Thanks Folks. I think after looking at it all, I'd prefer to use a
ball valve. Only issue I have is these valves (two of them, service
and a drain) will need to be operated from approx. 3ft away. These
are located in a crawl space and it's prohibitive for my guests (mother
etc..) to crawl under there every time they go up there to turn on/off
the water. So, with the ball valve, I'm not sure I can build a handle
extension that would not put undue stress on the pipe. With the gate
valve, the valve handle is different and an extension could be used
quite easily without putting undo stress on the piping. So it looks
like I'm relegated to using a gate valve unless someone knows where
"handle extensions" are available. Cheers, cc