New kitchen tap

mistermarantz

Folks

I want to change my kitchen sink tap but I cannot turn off the cold water supply.

The cold water mains valve under the kitchen sink and the valve outside the house are both impossible to turn.

Can anyone advise any plumbing tricks around this problem please?

Micky Dolenz

Depends on where you live. ring the coucil and ask them to replace stop cock outside as you need an urgent job done.

If you can't wait. Buy a freezing kit and freeze pipe under kitchen sink, then valve it.

or have another go at the valve under sink, get a spanner and turn it a little back and forth, it may loosen it up.

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mistermarantz wrote: »

Folks

I want to change my kitchen sink tap but I cannot turn off the cold water supply.

The cold water mains valve under the kitchen sink and the valve outside the house are both impossible to turn.

Can anyone advise any plumbing tricks around this problem please?

As above, pipe freeze kit is one way to do things when stopcocks etc seize. Best call Co Council and have new outside stopcock fitted, bit pointless to have one fitted that fails to work, you could replace stopcock under sink at same time. Its something you have to do, what you going to do if you have a leak in attic etc?

If mains pipe to sink stopcock is plastic (hydro) if their is any slack you could kink it over to reduce / stop flow, enough to replace stopcock. You can also close over plastic pipe by clamping with dedicated pipe clamp or simple vice grips.

Might be a job for plumber, since your outside stopcock wont work your running a risk with out having experience.

mistermarantz

Thanks for your help folks. Sounds like a job for a plumber all right. The valve under the sink is a gate valve. It p!ssed me off when plumbers use these crappy valves as opposed to the superior lever valves.

One last question...whos responsible for the cost of replacing the seized external stop cock? Is it me or the council?

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mistermarantz wrote: »

Thanks for your help folks. Sounds like a job for a plumber all right. The valve under the sink is a gate valve. It p!ssed me off when plumbers use these crappy valves as opposed to the superior lever valves.

One last question...whos responsible for the cost of replacing the seized external stop cock? Is it me or the council?

Gate valves are not high pressure valves, shouldn't be used on mains at all, regulation states only mains designed stopcock but I've found ball (lever) valves accepted. Ball valves will never give a days trouble their internals are different which reduces risk of seizure.

Gate valves seize from lack of use with build up of hard water, when you try to open them threads become stripped, its possible to take gate valve apart and replace internals but its far better to replace with ball valve.

Co Council is responsible for anything outside your boundary, if stopcock is outside boundary then its up to them to replace. Pray you don't belong to a group water supply, might not be anyone available to replace stopcock.