Replace a PRESSURE REDUCING VALVE That Sounds TERRIBLE

a defective prv like this can cost you thousands of dollars as well as make a terrible sound like this I'm going to show you how to replace it how it works and exactly why you need a working one we put a water pressure test gauge on it and it came out to 80 psi anything over 60 PSI is bad I wanted to try to adjust it just to make sure someone didn't mess with it and put it out of adjustment on this model going counterclockwise should reduce the pressure we opened up a faucet but it went right back up to 80 so to replace it shut off the water to the house open a cold and hot faucet now we need to break loose this Union nut this is 1 in so you're going to need a lot of torque I'd suggest a pipe wrench but pliers or an adjustable wrench over 12 in should work figuring out Union nuts can be tricky the way I picture it is the nut has to slide down the pipe so we have to reverse it counterclockwise so just a good old Lefty Loosey if it's like mine you'll get some water so be prepared for it so whatever's in your branch lines that's not drained will drain from here I like to have towels ready and also a bucket just stay with this most of this water leaking out is coming from the main shut off valve which there's nothing we could really do about that make sure you have good leverage positioning and your wrenches are in tight because you're going to have to grip it and rip it good night try to find a cheater [Music] bark reminds me of my pipe video days bring it back bring me back to a place I don't want to go a prv reduces the pressure for instance we had 80 psi coming from the city side and we wanted about 60 PSI for our house okay so threads we're reversing which means that needs to go this way any pressure above 60 PSI is asking for trouble and your appliances and plumbing may give out prematurely which can cost you a lot of money to me how a pressure reducing valve works is a genius engineering design all of the water going to your house gets filtered through this screen right here this catches any debris coming from the city side if you take the screen off then you have this plunger looking thing that's springload this is the part that actually seats and cuts off with this o-ring water Upstream when it reaches the correct PSI this rubber o-ring sits on the metal seat like so this tension is spring loaded by this spring right here if you're a little confused here's an exploded view of all of the parts I think we found the culprit to what's making the sound right here I think this eroded gasket caused turbulence in the water as it went through and under the right flow rate made that swish swish swish swish sound that's just my theory go ahead and put your comments on what you think it is as for the reason why it wasn't reducing the pressure it would have to be this gasket right here it's the only gatekeeper that separates the two water pressures I spent several hours researching this because I'm very curious on how it works and I'm about 97% sure I'm accurate but there's no real good videos or literature that I could find that explained all of this for the top part you have a large rubber diaphragm right here a metal washer that pushes on the rubber diaphragm a spring to create the tension and that spring is connected to the adjustable bolt on the housing when I adjust this bolt in or out all that does is adjust how much tension is on that spring and that's what's holding that rubber gasket down from my understanding the pressure of the spring along with the water pressure pressure pushes up against that rubber diaphragm which is three times the diameter of the seat when that lifts the top spring tension the spring from the bottom plunger goes up and makes a seal I'm sorry it's very confusing very hard to explain so I challenged somebody to put a comment that explains it a lot better than I did and I will pin my favorite comment to the top here's a few seconds of a cutout of what it looks like put together I thought it was kind of neat I also added 2 seconds worth of video of me cleaning because who doesn't like watching somebody work at 800% speed before you go to install your new one make sure that it is identical in the length and the connection type what's cool about this new one is it has male threads on the outside and female threads on the inside clean any old Teflon tape that may still be on there you could either use pipe dope or Teflon tape I got a habit of doing both both when I was in the fire sprinkler trade depending on how thick your tape is four to six wraps should be fine also make sure you're wrapping your tape the right way if you're not sure which way that is think of it is if you're looking at the face of the pipe you wrap it clockwise excuse me I would like to butt in here and say if you haven't subscribed consider subscribing and if you've like this video or got any value from it give it a thumbs up that'd really help me out whatever you do don't forget to put this ring on First and make sure it's going the right way get it nice and tight and then finish it off with a pipe wrench or something where you can have a hold back I will caution you that this is brass so it's very soft and if you get it too tight you'll bury the threads and run the fitting and make sure you install this so that the arrow points in the direction the water flows putting Teflon tape on the inside and pipe dope on the outside kn not only helps with making a watertight seal but the pipe dope also acts as lubricant which requires less torque and helps install the fitting I was able to get a good grip on this so I was happy with just going one turn after I got it hand tight now it's time to put your union nut back on and this took me about 24 seconds for it to finally catch the thread so don't feel bad if it takes you a little bit longer to catch it just make sure you can go quite a few so you don't cross thread it and make sure you hold back on the bottom fitting so it doesn't turn now you don't need to pipe dope or thread do thread tape those threads because it's got the O-ring right yep what Zach is saying correctly is that there's an O-ring and this nut doesn't hold back water it actually just is a friction fit so it doesn't need dope or tape now we'll just clean off the pipe a little bit so we can check for leaks turn on the water slowly turning on a main water supply can agitate sediments in the pipe and clog airator screens it's always good practice to take off the screens before you turn on the water this valve has a preset from the factory PSI of 50 so we are just verifying that and we want 60 PSI so now we're going to adjust it but first let's check for leaks which we don't have any to adjust the pressure on this model you loosen the set nut and you go clockwise to increase the pressure and counterclockwise to decrease the pressure go ahead and come down a little bit all right let it settle oh can you open it real quick so this is important in adjusting if you want to increase the pressure you can adjust it and it'll let more water in but if you want to decrease the pressure there's nowhere the water can escape so you're going to have to release some and then check your pressure again right at about 6 see they dropped below like one PSID i' now tighten up your set nut so it doesn't go out of adjustment clean your tools and now it's time to take a tour of my handyman tool bag which is in the top right corner right here if you've enjoyed watching this video today I'm pretty sure you'll get a kick out of the video right here in the left bottom corner

Channel: Handyman Hertz

Views: 8,477

Keywords: prv, pressure reducing valve, pressure reducing valve adjustment, pressure reducing valve installation, pressure reducing valve replacement, how prv valve works, how a prv works, prv plumbing, replacing a prv valve, prv valve, diy plumbing, reducing water pressure, adjusting prv valve, water psi meter, pressure regulator valve, watts pressure reducing valve, watts prv, swish swish plumbing, replace pressure reducing valve, boiler prv, plumbing basics, everyday home repairs

Id: xAQf4QFSQNs

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023