What’s the longest you’ve had to wait to drain water lines after shutting off water?

[Smokey424]

I was recently renovating one of my bathrooms. I had to make a few solders so I turned off the main shutoff and opened up every water line I could in the house. I ended up waiting several hours, maybe 4-5 hours. I tried sucking out the water left in the pipe several times with a vacuum. In the end, I used the bread trick and made my solders. I’m fairly new to this type of stuff so I was wondering:

should it normally take this long for water to drain out of the pipes after shutting off?
Could it be the main shutoff it not closing all the way?
Is it the case that sometimes a slow stream of water just keeps coming out, even after hours?

some more info: after 10-15 minutes it was just a drop or two of water every couple minutes, but enough to make soldering impossible for me. All the pipes in the house are copper. Single story, typical house. The pipes in question were the hot and cold supply lines for a bath vanity. my main concern is should I replace my main water shutoff if it’s not closing completely.

Thanks for any thoughts.

 

[Reach4]

Could have been siphoning out of the WH into your cold pipes. Next time, close the WH supply valve.

Also, open valves to allow air in too. You probably did that, but I thought I would mention that.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Smokey424]

Could have been siphoning out of the WH into your cold pipes. Next time, close the WH supply valve.

Also, open valves to allow air in too. You probably did that, but I thought I would mention that.

I didn’t think of the WH valve. Thanks for that.