The fridge.
Here’s a new word for your vocabulary. (No, it’s PG-rated.) The word is ‘saddle valve’, sometimes called a ‘tee-valve.’
This kind of valve is the quick way to tap a larger line for a trickle flow, say, of water. This kind of valve was invented in ancient Rome, when people near public waterpipes and aquaducts saw all that nice water going overhead and, well, got inventive. In places where the aediles (public works commissioners) only visited during election week, it looked like spiderweb.
The essence of a saddle valve is this: a screwdown pipe-shaped clamp, with a little valve with a piercing point, a little turning handle, and a hose opening, for 1/4 inch hose. To install this valve, you simply clean an area of pipe, clamp this device firmly in place, and turn the tiny handle until it pieces the pipe and water begins to flow into the 1/4 inch hose up to the fridge. Nothing could be simpler: no welding or pipe fitting: it’s a water vampire with a tiny, tiny hollow tooth.
Well, a refrigerator icemaker tends to have its supply from a line from a saddle valve, sometimes on the cold line for the sink—or in our case, on one of the main cold-lines in the basement. And it was behaving beautifully—but we had a little problem figuring how to shut it down to get the new icemaker on: the turn-handle is very primitive and has no direction indication.
Now, the deliveryman’s assistant was a very nice handsome lad whose principal job was lifting the refrigerator and the dolly around corners, single-handed. You get the picture. Strong fellow. And good-hearted. Hearing about the trouble with the shutdown of the valve, he went downstairs to help Jane, while I stayed upstairs to shout down to Jane whether the water was off or not.
The valve used to turn easily. The lad tightened it—I fear one jump from piercing the other side of the pipe!—until it has two positions narrowly separated, and only a trickle of water comes through.
So…while Jane is closing in on a cover for her brand new CC book…I am going to have to go to the hardware and get a new saddle valve.
Replacing a saddle valve requires a) shutting down all water in the house (where this is located) and then screwing the piercing-point of the new saddle valve until just a tiny bit protrudes (further than doing a new one, but then we already have a hole in that pipe: that’s made by the old one, and that’s why we shut the water off, la!—) Then you futz the little piercer into the hole, then tighten the clamp a lot AND the little turn-handle a bit, and we should then, finally, have water in the icemaker.
“Lefty loosy, righty tighty.” I would think that if it’s a screw-type valve, if you turn it clockwise, that should force the pointy bit into the pipe, and if you turn it counterclockwise, that should back it off. Left handed threads are the Devil’s appliances 🙂
Oh, nevermind. I re-read, and it looks like your delivery guy cranked it to the point of stubbornness, and backing it off may be its downfall, including spurting leaks. Can you leave the previous valve in place and locate the new valve right next door? or does it have to be removed with concommittent leak fixing?
This is one reason why I’d opt for shutoff valves on every line in the house, including those that branch off from bigger lines. That way, if something like a break occurs, you only have shut down one valve, not the entire house. Granted, it’s an inconvenience for the house to be without water for a few hours, but an even greater inconvenience if you can’t control the water flow in your house. I always wanted to install one of those utility shutoffs for the washing machine, because ours was a simple, here’s the valve, try to get it to shut off without stripping part of the flesh from your hand.
Since this isn’t my house, I can’t do it that way, but if I had to do repairs, I’d certainly start with valves wherever I could put them. Navy warships and submarines (a different kind of warship) utilize a system similar. There might be a very large valve at the upstream intake for the water, but as the branches get smaller, there are valves to control the flow of water in the smaller branches. This holds true for seawater for the fire main and flushing water, to the fresh water from the ship’s evaporators. It’s one more safety measure in case a pipe ruptures, you don’t lose the whole system while repairing one pipe.
Valves = good, and knife valves mo’ bettah, if you can get them. There’s no question if they are off or not; if the big lever is parallel to the pipe, you’re on.
Our main valves and sprinkler shutoff are all knife valves. Luv ’em. Another goodie: insert a drain tap in any ‘winterize’ line. Rather than pay big bucks to a company to do it, I go downstairs, throw 2 knife valves (front and back), allow the system to run ‘dry’ a couple of days, then shut down the system, and unscrew two drain-taps, little precision brass screws that, absent, will allow air to circulate in that pipe during the winter. In spring, replace the drain-taps, then throw 2 knife valves, and my sprinkling system is back in business. There are people who make sizeable fees for starting and stopping a system: when our guy charged us 50.00 to dig up a section of line with a hole in it (tiller) and use hose clamps to seat a new section, we observed, said, any good aquarium keeper can do that; so now we change heads, install elevation stems, move spray patterns and drain and start the system with the best of them.
