On May 1, 4:05 pm, DerbyDad03 wrote:
A ball valve would accomplish what the OP wants to accomplish:

The ability to shut off the water after each use without messing with
the current gate valves, for fear of them leaking due to not being
used for many years.

I don't think that restricted flow is anything that the OP is
concerned with.

Correct. I'm not worried about reduced flow.

How do these recessed "washer boxes" get installed? That's what I've
got, it's a WaterTite brand. I gained visual access in the basement
to see what's down there. It's two 1/2" copper (hot and cold) going
straight up through the floor and into the wall beneath the box. The
existing valves sit flush on the bottom of the plastic box, they have
a flange at the base of the valve with flats for a wrench. The drain
goes down in the middle. The pipes are rigid in the vertical
direction (they don't move vertically at all). I see what appears to
be a piece of flattened copper pipe shoved up next to each pipe where
it enters the floor, not sure what that's for. The valves do seem
free in a torsional manner, ie I can force the valves to rotate
slightly about the axis of the vertical pipe meaning I'm twisting the
pipes themselves. The thing that really confuses me though is that
the relatively large PVC drain pipe enters the box inbetween the
valves, and exits through the floor co-planar with the pipes but NOT
inbetween them. Somehow inside the wall, the drain pipe is routed
past one of the copper pipes. I would hope the copper doesn't do a
dogleg in all that, because that might complicate doing anything with
this.

I'm not sure how I would even go about removing the existing valves.
If they are threaded on, I won't be able to remove them because the
pipe flexes torsionally and I can't access the pipe itself to prevent
that. I'm open to suggestions on how to do a proper remove and
replace. But I don't want this to turn into a major project, hence my
desire to just thread ball valves inline before the rubber hoses ;-)