There are two areas of home repair for which a lot of people fear to tread: wiring and plumbing. Many homeowners are afraid of electrocuting themselves or burning down their houses by working with electricity, and nearly as many are afraid of drowning in leaking water or raw sewage if they dare to fiddle with the pipes.
Certain electrical and plumbing jobs, though, are a lot easier than they might seem, and today we’re going to look at one of them: Installing water shut-off valves.
Home water supply
In most cases, water is pumped into your house–either from a public water source or a private well–through a single pipe, and there is almost always a valve near the spot where that pipe comes through the outside wall.
If you’re on a public water system, the main shut-off valve will usually be inside the house on the wall closest to the street near the water meter. Some houses have meters outside on the wall near the street. If you have a well, the shut-off will be on the wall closest to the well.
Some houses built on a slab foundation rather than a basement or crawl space may have a main shut-off at the point where the water supply pipes come up through the slab. Once you’ve located the main shut-off valve, it’s a good idea to put some kind of tag on it and to show every member of the household how to turn off the water in an emergency.
If you have to shut off the water to your house, turn the handle on the valve clockwise until it stops. Another way to remember the direction of the turn is to think of the way the top of the valve handle moves as you turn it: Right is tight, and left is loose. (Righty-tighty, lefty-loosy is a good way to remember which way to turn screws and nuts, too, by the way.)
Once you’ve identified the main valve, visually trace the course of the water supply pipes around your house looking for other shut-off valves. You may want to label the valves as you identify what they control.
In most houses the pipes that carry water from room to room are 1/2 or 3/4 inch across and are made of galvanized steel, copper or a type of rigid plastic called CPVC. It’s common to find shut-off valves positioned so that water to one room or section of the house can be cut off while allowing water to reach the other rooms.
Also you should have shut-off valves at individual plumbing fixtures. For example, if you look under your kitchen sink you should have one valve attached to the cold water supply line and another on the hot water side. These valves typically will be designed to fit on 1/4- inch pipes, which is the standard size pipe for supplying a single faucet.
Check your sinks and toilets to make sure shut-off valves are in place. And if the valves are where they’re supposed to be, make sure they’re working properly. Adding or replacing a valve should take only about an hour, even if you’re a novice, and valves cost only about $3 to $6 each. Traditionally shut-off valves have had a gate-type structure inside; the user turns a wheel several revolutions and the gate closes cutting off the water. Now valves with a ball-type structure inside have become common. They may be more dependable and take only a quarter turn to open or close.
Fixture valves
The first step in replacing a faulty valve is studying the valve to see what it is made of and how it is connected. In most cases, you’ll find a small, shiny metal valve held in place with what are called compression fittings. Take careful measurements and shop at your local hardware, plumbing or home improvement store in the “sink repair” or “plumbing fittings” section for a replacement that’s configured the same way.
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A compression fitting has three parts: a six-sided nut with screw threads on its inner surface, a compression ring that looks like a plain wedding band rounded on the outside and flat on the inside, and a nipple with screw threads cut into the outside surface.
Cut off the water supply to the part of the house where you want to add or replace a valve. If you don’t have a shut-off valve controlling that part of the house, you’ll have to shut off the water at the main valve depriving the whole house of water for a time.
To remove an old fixture shut-off valve you’ll need a pair of pliers and an adjustable wrench or two pairs of pliers. To avoid putting stress on the pipes, use a pair of pliers to hold the body of the valve while using the adjustable wrench or second pair of pliers to remove the nuts holding the valve in place.
Once the valve is removed, examine the pipe that led from the wall or floor to the valve. Most commonly this will be a smooth 1/4-inch copper pipe, and you’ll use a shut-off valve with a compression fitting to attach to it.
To use the compression fitting, slide the nut with the threads inside over the exposed copper pipe. Then slide the ring on so the ring fits snugly near the end of the pipe. Now slide the nut up over the ring and start screwing it onto the exposed nipple of the valve.
A tight seal is created as the nut compresses the ring against the nipple. Don’t use a lot of force to turn the nut to tighten the compression fitting. Excessive force can crack the ring and ruin the seal.
After connecting the shut-off valve to the water supply line, you must connect the valve to the water line leading to the toilet, faucet or other fixture you’re working on. If the line leading to the fixture is a small metal or plastic pipe similar to the copper supply line, you’ll use another compression fitting to make the attachment.
In many cases, the line leading to the fixture will be a flexible hose with a threaded nut on the end. This nut should screw onto the nipple of the shut-off valve just like the nut of a compression fitting. In cases where you’re adding a shut-off valve where one didn’t exist before, study how the water line leading to the fixture is attached to the pipe leading to the house’s water supply.
If all you see are solid copper, galvanized or plastic pipes soldered or glued into place, it may be possible to add a valve by cutting out a small section of pipe with a tool called a pipe tube cutter, but that’s a considerably more complicated job. If the fixture line is a flexible tube attached to the supply pipe with some type of compression bolt, then finding a valve with matching connections shouldn’t be hard.