Yep, we believe in shutoff valves.
I go to Lowes to get the part, no real trouble, go out to the parking lot—and the lens falls out of one side of my only pair of reading glasses.
Well, I’m only a mile from Costco. I go there to get my lens put back in—Costco glasses. Now, I was supposed to get salmon from Freddy Myers, which is reliable, same size so easy to cook—but—Costco sells salmon, and by happy chance blueberries, which we refer to as the grizzly bear’s diet, which works very well for us on Atkins. So I got supper for tonight and next night.
So home I come. With the part. I looked up the procedure: stop the water, THEN unscrew the old valve. Because it was installed in a metal pipe, the plumber had drilled into the pipe (Had it been copper, a special kind of saddle valve could have pierced the pipe itself)—so we unscrew that, and then, in the dark—drop a piece. We’ve been meaning to replace those light bulbs. But these are long fluorescents, so it’s a pita to find. Next on our list.
We didn’t find the missing part, which involved attaching the 1/4 inch hose—but the extant hose and extant compression nut look viable, so to heck with that: we just screwed it on the new valve, and—applaud us—actually threw away the bits and bobs of the old valve rather than saving them, unclassified as to size or purpose, in a mysterious old can of such things we’ve saved. We’re sure if we ever need a 1/4″ x 3″ bolt, it’s in that can.
So now, to a recitation of lefty loosey, righty tighty, we run upstairs to discover water in the icemaker tray. Yay us!
Now we just have to replace those basement lights.
I’m surprised that Lowe’s doesn’t have the long fluorescent tubes, unless you just haven’t gotten ’roundtuit yet.
Our nearest Lowe’s has plenty of florescent lights in various tonalities, winter white, daylight atc. 8)
Glad that it all worked out. Do NOT want to be without ice in summer!
When you replace your lights may I suggest a few LED flashlights to keep on hand? They come in all sizes and appear to last forever. I’ve been using one of ours for a year and a half with no battery change. You would be amazed at how handy it is to be able to directly light a project even with good lighting. Various of my nephews and nieces use the headlamp “miner’s version” when the cross country ski so they can get home easily at dusk. 8)
Don’t we all have mystery cans and drawers with all the things we may *need* someday. 😉
Spent the day working on the pond. Proge’s Pop came over with the tractor and moved the BIG ROCK so we could get the liner under the rock rather than mess with sealing tape. I think it took about an hour and a half, felt like ages. My job was to watch and yell when things looked unsteady or off kilter. We have two robot fish, bamboo, papyrus, and blue flag in pots and three live little frogs. Now to finish the berm etc. and finish filling, filter etc. Don’t expect it to be a ‘real pond’ until next year, but it’s still PRETTY COOL! 🙂 😀 😆
robot fish???
see — Bujold, Lois M, _Brothers in Arms_, Miles at the ambassador’s reception pondering if the big goldfish that doesn’t come for food is a Cetagandan robot spy 😉 😉
😆 I *like* it. Spy fish! 8) They aren’t *really* robot fish in they they are battery operated. We also have some little ones that work by pulling a string. But the little frogs are real and cayoot! 😉
It’s a matter of getting the bulb specs noted down and carried with me. 😉 Am I that organized? No.
Knife valve?
I don’t know that one. Stopcocks, plug valves, gate valves, ball valves … all those I know.
Ah, google is my friend: it’s a gate valve.
(I work at a utility company, doing GIS stuff. Valves and pipe are part of my job.)
Point of order…
What you guyshave been calling a ‘knife valve’ is properly called a “butterfly valve.” The operating rod goes down the center of a pipe-diameter plate, the operating handle is in plane with the plate. Rotate handle to be perpendicular to the run of the pipe et wallah! Allee stopee flow (well, mostly–depends on pressure in effect, just ask the fellows aboard the USS Stark when the missiles hit).
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A gate valve is what you find in your typical garden hose bib faucet–rotating the handle raises & lowers a pipe-diameter plate within the valve body, a la your garden variety portcullis (plate doesn’t rotate, just moves radially wrt the pipe).
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A ball valve is one where the operating handle rotates a sphere (ergo ‘ball’) within the valve body; a near pipe-diameter hole is bored through the sphere, so that when properly oriented, water flows through. This is best and most reliable, and also most expensive.
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Just another semi-obsessive former-Navy type with nerdy valve info….. Nerdy, not needle, which is a different type of valve altogether! 😀
I have another kind of valve they call a knife valve that closes off the 3″ drainage gate of my waterfall (for cleaning and seasonal shutdown)—it’s simply the most ancient form of gate, a big flat gate in two grooves that slides up or down via a ring-grip at the top to allow or forbid water flow outward.
