The only plumbing bit I haven't bought yet are a pile of ball valves, to install on key sections for isolation and maintenatnce purposes.
So many... Any recommendations? I'll need a fair few, hence teh question - otherwise I'd just buy the expensive ones... Bugger all point in fitting them at all unless they work and stay working for the next decade or two...
hi tim watch out for the bore size when the are fully open - cheapies will, i expect, be narrow bore so each one will negatively affect flow rate, so increasing power required to e.g. operate CH or reduce flow to showers etc.
IME cheapies start leaking sooner than more expensive ones... My "plant room" uses 1/4 turn full bore lever valves which I hope will stay the distance! tho not nice to look at...
use those all the time & there isn't anything wrong with them. Having said that, my needs are different - I won't be the bloke using it in a decades time. I use them simply to make jobs easier for me to do at the time.
gate valves, IME cheap ball valves work well enough - I have not had any problems with them leaking, seizing, not sealing etc. So in situations where you are just isolating single taps, cisterns etc I would probably use those. For more major locations, and for things like shower isolators, I would use the lever operated full bore valves - especially round the components of the heating and hot water systems etc.
> Unlike gate valves, IME cheap ball valves work well enough - I have not
I have a ball valve (screw slot) on the feed to my outside tap - I find that if the outside tap is closed then the ball valve is very hard to close. If the outside tap is open a trickle then it is easy. Must be some sort of hydraulic pressure on the seal. Anyone else found this?
I've had cheaper ones fail (and also some don't seal well in both directions) I now generally get full bore Pegler lever or butterfly ones as I only want to fit them once.
> These ought to be reliable, but getting more expensive:
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T Ball Valve 15mm Red
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> And RWC, who I presume are a good brand?
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> And these:
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> Cheers
Is that your completion date for finishing the bungalow :-) ?
The two (probably cheapo ball valves) that my Dad fitted to isolate the hot and cold outside taps some years ago (1) still work. They are of course used every year as he isolates the outside taps every winter. I wonder if non use of a ball valve allows them to fail when they are needed like gate valves always do?
Cheers
Adam
(1) Work it out for youself. He installed the outside taps the same week as he bought a brand new A registered Ford Sierra as he intended to clean it every week. I can assure you that he spent more time installing the taps than cleaning the car.
ARWadsworth wibbled on Saturday 03 October 2009 16:38
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>>> These ought to be reliable, but getting more expensive:
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> T Ball Valve 15mm Red
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>>> And RWC, who I presume are a good brand?
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>>> And these:
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>>> Cheers
Finish? What is this alien term you talk of? We're moving in the end of the month whatever's ready. We will have a bathroom (pretty complete), 2 bedrooms and if we're really lucky a kitchen floor. That gives us enough room to dump stuff and exist. There's still *much* to do (ie heating system, fit out the kitchen, paint hall, 3rd bedroom + new window) but it's fairly clean work and fairly non invasive.
Then there's upstairs + sort out the roof ventilation and insulation, but that can wait till spring...
I only wondered as I found a couple of ball valves that were right bastards to turn off on the old plumbing and one in our rented house. Probably a case of "if they were turned once a year" then they'd be fine.
VW clean my car when it goes for it's annual service (while it's still worth having a manufacturer franchise service for the book). Othertimes, if I'm desperate (ie SWMBO is kicking my nuts off) then it's a quick slosh with a bucket if I have time or see the nice Polish blokes outside Homebase who do a really nice job for a fiver.
snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net wibbled on Saturday 03 October 2009 15:33
I'm hearing Peglar = reliable enough to consider the extra dosh.
I might do a bit of half and half. Peglar t-valves on each major branch and a cheap ball valve on each final leg. That can be handy, but if it jams, it's not the end of teh world...
Is there any likely problem with using screwdriver ballvalves as flow restrictors? Noisy maybe...
I'm going to have mains pressure hot water, and it might be useful to restrict the flow to certain taps so that, say, turning the kitchen sink on full blast doesn't drop the shower flow.
I recently changed the downstairs bog & utility room over to mains fed rather than from the cold tank. Tried to restrict the bog by part closing the isolator ball valve. It was too noisy, woke me up upstairs, so I raked in the plumbing box and found the spiral flow restrictor for the cystern ball valve(other type of ball valve!) HP. Works a treat and silent. Don't know if you can get teh same for other devices, but a length of microbore may silently reduce flow enough.
JOOI are ballvalves OK to operate half-open? I noticed the other day that one of my gate valves (spit) has a tag on it saying to only operate it in full-open or full-closed, persumably for wear reasons.
(I see lots of small ballvalves here in the US with small lozenge-shaped handles; they seem to be a standard fitting, presumably for both flow-tuning and easy shut-off. I see a lot of them leak around the shafts, and even a couple where the bodies have outright cracked. Crappy stuff)
You can buy pressure reducing valves quite cheaply now - I picked up a Caleffi thing to stop the mains pressure water blowing our caravan plumbing for about 10 quid.
In our replumbing exercise I'm planning to bring all the plumbing to the toilet cisterns back to a central point in case I ever get the budget for a proper rainwater recycling system so it would be quite an easy thing to reduce the pressure down to a couple of bar.
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