How To Fix A Main Water Shutoff Valve Leak

how's it going you guys it's scott with everyday home repairs and i'm just getting ready to install a water heater but want to run through a very common problem that i'm seeing here and also many homeowners encounter and that is if your main water shutoff valve maybe is a little bit older and it's a multi-turn style like the one behind me here this is called a globe valve and really all that is is it has some pieces of metal in there that are baffles and it's a plug that sits on top to close off or open up the water supply now these valves are kind of notorious for having leaks and it can be pretty intimidating if you're opening this valve and all of a sudden you have a leak and you don't know how to stop that so let me walk you through three easy steps starting with the most basic something you do right now and hopefully stop that leak and then walk you up in terms of complexity and hopefully we'll get that problem fixed for you so let's jump into step one all right so step one is just to tighten what's called the packing nut now if you have threads that you can see exposed hopefully that means this is going to work for you because you have a little room to tighten this packing nut back down because there is a either a seal a flat washer or and or packing material that will seal this off underneath so all you'll do is just adjust your crescent wrench and then just give it a quarter turn or half turn in the clockwise direction so looking down from the top right top perspective clockwise direction will tighten that now for me my packing nut is at the end of travel so this really is going to do much for you hopefully just tightening this packing nut will stop that water leak here at the stem and be an easy solution for your problem okay so now if you're still with me assuming that just tightening this packing that did not work step two will be replacing and trying to pack this nut with new teflon or graphite cord so first up what i'll do is try to remove the handle now you might have mineral deposits such as i have here which is going to affect possibly the screw coming off and or the handle coming off you can use vinegar to try to break down those mineral deposits the only challenge is it is a little bit harder to soak you would want to soak those components for 15 or 20 minutes but this handle can also be very hard to pull off and you want to be careful because you probably have copper lines or a set up where you're going to be applying a lot of torque to those fittings so be careful when you're doing this not to damage the pipe coming in or going out but what you can do is take that crescent wrench around the stem and lightly pry to the front and back to try to slowly move that handle off so i'm starting to get to work free okay now that's worked free now you might need to keep this on for this to actually remove because you want to keep the valve closed especially if your water is still on which mine is not all right so now we'll remove the actual packing nut keeping the valve closed all right if you look down in that packing nut i can see some remnants of probably some graphite used over the years but overall has very little packing material and that was also why i didn't see any exposed threads because this nut was all the way placed all the way down but you'd preferably have some open threads here where packing material is actually holding it up on the threaded surface and then making that nice seal so what i'm going to do is just clean this up a bit and then i will use some teflon cord to go ahead and start to rebuild that packing material up so this is the packing cord that i'll be using and it's just a teflon base you can get teflon or graphite either one at any ace hardware home improvement store also you can look in the description you'll see this exact product just for your reference so it's easier for you to find also i do want to clean up the stem and kind of get those mineral deposits off what i'm going to use is just some plumber sand paper which is usually used on copper when you're going to sweat some joints but here i just want to lightly work some of that mineral deposits off without screwing up the teeth and the stem again you can look in the description for that exact sandpaper i'm using but you want to clean everything up especially after you've sanded off that much mineral deposits and debris so now use the packing cord and go around because with those mineral deposits on there if i didn't clean that off i would not have a flat surface for this cord to seat against so it'd be really hard to make a seal all right so i'm gonna do two turns snip it off then with the packing nut and all that old graphite cleaned off and really cleaning out the internals i'll reintroduce the packing nut tucking i'm making sure the teflon or graphite cord is packed underneath now again what you should be seeing is this nut gets tighter well before you reach the end of travel because you don't want to be able to secure this all the way down and if you're able to go too low you're going to want to introduce a little bit more cord to fill up that void so i do want a little bit more so i'm going to do another a little more than a turn i'll tighten that up and reintroduce the packing nut all right i like this a little bit more because i'm gonna have a little bit of space there at the bottom now i'm just gonna tighten this down you don't have to tighten it down too securely because what i'm gonna do is my main water shut off is off at the curb so i'm going