I want to add a compression fitting lever arm ball valve in a piece of
22mm pipe that as far as I can tell is unlikely to be able to be sprung apart enough to get the valve into the space. Is there a special plumber's trick or piece of equipment or whatever to deal with this problem?Keith
What length of pipe is accessible? If you've got enough room, you could use a 'pipe repair' fitting in series with the ball valve. These are like an elongated compression coupler without an end stop one end - so you can slide them down the pipe to clear the other pipe, and then slide them back over the other pipe.
You can get the idea from
Ah, that sounds possible. There is plenty of pipe to play with. My worry is it's the central heating and I don't want to open the pipe to fit the valve only to find I can't get it in!!!
Keith
I'm curious to know just what you're attempting to do?
=A0 Dave Plowman =A0 =A0 =A0 = snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 L= ondon SW =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 To e-mail, change noise into sound.
I have bought a house with fairly chaotic (but now much improved) central heating arrangements. There is also a woodburner with a back boiler connected to the heating circuit (without any special arrangement to stop the oil boiler heating up the woodburner!!!!). I want to be able to use the woodburner but it is not powerful enough to run the whole house so I want to be able to shut off sections of my central heating. I also only have a limited idea of which pipe supplies which radiators. The pipe I want to put a valve in goes upstairs, but I have no idea if it supplies all the upstairs radiators or just some of them - so the valve would have two uses - find out which radiators are on it and shut them off if appropriate when the woodburner is lit.
Keith
Dave Plowman snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound.
I have bought a house with fairly chaotic (but now much improved) central heating arrangements. There is also a woodburner with a back boiler connected to the heating circuit (without any special arrangement to stop the oil boiler heating up the woodburner!!!!). I want to be able to use the woodburner but it is not powerful enough to run the whole house so I want to be able to shut off sections of my central heating. I also only have a limited idea of which pipe supplies which radiators. The pipe I want to put a valve in goes upstairs, but I have no idea if it supplies all the upstairs radiators or just some of them - so the valve would have two uses - find out which radiators are on it and shut them off if appropriate when the woodburner is lit.
Keith
Wouldn't it be more advisable to close the radiators at their individual valves? Closing of sections of a whole loop could cause air traps and hot spots throughout the whole system. If you could close both the flow pipes to certain sections, the water may not flow through the rest of the system.
If I were you, I'd think a bit more on what you intend to do, and make sure that the additions you want to make to the system are safe and advisable.
Just my thoughts.
I'm afraid I don't understand. Surely all I am planning to do is equivalent to fitting a zone valve? All I'm planning to add is a lever arm ball valve to the feed pipe pointing upstairs. How can that be unsafe or inadvisable? The system already has a valve which closes off the main house and so the annexe only is heated - fitted when it was a "granny" annexe. That works perfectly well.
My question was about fitting valves, or anything in fact, in pipes where it seems impossible or very difficult to separate the ends of the pipe enough to get the valve in. Any other suggestions or links on that score please?
Keith
Why? Zone valves shut off parts of a system without causing any problems. Why is this any different (except for being manually operated)?
If you can find a full bore faxable pipe, with a 22mm compression connector on each end, this might do what you are after? - However, not sure if and central heating treatments will degrade them!
Is there really no movement at all on this pipe, you would only need a couple of CM movement to get the valve in! Surely there must be some movement for thermal expansion?
Or disconnect the pipe one end?
Toby...
I find it hard to believe that there is no movement at all in the pipe...it will need to be cut to fit a valve anyway so only other thing I can think of ,if there is room,is to cut the pipe and remove a section then fit another section to the side using right-angle joints to make a sort of U section on it's side and fit the valve in that. Would that work?
Faxing a pipe? That would be worth seeing!
As I've already stated, the pipe is a central heating feed. It certainly is very firmly fixed at the bottom, and as yet (and I suspect this may be my next move) I have no examined it at the top. I didn't want to drain the heating, then cut into the pipe and only then find it wasn't possible to separate the pipes enough to insert the valve.
But then I now realise I'm not at all sure where this woodburner is plumbed into the circuits - so I may have to take up carpets and flooring upstairs anyway to find out what's going on!
Keith
Fax Sake!!!
OK, it's easy. Cut out a few inches more pipe than the valve needs. Fit the valve on one end and cut off a short piece of the piece of pipe to fill the remaining gap, and make the joint with a 22mm end feed slip coupler like this (although you can get it a lot cheaper in your local plumbers merchants)
If there is really /no/ give in the pipes to spring them apart you can get away with cutting the pipe so that with the valve pushed fully over one pipe end the valve will then mate with the other end. Then the valve will slide back and forth on the pipe ends: tighten the compression fittings so the valve is midway in its travel and therefore the pipe ends are equally inserted into the valve. IYSWIM.
If there's enough straight length of pipework the pukka way would be to make another cut somewhere along and join that with a slip coupling after fitting the valve properly.
If the pipe at one side or another of the proposed valve position does a right angle bend and there's room to cut and insert a fitting round the bend (as it were :-)) then that can give you enough wiggle space to assembe the valve and the new (compression) coupling.
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