"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
...
On 29/01/2012 11:18, Arfa Daily wrote:


22mm can be difficult to get tight enough in some cases... a bit
depends on the ease access and the size of the spanners etc[1].

I usually stick a few turns of PTFE on the threads to act as a
lubricant, and stop it squeaking when tightened. It tends to make it
easier to get the water tight joint with less physical force since
more of the torque gets to actually rotating the joint rather than
overcoming the friction.

[1] I remember having great difficulty tightening the nuts on the ends
of some butterfly service valves in a CH pipe above a kitchen cabinet.
There was probably only 6" of height between cabinet and ceiling, and
that meant that longer spanners could not rotate enough to get the
next flat into position, and short ones could not get enough torque in
there easily!

Might be a day or two before I can try anything. My elder daughter has
had to go to hospital tonight, and they've kept her in, so I don't know

Sorry to hear that. Hope she's well soon!

quite what time I'm going to have Sunday to 'play', and I am pretty
busy
next week with the 'day job'. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks
again for the advice lads.

Let us know how it works out...


Thanks for your kind thoughts, John. Nothing too serious hopefully, so
she should be out this afternoon.

All understood on the plumbing issues. The place where this valve is to
be located, is not exactly 'tight' for space, but you are on a ladder as
it is high up on the wall above a door, and a plastic waste pipe does
run below it, which makes it a bit restrictive to get spanners on. I'm
really beginning to think that not enough tightening is the issue now. I
was holding the body of the valve still with an adjustable spanner, and
tightening with full sized Moles, which I suppose might actually have
been introducing additional friction problems from distorting the
compression nut.

I have a chum who is a car man, and has every conceivable spanner type
and size, known to man. He has volunteered to come and have a go (he's a
proper DIY-er as well). I think that I am still going to go down the
route of fitting 15 mm 'tails' to the valve using the B&Q copper
reducers and conventional olives. When I did this originally, it
actually looked a nice solution. It will also allow us to do the 'grunt'
work on getting it to seal, off site using a vice etc. I can then fit it
back in using a pair of 15 mm compression couplings, which will at least
then make the job of patching the pipe up, just a case of two new olives
and a length of pipe, should it have to come back out yet again ... :-)

Best £7:50 I ever spent was on one of these
http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Hand...0/sd210/p23418

If you have room to use it the welly you can use is amazing.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Noted, thanks.

Arfa