Brass would be more likely what the original were. If you used just an ordinary steel screw it will rust and likely by the time you to repair again it'll be near impossible to remove...SS would work as well, though, you're correct.
I just removed and reinstalled the shutoff valves under a bathroom sink and the washers in the valve stems of the faucet itself. After doing so, whenever I let the sink sit for a little while, like overnight, I get rusty/yellowish water for the first few seconds after turning on the faucet. The rust clears up after a couple of seconds, but I can't figure out why doing what I did is causing the rust. Any ideas what I should check? The only metal pieces that I actually replaced were the screws that held the washers in place. Do I need to use a special screw for this, like a stainless screw? The ones that I took out were pretty badly corroded.
Whenever you turn off the water supply and open a line, especially on an older home, you disturb the rust, sediment and calcium that is built up in the line. It takes a while for it to settle back and stop coming out of the line.
I can't imagine what screws you are talking about, so I can't help you there.
You didn't tell us what kind of fresh-water piping exists in your home...ahead of the stop valves. I concur with Robert Allison.
Yeah, as I noted in previous response, if you replaced the originals which were undoubtedly either brass or bronze w/ ordinary steel they may well be at least part of the problem. Pulling on seat back out and looking will answer that question faster than posting here... :)
If putting a new washer on is all that's been changed, it's unlikely there's a lot of additional new rust although as noted elsewhere having opened a system is likely to break up old sediment which will take some time to either reattach internally or get flushed out.
Better to swap out steel screws anyway as they will eventually rust and next time need to replace washer will be more difficult to get them out w/o damage.
I have copper piping for supply lines, in a fairly old house (100+ years). I replaced the valves and washers nearly 2 months ago, and the rust is still a problem. The screws that I'm talking about are the screws that are used to hold the washers into the valve stems.
Does that help to clear up the issue?
In my case, the rust is coming from city pipe that are 50 to 100 years old. Whole house filter solved the problem.
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