Replacing residential main shutoff valve

[Bbrewer87]

I want to replace the main shut off valve because it's leaky and I want to re Plumb everything from old galvanized to PEX. I'm pretty sure it's three quarter inch copper coming in but there's not a lot of room between the wall and the first fitting. I want to take this fitting off so I can connect to the three-quarter inch copper with a SharkBite fitting and run that straight into PEX and take off from there but I'm worried that if I try to take that fitting off it will twist the copper. I'm not sure how to tackle this, any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Michael Young]

Cut the galvanized pipe. Remove the union.
Unscrew the union from the female threads
Unscrew the galvanized from the female thread

Screw in a male adapter on each side. The brass will act as a dielectric.
I would cut back as far as you can and get rid of as much galvanized as possible
Just use a male or female adapter to transition to pex.
don't use sharkbites. They work, sure. but use the money you save on sharkbites
and just buy some inexpensive crimpers at home dopey.

Are you sure that's copper back there? Looks like more galvanized to me. If your replacing all of this with plastic pipe, you're going to lose your ground. Make sure you re-attach your ground properly.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Bbrewer87]

Cut the galvanized pipe. Remove the union.
Unscrew the union from the female threads
Unscrew the galvanized from the female thread

Screw in a male adapter on each side. The brass will act as a dielectric.
I would cut back as far as you can and get rid of as much galvanized as possible
Just use a male or female adapter to transition to pex.
don't use sharkbites. They work, sure. but use the money you save on sharkbites
and just buy some inexpensive crimpers at home dopey.

Are you sure that's copper back there? Looks like more galvanized to me. If your replacing all of this with plastic pipe, you're going to lose your ground. Make sure you re-attach your ground properly

Cut the galvanized pipe. Remove the union.
Unscrew the union from the female threads
Unscrew the galvanized from the female thread

Screw in a male adapter on each side. The brass will act as a dielectric.
I would cut back as far as you can and get rid of as much galvanized as possible
Just use a male or female adapter to transition to pex.
don't use sharkbites. They work, sure. but use the money you save on sharkbites
and just buy some inexpensive crimpers at home dopey.

Are you sure that's copper back there? Looks like more galvanized to me. If your replacing all of this with plastic pipe, you're going to lose your ground. Make sure you re-attach your ground properly.

Okay I think I understand what you mean. Basically I will unscrew the shut off fitting from the union and leave the union in place and tie a male adapter into the union. I'm pretty sure it's copper but I could be wrong.

 

[Terry]

The safest would be to keep the old angle valve in place, and pipe to that outlet, adding a new shutoff while you at it, downstream.

What is on the other side there? If it's a wall, and you would have to dig down and replace out to the water meter, well............that's always a better job, but it is a bigger job too.

Normally you would have really old galvanized piping there to the meter. I don't know of many water services that were ever run in copper.

 

[Bbrewer87]

The safest would be to keep the old angle valve in place, and pipe to that outlet, adding a new shutoff while you at it, downstream.

What is on the other side there? If it's a wall, and you would have to dig down and replace out to the water meter, well............that's always a better job, but it is a bigger job too.

Normally you would have really old galvanized piping there to the meter. I don't know of many water services that were ever run in copper.

Yeah, it's a wall. I wish I could replace it from the meter to the house but it is too big of a job. I'm thinking it would be a good idea to keep that in place and add a shutoff downstream like you said. Thanks for your advice I appreciate it.

 

[Jeff H Young]

Not being a smart alec the other option is the one that's being lived for years already and that is to do nothing. But I'd likely add a valve down stream. or try to find the guts out of another Mueller valve that matches Call them up with a pic and the size 3/4' or 1 " a little bit of time but easy fix if you can replace the guts