Lead pipe and stop valve

[NickyA]

Hello,

My house is a 1930s ex-Council property.

The water main coming into the house is the original as far as I can tell, and the stop valve is in the corner of the kitchen behind the cabinets, buried in ancient quarry tiles and concrete just above floor level.

There's still a few feet of lead pipe emerging from the old stop valve, but it then converts to 1/2" copper before supplying the kitchen, bathroom etc.

When I bought the property, the stop valve was seized and the handle had been yanked off, but I managed to strip it down and refurb it (middle of the night job as the stop valve in my front garden is easy to access and turns easily... but isolates the whole terrace of houses!). It still works, but it's quite stiff to turn and leaks slightly from the spindle for a few days after it's been operated, in spite of my best efforts to get the gland packing just right.

So now I'm replacing the kitchen again, I thought I would take the opportunity to fit a full-bore lever ball valve just after the existing stop valve, leaving the old valve undisturbed and using the new valve instead. I could then replace those few feet of lead with copper too.

The stop valve has a hex nut as if it's a compression fitting, with a few inches of narrow pipe emerging from it, before a wiped joint onto the fatter lead pipe. So presumably if I carefully loosen this nut, I could then get some kind of reducer so it accepts 15mm copper. Does this sound reasonable?

Thanks.

 

[Londoner2]

Sorry cant advise you.

But we had a similar pipe in our house, it was totally rubbish, often gave us low pressure issues, the stopcock was also weeping slowly from the glands and was about to replace with a full bore.

Ripped it all out when we had new kitchen extension done and new 25MM mdpe pipe.

Solved all our water issues.

 

[NickyA]

Thanks but can't do that due to the supply serving other properties in the same terrace. Thames Water say I can't be metered because of this, and don't want to know when I queried the slightly low flow rate.

 

[oldbuffer]

1. The short length of pipe coming out of the top of the stop valve is probably copper, but could be steel.
2. Rub it with some fairly fine sandpaper to try and work out what it is. Try and clean it all the way round if you can.
3. Measure the diameter accurately. Use vernier calipers if you have them, otherwise measure the circumference and divide by 3.14.12 (pi).
4. If the outside diameter is 15 mm, then it is 15 mm pipe, will almost certainly be copper, and all will be well. Then you can use 15 mm copper pipe with a new olive in the existing compression fitting.
5. If the outside diameter is 15.1 to 15.15, It is probably 1/2" copper pipe. I would cut the 1/2" pipe just below the lead, and use a conversion fitting to go to 15 mm.
6. Anything greater, and it is likely to be some other material, probably steel. Difficult to say what to do without knowing what it is.
7. Whatever you do, make sure the lever valve is a good quality such as a Pegler. You already know it should be full bore.

 

[opps]

Whatever you do, make sure the lever valve is a good quality such as a Pegler. You already know it should be full bore.

I once used a full bore lever valve from toolstation. Two years later it decided to snap (without any human interaction). Fortunately, it snapped at the feed side and not the supply side, meaning that it could be isolated. Still did five grand's worth of damage.

I now only buy Pegler valves.