Stuck service valve

[marc_ely]

I am just replacing our bathroom and I need to get the old bath out. All of the pipes in the bathroom have service valves (the 90degree on-off type). All move fine, except the bath ones. One >almost< turns off, but the other is stuck open. This one wont budge at all.

I tried heating it up with a hot-air gun, but it still wouldn't budge.

Any tips? The hot/cold feeds into the valves look to come direct from the tanks, so replacing the valves will mean draining them all.

Sorry if this has come up before, but I've searched old posts and the FAQ and I can't find an answer!

Regards Marc

[deckertim]

You should have a tap or service valve on the output from both the cold water and hot water tanks. have you looked closely?

marc [e-mail] wrote:

[John]

Try turning them off whilst the tap is open - ie. water flowing through them. I have this with one that leads to an outside tap. Only goes halfway if the pressure is on both sides.

[Richard Downing]

Two things come to mind:

1) If there are no other usable valves in the run from the tanks, can you put a cork in the outlet from the tank by reaching into it from the top? Yes your arm does get wet!

2) If these are ball-type valves they can get blocked/sealed by sediment or lime scale. When you do manage to force them, the sediment can scratch the ball body or brass casing. From then on they always weep, and there is nothing that you can do about it.

You might be better off draining the system and adding gate valves at both places - tank end and bath end. Gate valves suffer other problems but it's often possible to repair them.

R.

[marc_ely]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've tried opening the valves with water running but there's no improvement.

My hot water pipe comes out of the cylinder and then splits 3 ways. 2 pipes go to shower pumps and have stop-taps on them, but the other dissapears under the floor. The cold water storage tank has 4 outlet pipes. All of these are lagged, so I have guessed (maybe incorrectly) that there are no valves under the lagging.

It's looking more and more like a system drain down :-(

One last go on the valves with WD40...

Marc

[Frank Erskine]

You'd do better with PlusGas...