How to Rebuild a Hose Spigot | Ask This Old House

[Music] all right so you've got an outside garden faucet yeah and the issue is um when we moved in the feed to this faucet had been turned off and i figured out why when i turned it back on you can see it's leaking yeah all right now how old is this house it's a little over 30 years old so i would imagine this outside garden faucet is original about 30 years oftentimes i would come out and see this and just replace it with a brand new faucet but tell me about the basement is it finished it is finished and the shut-off is in the ceiling or that finish so that might make it a little tougher so why don't we start by actually trying to repair it first okay that'd be great so you know where the shut-off is right i don't you're going to turn it off sure okay all right how'd you do great got it all shut off good all right there are a lot of different ways to shut water off a lot of different types of valves and i brought a few along to help understand and i've cut them in half to make it easy great so this is called a gate valve this goes back to the beginnings of modern plumbing and what it has is a guillotine that as you turn that handle it rises water passes through but now look what happens is i turn it and i close it i turn it down and it wedges tight to make a really tight watertight seal without a washer okay now this was always used on water mains because it was an important valve but over time these stems could actually wear out and sometimes they'd break in the closed position they gave way to this this is called a ball valve now the handle tells you the direction of flow this if you look right here you can see that there's an opening right here the water passes through now when i turn this handle this ball turns and so now here's the opening and look at this it's completely sealed again without a washer right here but these two valves are really expensive the most common valves that are used are compression and that's what this is right here so i've cut one a valve just like this i've cut it in half to help understand it you can see what's going on inside here's the water right here now it has a stem right here as you turn the handle that stem rises you see the washer at the bottom right here it goes down against the bottom the bottom thing is called a seat and that will hold water tight now in your case i see water dripping out right here so that suggests it has something to do with the washer right here or the seat that it sits against if i saw water leaking up right here from the stem itself i would look at the top to the thing called the bonnet now let me loosen that and you'll see that there's a little gasket up in there you see it right here so now when you tighten that nut it compresses that gasket so no water leaks here that's not the issue you have so we're going to take this valve apart and we're going to see just what's going on inside so let's see if we can get this apart with some water pump pliers for good measure i'm going to hold back with a wrench there we go come on there we go first time apart in 30 years i bet oh there it is okay so there's our washer it's pretty scored in there i don't see any break normally i see a break right here now we want to try to get this screw out this hasn't been taken out in 30 years either so wish us luck so we want to have really solid downward pressure onto that screw good sometimes they break off and then then you go and replace the whole process all right so there's the screw okay now i want to pry this old one out all right so now reach in there i've got a package of assorted washers and let you dig around there and see if you can find one that matches that size that's too small let me see yeah way too small yep this one looks about right not bad now there's two sides to it see this one has the size on it you don't want that you want the nice smooth side right there so there's that and then we want to go in with our screws these screws are actually made out of a metal called monel so it won't rust over 30 years all right so let's get that snug down okay okay so this should take care of your leak but while we have it this far apart i'm gonna actually rebuild right here the bonnet so that means i take two wrenches i break this nut from this top gland okay i'm gonna hold that back first okay so there's that top nut reverse my plier okay so now you can see there's a little space right there didn't you see it we're gonna actually fill it with some teflon packing just open that up and just give me about enough to go around one to one and a half times right that's like a rubber string yep good good so now we want to wrap it around the stem itself so i'm going to actually hold it right there and try to turn it right around on itself and if i get it right i should be able to bring the ball yup good bring the bonnet down and as i tighten this up it compresses that teflon right against the stem right okay so now let's put it back in you know what you got to do right turn the water back on go down all right so how do we do well much better but we have a slight little drip right here let me tell you what i think is going on here's that cutaway right you remember what we did we changed that washer right here we repacked the bonnet right here right but there's one more part of any valve and that's the seat the part where the washer sits against so let me show you what i think is going on i think we have a little score mark right on the existing seat down here but it doesn't mean we're in trouble because we can actually use a cool tool this is actually a valve receding tool so look at this there's a grinder wheel at the end the kit comes with a variety of different sizes and now i can thread this down into the place where the stem used to go watch okay now once that's in watch what happens now i can come down here and i can turn this clockwise and it'll actually put a new machine finish on that old seat that means should be able to clean it right up it means you got to go and turn the water off one more time no problem all right okay so see how nice and shiny it is down there at the seat yeah it looks great that washer will seat perfectly now put this back in guess what i'm going to ask you to do again turn the water off this is your exercise program all right all right so water is on water is off let's see how it does it's holding that's great it's the way it's supposed to be and we've really got a really a brand new valve now with what we've done [Music]

Channel: This Old House

Views: 2,640,996

Keywords: richard trethewey, hose, plumbing, 7-10 minutes, repair, This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Kevin o’connor, kevin o'connor house, kevin o'connor this old house, kevin o'connor ask this old house, kevin o'connor interview, home renovation ideas on a budget

Id: Gw7BSrWH1Ck

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 18 2018