to go turn that on and then see if that actually stops my leak but i do want a little bit more travel that i can you i can turn the valve on and off and then still tighten this packing nut to stop that leak so i have a little bit more so you don't have to go too secure until you have the water on and start testing it out in the step two so now i have my water on at the curb and if you guys need to reference how to turn your water off before your main water shutoff valve that would be out at your curb and here is a link for a video that quickly walks you through that because in certain situations like i have you do need to cut it at the curb so you can do your maintenance on your main water shut off but now let's open the water and check and see if we're sealed up better definitely much better i have a little bit of leakage at the top but i can tighten a little bit more now that's not bad especially compared to where i was at before a little bit of leak once i get all the way open all right and there i still have quite a bit of leak so let me go turn that off of the curb again and then i'll show you step three okay so now moving on to step three i'm gonna actually remove the full stem and remove the bonnet nut here so i can take everything out and take a look at the flat washer down in here and just do a better inspection of the overall globe valve this bonnet nut can be tough to get off [Music] so i'll take the handle off once again remove the packing nut and then see if i can get the spot be careful again of putting too much torque on your your pipes now if you can't get that to move one way it's probably the most effective way is to introduce a little more heat into this body which will hopefully then break down those mineral deposits which is holding the bonnet on not easy and again you need to take your time with that because you can when you have to apply that much torque to your plumbing you can cause quite an issue all right broke it loose so now you'll see that flat washer in here and then also usually you have some kind of seal between this flat search surface and the housing itself now what you can do is you can take now this down to your home improvement center so you can get a replacement here and then also now you have much better access to clean up the stem and just clean up the full body you can also soak it in vinegar to get vinegar to get the mineral deposits off you just have more capability but as you saw it can be much tougher to get the bonnet nut loose but a little heat usually does help that out all right so i ran down to the hardware store and also soaked the components in clr to get the mineral deposits off and kind of clean them up but one additional important point is the stem itself had a lot of mineral deposits which actually was changing the diameter of the stem and honestly in step two that's probably what was creating my link with the new packing teflon cord is because every time i turned it since the diameter was fluctuating so much from the mineral deposits that then creates leakage paths pass within that new teflon cord so that is all cleaned off and smooth now i have a new flat washer so i grabbed a pack of flat washers to match up and that's why it's nice to bring down your components to the hardware store so i installed that new washer the old washer was beat up and dry and i think that thing's probably been in place for over 60 years so well past its serviceable life and now i'm going to build this back up one thing to note the bonnet itself is is metal to metal in terms of the contact surface and this one has sometimes you'll see a fiber washer or something that sealed the bonnet itself this one does not have that so we'll see if it leaks on me i will have to put either some teflon cord in there teflon tape or something to seal this metal and metal surface here [Music] okay so i'm going to turn it all the way off and then i'm going to go out and turn the water on at the curt all right now with the water back on we'll go ahead and test it out all right looks like we're water tight and step three fixed my problem now hopefully one of those three steps also stopped your water leak on your globe valve steps one and two are very quick and easy step three does take a little more time and if you're like me that bonnet nut can really be fused on there with the middle mineral deposits and this one literally might not have been touched for 60 years so it can really get fused on there but now my globe valve is water tight and that last step cleaning that stem was key because if you don't clean that stem and you leave the mineral deposits on the stem then your packing material is going to be worked overtime as you open and close and the stem goes up and down through the packing material so make sure that stem is clean in addition to get a new flat washer on there if you need to go to step three the only other point i would make is when you do have the chance i would swap out to a ball valve the ball valves are going to be just less hassle less maintenance and more reliable long-term and this is something i'm going to install here on this property once i do a little more reconfiguration of the plumbing and get the water heater installed now before you take off don't forget to subscribe to our channel if you haven't already as we have weekly videos coming out to help you with repairs and improvements around your house and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 1,824,819

Keywords:

Id: fXR7ALyJhdU

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021