roadrunnertwice

So last week's adventure in home maintenance was that the toilet was running almost constantly. Well, I say "last week" because that's when I finished fixing it, but it had been running for like a WHILE.

Now usually when the toilet keeps running intermittently (which is what ours was doing at first), it's the flapper, so I went ahead and replaced that. But no dice: the fill valve itself was failing. So, ok. I hadn't replaced that before, but I was familiar with the theory and I'd seen my dad do it. (And Dad is a person of many talents, but he isn't handy with plumbing, so I knew I wasn't getting in over my head.) Step one is, turn off the water with the shut-off valve down by the wall.

The water would not turn off.

So then I had to turn off the water to the entire house and replace the busted shut-off valve, which absolutely qualifies as "over my head." RAD.

Anyway, I did it. The worst part was removing the old compression fitting once the valve was off; there was some kind of silicone sheathing on the copper, and it dug into that so there was no hope of sliding it off. I didn't want to run a Dremel in there, so I had to take a hand file to it. Which sucked. Eventually I prevailed, tho.

Here's the unwanted knowledge I gained THIS time:

Now I know where our main water shut-off is. God damn that thing is hard to twist.
- (Note to future Nick: gotta turn it a full 180°, so the arrow points backwards into the incoming pipe. 90° is only half closed.)
There are two main types of shut-off valves: the screw-type, which are harder to use and which inevitably self-destruct by eating their own washers, and the quarter-turn type, which are fine and mostly indestructible. Why would you install the screw-type? I DON'T KNOW, but someone did it anyway.
There's also multiple ways to attach a valve to a pipe: compression fittings, and "push-on?" which I think is also maybe called "shark bite?" Oh, and also solder-on. I didn't quite trust the push-on type and was kind of in a hurry, so I just went with compression fit again, because it's the standard and it seemed simple and straightforward and reliable enough. I was still kind of amazed when it worked without leaking on the first try, tho.
Copper pipes are designated by their nominal internal diameter ("ID"), which by the way is not their ACTUAL internal diameter and which you can't measure very well in the first place. But a given ID corresponds to a predictable outside diameter ("OD") because standards. So, I measured the pipe by using a crescent wrench as a calipers, and it was 5/8" around, which meant it was a 1/2" pipe. The valves at the hardware store are usually labeled by the ID of the wall pipe, and then probably the OD of the fill pipe (which was 3/8" for my toilet thing, but then I had to get a replacement fill pipe anyway because the old one was too rigid to fit between the shut-off valve and the new, longer fill valve stem, so really I could have gotten the valve and the pipe at the same time and had it be whatever).
Here's the relevant See Jane Drill video. Basically you screw it on as tight as you can by hand, then wrench it for at least another half-turn.

Valves