So you probably won’t run across this problem to often in today’s world of plastic plumbing parts, so when a you-tube subscriber mentioned he couldn’t remove a plastic coupling nut from his fill valve aka “ballcock” I thought it’s time for a video!
Before we get into removing a frozen fill valve nut here’s a quick history lesson.
Back in the 70’s plastic components were not as popular as they were in today’s plumbing world and the material of choice was good old American made brass. Most of the better companies supplied a brass lock-nut and a brass coupling nut to connect the water supply tube. Eventually and in an effort to save money, some of the companies started shipping these ballcocks with a white metal nickel composite lock-nut and coupling nut.
The problem is that when you connect to dissimilar metals on water carrying components, a process called electrolysis takes place. It would literately fuse the two metals together and make it virtually impossible to break apart. When this happened which by the way was quite often, the only way to separate them would be to cut them off. So whether you were replacing the fill valve or just replacing the water supply tube, you more often than not ended up grabbing the hacksaw and proceeded with the task at hand.
To be honest before I grabbed the hack saw I would always set up a straight 6″ pipe wrench inside the toilet tank and position it at the base of the fill valve with the handle up against the toilet tank. I then would proceed counter clockwise with a second offset 6″ pipe wrench and try to loosen the nut. Bottom line is sometimes I got lucky and sometimes not. The thing is you can’t really put gorilla force on it because you always ran the risk of cracking the tank.
Anyway check out the video and hopefully if you ever find yourself in this position, these tips will help you get the job done with minimal pain.
As always you can send any questions to info@bobsplimbingvideos.com, I’ll be happy to answer them. Until next time,
HAPPY PLUMBING!
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