Help - leaking pump ball valve

[jonnyp]

Hi. I'm new to the forum and have a bit of a brain teaser looking for expert guidance:hurray:

I have an oldish Glow worm ultimate boiler which I fitted 20 or more years ago. It has separate circuits for heating and DHW. When fitting, I found I needed to add an additional pump to the hot water circuit for it to work properly. It functions well but the pump valves on the DHW circuit are the nasty ball type and I made the mistake of trying to cure a slight drip from the lower valve by turning it.

You guessed it - I now have a VERY leaky ball valve. Managed to stop the leak by turning the valve fully off but that means no DHW. Fortunately, boiler is in the garage and the pumps are immediately above the boiler but that means there's no way of draining the DHW circuit. Flow and return for the DHW are 28mm pipes that go directly up to the next floor so will contain a lot of water. C/H drain cock is obviously at the lowest point but is on the C/H circuit so won't drain the DHW much if at all so I'll get quite a flood if I change the pump valves.

Anyone have any ideas - preferably on how to stop this ball valve leaking (quite a lot when opened) in situ?

 

[Chalked]

Hi
Only one way. Drain down and replace. I would swap both. Your drain off will lower all water.

 

[Best]

We have all been there and done it, - touched one of those valves hoping it wouldn't leak, but it flooded! Nothing else you can do but replace both valves, as they are now damaged rubber seals and not fixable. Best to just drain the lot and remember to add inhibitor.
There is a couple of ways to do it without draining, but risky and really best left to a plumber.

 

[Alex Knight]

Turn off pump valves remove pump head drain into bucket, then make up fitting to drain system from pump valves

 

[king of pipes]

It's a drain down job bud replace both valves and the chemical inhibitor

 

[turnpin]

Freeze pipework and have new valves ready ....or as stated drain down ...regards Turnpin

 

[jonnyp]

Thanks for your thoughts. Bit concerned that turning the valves off will stop the flow

 

[jonnyp]

Re: Help - leaking pump ball valve (immersion heater?)

Thanks all. I've bought new gate valves for the pump and will drain down later this week.

I'm having to use the rather old immersion heater for hot water. Can anyone tell me what type this is? see photo. I assume it's non-thermostatic but that it does have some kind of safety cut-out? Does that mean it will heat the water to 75degreesC!!!!

 

[jonnyp]

Ended up replacing the ball valves with gate valves and all working OK now and no need for old immersion heater. Heck of a pain removing old valves from pump - didn't realise the gate valves are bigger than the ball valves either!

 

[Chalked]

Welcome to the wonderful world of plumbing!