I was watching one of the various varieties of the Holmes On Homes/Holmes Inspection/Holmes Makes It Right/Holmes For The Holidays/Holmes Is Where The Heart Is/etc. shows last night.
They showed one of those Frost Proof Sillcocks that had frozen and split. It turns out that it had been installed with a slant towards the interior of the house so that it didn't drain. The water that collected near the interior shut off froze and split the device. The plumber said that the owner probably wouldn't have known it was split until they turned the water on and it sprayed out of the split, which they wouldn't see until they came back into the house. He said that they should be installed slanted outward so that they drain.
That got me thinking, which is always dangerous.
Wouldn't there be a vacuum effect that would prevent the sillcock from draining even if it was slanted outwards? With the tube filled with water, how would air get into the device to allow the water to drain?
The HO needs to take the hose off, when cold season occurs. I've seen it before, people leave the hose on. The tube stays full of water, and they curse the ancestors of the sillcock manufacturers.
The valve is 10 or 12 inches back from the turn handle. Long, long, long valve stem. Ideally, they drain out the open thread end, since the hose is taken off the threads.
Hi, There is a beveled spacer to be betweeon wall and bib. Whoever installed it was not paying attention or s(he) was an idiot? I have several of them out t my cabin. Since it was built more than
10 ers ago, nothing happened to them. I has also heated basement. Owner ought hear the water gushing out......!
When I replaced the frost free faucet in my sister's house, I soldered in a ball valve with drain just a foot or two upstream of it. One like this:
formatting link
By having a ball valve upstream of the frost free hydrant, you can service it easily without turning water off to anything more than that one hydrant.
By having a drain cap on the downstream side of the ball valve, it doesn't matter which way the piping slopes. If it drains to the outside, good. If it drains to the inside, you empty the piping by using the drain on the ball valve.
And, leaving the drain cap loose on the ball valve is advantageous because if the ball valve ever starts to leak, the water will leak out the drain rather than fill the piping downstream of the ball valve and possibly freezing to crack the frost free hydrant.
Using a ball valve with drain upstream of the hydrant allows you to protect that hydrant from cracking due to freezing no matter what.
Some of them have vacuum breakers. This one mentions the valve should be slanted downwards.
formatting link
Also says the hose must be disconnected before freezing weather. I think these things are totally unnecessary. Cost 6-8 times more than a common reliable hose bib. I have 2 hose faucets and before winter I just close the inside valves, disconnect the hoses and open the faucets. BFD The pipes from the inside valve to the outside faucet look level to me. They drain fine. Galvanized steel pipes.
It is a big enough tube that thw wader"slumps" enough to let air in - and the water runs out. The more likely cause of the frostproof splitting is the owner left a hose attached. That will do it, just about every time. In my case it didn't split, - it just pulled the tube out of the faucet/valve portion - so the tap opened and water ran through the hose the first time it got warm, and filled my window well with water - which ran in the window and (most of it) into the laundry tub.
I'm not saying that your drain is a bad idea, quite the contrary.
However, I've never seen one suggested on any Sillcock installation site. I just watch 3 youtube's and scanned through the top three text hits on installing a frost free Sillcock. Not a single one mentions a drain.
If I recall correctly, 4 or 5 of the 6 suggested the downward slant, but not one mentions an interior drain.
Is that something you've seen/learned or was it your own idea?
My son, when he was like 10, opened the backyard spigot and nothing came out because it was frozen. Not being fully versed in righty tighty, lefty loosey, he got confused (he admitted as much later) and wasn't sure if he had turned it off or left it on.
A few days later the weather warmed up, the spigot unfroze and came on full blast. At the time I had a grading problem and massive amounts of rain (or a fully open spigot) would cause water to come under the back door and into the basement. Luckily, my wife had taken the day off of work and eventually heard the rushing water and shut off the main before too much water entered the basement. Had we both been at work, the water would have run for 8+ hours.
(I have since buried a 55 gallon plastic drum as a drywell right outside the basement door and have not had a water issue even in the worst downpours, the kinds that used cause the basement to flood.)
