Gtomike06
New Member
Had some pipes break during the freeze and was lucky enough to only feed some water spigots. Hadn't sweated any copper in years since the last house was converted to PEX. Sweated a shutoff upstream and got the house back on. Finally found all the stuff to fix it and have had a small leak from under the kitchen sink on a valve stem on a compression type shutoff and decided to replace em all. Cut the ferrules off and put all new on but left the old indented pipe. Sure enough the same one was leaking from behind the compression nut. Always buy extra so I cut the pipe off cleaned and put another one on. Didn't leak all yesterday and this morning I found 2 drops of water from under it. Now it looks like its leaking from the threads going into the nut.... I put about an 1/8 turn on it this morning but I did notice the other 2 look like the nut is on further. Don't wanna overdo it but geez I got this sucker super tight now but what's weird is the nut doesn't want to tighten down more but I can more easily tighten the valve side of it if that makes sense. Do I just keep tightening it till it quits leaking? Also if this one fails id almost rather go with a solder shutoff but I know how prone to failing these are and worry about soldering on and off every couple years. Realistic worry?
Also when I was repairing the leak in the attic instead of standing on my head in the attic I just cut a section out and took it to the garage and built it but when I got back up there I shoulda soldered it backwards of how I did because the shutoff valve lengthened the one side and now where the fitting went together its angles don't match up exactly perfect. It held all night and seems solid. I whacked on it with a pair of Kleins to see if it would give up but it held. I know I got it all the way in there because I measure depth everytime. Is a stress on the pipe going to make it failure prone?
Hopefully this is my easiest leak, the packing nut on the shutoff I installed to get the water back on. Must have overheated it when I tried like heck not to but the water was on to one side of the valve so I had to solder the other side closed but did that before I put it all together so it wouldn't build pressure. I noticed a small water drop by the packing nut overnight. Not even enough to drip down but enough for the OCD to kick in. I put a small turn on it this morning but if I did overcook the packing I have no problem turning the house water off and pulling the top off to hopefully replace it? I've always just replaced the whole valve when I've had a bad one but I prefer not to unsolder and re solder. I bought 2 of em so I have the exact valve I could take the guts out of but I can't find much online about replacing ball valve packing. Mainly stuff for gate valves. If the tightening the nut doesn't fix it is replacing the packing feasible?
Thanks for the help.
Also when I was repairing the leak in the attic instead of standing on my head in the attic I just cut a section out and took it to the garage and built it but when I got back up there I shoulda soldered it backwards of how I did because the shutoff valve lengthened the one side and now where the fitting went together its angles don't match up exactly perfect. It held all night and seems solid. I whacked on it with a pair of Kleins to see if it would give up but it held. I know I got it all the way in there because I measure depth everytime. Is a stress on the pipe going to make it failure prone?
Hopefully this is my easiest leak, the packing nut on the shutoff I installed to get the water back on. Must have overheated it when I tried like heck not to but the water was on to one side of the valve so I had to solder the other side closed but did that before I put it all together so it wouldn't build pressure. I noticed a small water drop by the packing nut overnight. Not even enough to drip down but enough for the OCD to kick in. I put a small turn on it this morning but if I did overcook the packing I have no problem turning the house water off and pulling the top off to hopefully replace it? I've always just replaced the whole valve when I've had a bad one but I prefer not to unsolder and re solder. I bought 2 of em so I have the exact valve I could take the guts out of but I can't find much online about replacing ball valve packing. Mainly stuff for gate valves. If the tightening the nut doesn't fix it is replacing the packing feasible?
Thanks for the help.