could not open up the valve to restore water! These things do wear out, and I replaced it with a new ball valve. But, I live in a row of condominiums, and while I have my unit shutoff, to actually shut off water to replace my shutoff, I had to go to the end unit and shut it off for the whole row. So, to get the water to stop dripping would have required draining ten units, without access to each one to open a valve...it would have likely continued to drip for maybe days, which was certainly not possible to wait to solder in a new valve. And, even if it slowed to a stop, as soon as someone opened up a faucet, more water would have come out. The more common choices were, a compression valve, or a Sharkbite. I opted for a Sharkbite, which meant I only needed to have the complex water off for about 10-minutes and didn't need to get any wetter since it went on in less than two minutes after cutting the old out, cleaning it up so it wouldn't damage the o-ring seals, and shoving it in place. Holding a compression valve up (it came out of the ceiling) would have required trying to juggle three things: hold the valve from falling off, and two wrenches to tighten a compression valve in place while water was coming out (gravity, not pressure anymore, but still). The connection to restore it to the rest of the house was fairly easy, but it, too, wasn't really setup to drain fully. There are some dissolvable plugs you can use, but I ended up using a Sharkbite slip joint to make that connection, too. Normally, I'd solder everything, but sometimes, you just have to do what you have to do.

Anyway, if you have an old gate valve, especially when it isn't used often (and maybe even if it is!), consider changing it out on a weekday, early in the day, in case you have to call a plumber and don't want to pay emergency weekend rates! You'll have more choices on where to shop, too, should you then need to pick up some parts.

Lesson learned....
 

SteveW

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Good post, Jim.

I too have learned the hard way not to initiate an elective plumbing job close to closing time of the hardware store! Good reminder to be a little strategic when planning a job involving shutting down the main supply.
 

FullySprinklered

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I've broken one or two.

The slip coupling has become my go-to fitting for making repairs in tight places.

I hate jobs where you have to turn off a stack of units to do work on one of them. Lots of dirty looks from folks in the elevator as you're carrying up your tools.

I've found that using a crescent wrench as a hammer is good for seating the sharkbites. You can close the two-inch gap for the slip coupling and ram it home by snugging an adjustable wrench down on the pipe, snapping on the orange tool, then tapping the tool with the jaws of the wrench. It hits equally on the tool and seats the fitting nicely on the other pipe. You can tell when it bottoms out.
 
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Flapper

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I once shut off a gate valve to a water heater that probably wasn't turned in 15 years... and it broke
soo to fix it I had to shut off the main (gate) valve... and it broke too...
ended up being a challenging and expensive plumbing project, and I wanted to do it right and solder copper but it messed up. A couple of push fittings ended the mess
 

Jadnashua

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THe hassle with these things is that it's important that they actually work when needed, and you don't know until you try. It could leave you with either the water off and you can't get it back on, or on and no way to shut it off. Since you can't plan emergencies...it's not a bad idea to replace an old one with a new ball valve as a planned maintenance operation, rather than in an emergency. A good ball valve should last much longer, but they, too, will get stiff if not used, but will usually still work.
 
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