Yes, the show talked about the pitch, although it wasn't a brief mention of the pitch. The entire segment (a full minute?) related to Sillcock was about the fact that the old had split because of the pitch to the interior. He explained in detail why the pitch should be towards the outside.
However, you mentioned that when you saw it, you thought to yourself "Why no drain?" My question is what made you think that? I've never seen a drain on a spigot nor have I seen any installation instructions that suggested one. So, I ask again, not in a challenging manner, simply out of curiosity: Is the drain something that you came up with on your own or have you seen them installed?
DerbyDad is saying that he's seen many references on how to install an frost proof outdoor hydrant, and none of them have recommended installing a shut off valve with drain upstream of the hydrant.
I believe that because most of these TV shows rely solely on the knowledge of the film crew and actors/contractors in putting the show together, and these guys don't know everything just as none of us do.
But, what bugged me is that when I did see a DIY show that did suggest the shut off valve with drain upstream of the frost free hydrant, the dummies soldered the valve in with the handle on top and the drain at the SIDE of the valve body so that not all the water would drain out.
It takes someone who's brain is barely funtioning from lack of use not to realize that even if the pictures always show the drain at the side of the valve...
formatting link
that the valve should be soldered in with the drain at the bottom and the handle sticking out horizontally at the side. That way, all the water drains out cuz the drain is at the lowest point in the piping. It surprised me that no one the team that made the TV show or VHS video that I watched ever suggested they orient the valve differently so that the drain is at the bottom.
You're 100% correct. In the photo of the valve, the drain is clearly located at the side of the valve.
However, no where does it say that the valve should be installed vertically as shown in the photo. As soon as you change the orientation of the handle, then the drain is still located at the side of the valve, but the whole valve has been rotated and so the "side" of the valve now faces up or down. That is, the drain is located at the "side" of the valve only when the valve is installed vertically as shown in the photo, and that's not a requirement.
We live in a world where things aren't always intuitive. Professional boxers used to suffer from dimentia in their autumn years, and it seemed intuitive that this was because every time they took a punch in the face, their skulls would be pushed backwards causing their brains to slam against the inside of the skull directly behind their foreheads. The problem was that the kinds of mental abilities that boxers lost in their autumn years were all associated with the rear part of the brain, not the front part of the brain. Autopsies done on professional boxers confirmed that it was the BACK of their brains that were severely damaged from bruising, not the fronts of their brains. Well, it turns out that the mucous fluid that surrounds the brain inside the skull is denser than the brain tissue itself. The brain basically floats in this dense viscous mucous fluid. So, when a boxer is punched in the face and his skull is pushed backward, the inertia of the mucous fluid causes it to accumulate at the front of the skull, pushing the lighter brain backward to hit against the back of the skull. So, things can often be very different in reality to what they might seem to be at first glance.
But, this is NOT one of those cases.
Ball valves work equally well if the stem which turns the ball is horizontal, vertical, oriented north, west, east or south or even upside down. So, the ball valve will work equally well in any orientation.
The drain, however, always works best if you put it at the bottom.
IDK what he's they're talking about either. Drain? What drain? Freeze-proof sillcocks don't have a drain. They just have the valve 18"+ or so back with a long valve stem so the water gets shut off inside the house where it doesn't freeze. The valve is installed horizontal or very slightly pitched downward. When you turn it off, the remaining water runs out of the pipe like any other water would out of a sillcock. That's why if you leave a hose on it that's full of water it will freeze and bust. Or if you're dumb enough to put it in with it tilted back into the house, it can stay full of water.
If you did put a "drain" in it, IDK how that would work or where the water would go. The whole purpose of these things was so that you didn't have to shut them off and drain them in the winter and so you could have water available all year long.
So what? It still only costs $20 and they last for decades.
And then besides having to remember to do that, go through it each year, you also have no water available outside for months. With a freeze-proof one, if you need to wash something off on a moderate winter day, the water is available.
In fact, it would be nice if they plumbed one near the garage with both hot and cold water, so that you could mix it as needed.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.