And I do like to know the right word. If there’s one thing booksellers hate it’s “It’s a green cover, sorta, or maybe blue, and there was a dragon on it. Or some kind of creature.” And of course it turns out to be a red cover with a lion on a banner.
I can appreciate the hair-pulling hardware people must go through with people walking in to buy a thingie for a whatchamacallit, you know, the water line in the basement. Copper? Plastic? Uhhhh…I dunno.
And being female, I can safely say that women are the worst offenders, who won’t ask (it’s the female equivalent of men who won’t stop and ask directions) and perish forbid they should check the internet for the right name. 🙂 So I have learned terms like hose clamp, hose barb, ball valve, quarter inch hose, irrigation hose, even a gator connector, etc. —my new word being ‘saddle valve’—and I know the difference between interior and exterior diameter on a pipe or hose when you’re asking some guy to go into stock at Hoses Are Us to get you some special item. The clerks’ little faces are a show—they’ve jostled around trying not to be the one to wait on the lady—and then the lady proves to be the one the exact name of the item. The sun rises. Birds sing. The morning is good.
I never know the name of what I want, but I bring in a little sketch of it and say, “it looks like this, and it’s gray” and they say “Oh, a utility knife. Right over here.”
That’s the kind that gets called a gate valve: raising and lowering a gate.
The little ones they sell for using two or more hoses on one faucet have ball valves. The valve-bore can be the full diameter of the hose or pipe, but then it has to be quite a bit larger outside. (A 30-inch full-bore ball valve, like we use, is about 5 feet outside diameter. And weighs about 9000 pounds.)
Apologies to all if I’ve been using incorrect terminology. I had it stuck in my head that ‘knife valve’ was the proper name from a long-ago engineering class; if it is properly called a ‘butterfly valve’, then that’s what it shall be called. So it shall be written; so it shall be done. 😀
*sneaks back in* I still prefer them to most other valves, for simple visual confirmation of the open-closed state *sneaks back out*
😆
In my (limited) experience, it’s usually two prong 4′ kitchen and shop lights, 3′ bathroom, (odd sizes and connectors in lamps, under counter lights, appliances…) Lowes is the only place I’ve found that doesn’t charge and arm and a leg for 3′ daylights. Don’t let the thin fluorescents fool you: the prongs are just like the fat bulbs.
But, the safe way is always to take a bulb with you. I had an awful time replacing a fluorescent desk lamp until I went to an office store instead of any other kind.
Watch out for new fixtures: I bought a lamp at Target only to find it had some oddball (Chinese?) compact fluorescent, that *Target* didn’t carry!
(I used to love Target, but I inspect everything ten times now! The last thing was a coffee maker with the fill markings facing right, not readable form the front of the machine–and the right side of the reservoir blocked by the filter basket! I would say some Marketing weenie was having a bad day, but I’ve dealt too much with Marketing departments! They wouldn’t know a good day if it were raining Benjies! — the bills, not the dogs; USD100 for the non-USAns.)
Can’t resist this: Speaking of the need for emergency flashlights……my Droid has a flashlight app. Another plug for the smartphone, so many things that are needed once in a while are now at my fingertips.
Murphy’s Law is pretty good, but I’ve always been a fan of O’Reilly’s corollary. “Murphy was an optimist.”
I thought that was Schultz’s corollary to Murphy’s Law. Oh well, someone else will say it Miyamoto’s Corollary, or Mbutu’s Corollary, or even Kovaleski’s Corollary. I’m certainly in favor of whichever one it is.
I just ordered an icemaker kit for my refrigerator. Easy to install, but let’s hope it works…..those 23 pound bags of ice are heavy and you always drip melt water when you’re heading for the freezer.
The main thing, if you don’t like your local water, go to Lowe’s and put an in-line filter in that line: doesn’t cost much, lasts nearly a year and it’ll protect your icemaker, as well.
I have the in-line filter from before. The old fridge had an icemaker, but due to problems with the way this house is wired, we replaced it mistakenly thinking it had gone bad. I now believe the problem was the outlet that it was plugged into, which was wired to one side of the switchbox for the water heater (220 volts). One of the contact screws for the wiring worked loose due to the constant cycling of the compressor motor and eventually was arcing inside the switchbox. Not only did this pose a fire hazard, it also prevented the refrigerator from functioning properly. I think looking back that the old fridge was fine. I had an electrician come in to rewire the outlet in a much safer manner. He still had his work cut out for him, the house needs to be completely rewired and the electrical service upgraded from 60 amps to at least 100 amps. Isn’t going to happen while I’m here, though, it’s about $8,000 or more.