Tightening an outside water valve

[docblamblock]

Just need some advice on tightening both ends of this valve:

This valve is drip-leaking from both ends where it meets the pipe. It happened after defrosting it after the pipe partially froze overnight. I was moving the pipe a lot to try to break up ice inside and it obviously disturbed the connection at the valve.

I'm finding it very hard to turn the nuts as the entire valve just turns on the pipes thus loosening the valve's grip on the pipes even more. The trickles of (freezing!) water don't help.

I also don't know which way to turn the nuts. I'm afraid to experiment too much with the nuts as the mains is on. Any advice would be helpful.




The mains supply to the house enters the valve from the right. The stop-cock on the public road supplies 10 houses so ideally I'd like to not have to turn that off while tightening the valve.
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[Burnerman]

Its a pretty conventional coupling really - the plastic pipe will have inserts and the compression valve will have olives. The nuts are tightened up clockwise - the usual way. Its certainly worth trying to nip them up, but - there is a chance, if the pipe has been frozen, that the olive(s) have backed along the plastic pipe and are trying to force themselves out of the compression coupling - if you can understand my rambling.
Give the nuts a tweak (!) don't overdo it - and be prepared to remake the joint with the water turned off if necessary.
John

 

[docblamblock]

Its a pretty conventional coupling really - the plastic pipe will have inserts and the compression valve will have olives.

The nuts are tightened up clockwise - the usual way. Its certainly worth trying to nip them up, but - there is a chance, if the pipe has been frozen, that the olive(s) have backed along the plastic pipe and are trying to force themselves out of the compression coupling - if you can understand my rambling.

Give the nuts a tweak (!) don't overdo it - and be prepared to remake the joint with the water turned off if necessary.
John

Thanks for the helpful reply. I now know what "olives" and "inserts" are. Roughly anyway.

I assume when you say to tighten the nuts clockwise you mean you are looking at the valve front on. i.e. when in my picture above if I were to tighten the nut on the right I would turn it upwards as you look a the picture. Hopefully tightening it will do the trick as I really dont want to get into cutting off everyone else's water and re-making the valve.

 

[Burnerman]

Yep, one spanner on each nut - when you tighten them (clockwise looking directly at them, end on ) the slack one will bite up. Don't use just one spanner as you need to support the valve.
John

 

[docblamblock]

Thanks I'll give that a try when I get a second spanner big enough.

By "bite up" I assume you mean tighten? I thought that if I had a spanner on each nut then both would tighten and untighten equally as the forces are opposite even if I just turn one.

 

[Burnerman]

Yep, bite up means tighten.
Ideally, you need to hold the valve somehow while you tighten each nut up separately. Indeed, if you can see the shallower hexagon on the valve you can use that - but it is initially for the valve assembly.
You can use mole grips on the valve, or even slip joint pliers - but you don't want to damage the lever.
Two spanners, one on each nut, will do what you want - if alls good they don't need to be massively tight anyway.
John