I vote for reducing your exercising the valves to twice a year, but
don't replace them with ball valves. What a waste of money and time
that would be!

The art of tightening the packing nut is crucial. If you are not
mechanically inclined then get you a torque ranch and tighten them
uniformly to 50 inch pounds or about 4 foot pounds.

Now, with the correct packing nut torque, you can exercise them
fully. Close them gently and open the all the way gently, then close
them half a turn from full open. Check for leaks and you are done for
half a year.



On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 01:45:05 GMT, "jay-n-123"
wrote:

My 20 year old townhouse has a total of 17 Brasscraft shutoff valves. These
are the multi-turn style (NOT ball) and are the ones with metal stems (NOT
plastic). I believe they were all soldered on.

When I first moved here 2.5 years ago, most of these valves were siezed but
I was able to use a pair of pliers to get them unsiezed so they could then
be turned by hand.

Every two months I've been turning them as slightly as possible to prevent
them from being siezed again, and then turning them back slightly to the
original position. I'm not giving them a full workout as I want to avoid
deteriorating existing packing. Question is to continue with this strategy
or just leave them be?

Someone, who is not a plumber, but an experienced homeowner, suggested that
I should simply leave them alone and not touch them unless I really need to
shut something off, since turning them at all may be deteriorating the
packing and cause a leak and then the valve might need replacing. He said,
unless you are prepared to be spending a lot of money getting the valves
replaced, then just leave the shutoff valves alone.

Should I continue to turn them slightly every two months and hope that none
of develop a leak a result of my turning them, or just leave them alone?

Thanks,

J.