I've just turned off the hot water at the stopcock in the airing cupboard (one of those red-wheel jobs.
Something has broken, and it won't turn back on again.
I've removed the wheel, and the centre stem is just turning endlessly without pulling the shutter (don't know the right terms!) back and openening the pipe.
No hot water tonight is going to be popular. Is there a way forward without draining the whole system down?
TIA
Pete
gate valve
ought to open and close it once a month to avoid such issues.
not really, new gate valve is needed. couple of hours at most, including nipping down to a shed to get the gate valve.
RT
Depends where the valve is and the layout of the rest of the plumbing. If it's in the hot water circuit (as opposed to the primary heating circuit) then you just need to empty the loft tank, and if it's below the top of the hot water cylinder, that too down to below the level. You might even avoid emptying the loft tank if you can reach into it and block the outlet with a bottle stopper or something similar.
My guess is the travelling gate has run off the end of the thread for some reason. You might be able to do a temporary repair by unscrewing the body of the gate valve, taking the gate out, and pushing it back into the top as you start opening the valve, until it bites into the thread again (or you might even risk putting it back together without the gate in the valve as a temporary measure, although you then lost your ability to turn off the valve in an emergency). One snag is the seal between the two parts of the valve body may not seal again when you reassemble it, and they are a strange size, but it might do until you can get a replacement.
Use a full-bore one if you do this -- normally with a lever on the top to turn it.
Thanks for advice, guys - but how DO I drain down the hot water tank when the inlet valve above it is stuck shut?? Am I reduced to waiting
12 hours for what trickle there is to drain it?
siphon it out with a hose, crack the joint on the top of the gate valve and there will only be the amount of water the 22mm (guess) tube will hold. about a pint.
any unplanned plumbing job means water all over the shop.
RT
or if you really want to take a chance, disconnect the "dry" side , fit a new valve to it, open it and all the hot taps and be ready for a quick changeover .....
(but not if you have a tank full of hot water)
I assume you mean the gate valve in the pipework from the storage tank in the attic feeding into the bottom of the hot water cylinder as this is the usual position for a valve to stop the hot water supply. You can stop the flow to this valve in order to change it by blocking the outlet from the tank. Usually this will be 22mm (maybe 28mm: if it's 15mm something is wrong) and the traditional stopper is a carrot :-) Drayton sell rubber bungs for this sort of purpose (but they're expensive). Wine corks are the wrong size although IIRC those rubber vacu-vin stoppers might do. Just don't even think of plasticene or blu-tack: it's liable to get sucked into the pipework!
I always replace gate valves with lever-operated full-bore ball valves like
You might have to get off the old olives and nuts to put a new valve on anyway as sometimes the old valve has different threads on its compression nuts than new ones. Sometimes you can persuade the old olive to slide off by tapping the back of the nut but if not you saw carefully through the olive using a junior hacksaw almost parallel to the pipe direction and then splittingthe olive with a screwdriver blade.
You might also find that the old pipework is 3/4" rather than 22mm in which case you really should use 3/4" olives (designed to work in 22mm fittings to adapt to old pipe) though I have got away with tightening up a copper 22mm olive a long way.
The carrot trick was nothing short of briliant! It worked, the valve is replaced and hot water is restored.
Think I'll replace the others before this happens again...
Many thanks to all.
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.