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Re: American Standard Aqua Seal Faucet
It is possible that the replacement cartridge you got is not manufactured correctly too. with the combination of covid shortages and moving manufacturing to china there are a lot of incorrectly made parts out there.
mattmia2
Re: American Standard Aqua Seal Faucet
Its not like this is some rare and unusual valve. American Standard designed these to be repaired almost indefinitely because they are installed where repairing the tile to install a new valve would be a major operation. The American Standard parts book is out there and pretty easy to find. If you can't match up the parts for this, that would be no different than not being able to connect to an existing galvanized pipe and suggesting it all needs to be replaced because you don't know how to work with it.
mattmia2
Re: American Standard Aqua Seal Faucet
I generally just replace the top hat and the seat if needed. As long as the top hat doesn't leak into the stem, the brass parts should be fine.
The nice thing about the AquaSeal is it was designed to fit existing A-S washer-type faucets from about 1955 on. My house had those and I updated them decades ago, and I've only had to replace a couple top hats since then.
My SteamPunk boiler
At the beginning of last winter i've zeroed out my automatics water feeder. At the end of the season it read 247… Not good!
Opening the boiler covers i saw a sorry state of the boiler's top - with huge rust holes.
I though i could seal it with some kind of steam-resistant high-temp epoxy.
I've searched long and identified some pro epoxies uses used in the oil industry. Sales rep has confirmed that it could work (key word: "sales rep"...)
I cleaned up the surface prepping it for the epoxy. I filled the holes with the marine version of JB Weld (btw, very good epoxy!)
Then covered the top with the "pro" grade reinforced with some carbon mesh.
Soon i started having doubts.
In my research i didn't consider high temperature of the flue gases. Though metal jacket heats up only to around 250F, the surrounding flue gases can get to 600F (the verge of the epoxy stability).
Even before fire test, i started thinking about plan B.
Test fire has confirmed my doubts.
The surface, despite the prep, showed epoxy delamination due to rust developing between epoxy and the cast iron. Surprisingly, the water resistant JB Weld held quite well.
The boiler was "dead" again so i removed the epoxy and this time chose not to stop until i found some solid metal. The holes kept on growing...
I started to think the whole cast iron section turned into a clump of rust held only by wishful thinking. That said, i started to see some hope. Some chunks were still quite thick. If i could manufacture metal plates, drill then tap some holes to hold those plates then maybe - just maybe - i could get another heating season out of this boiler.
I drilled some holes in strategically located places. Surprisingly all had enough metal to tap those with at least a few threads.
Some extreme heat silicon (rated at 750F) was applied to create gasket between cast iron and metal plates.
The plates were bolted onto the boiler with stainless screws (ah, why not at this stage?).
After a few days of firing, so far so good.
Wish me luck this heating season!
(i'll update you as the months go on)
Re: Anyone know about disassembly of these full-port Webstone (Nibco) ball valves?
Either ream it and don't worry or don't ream it at all. Right now you have no problem take the valve apart and you will have a problem
Re: Domestic hot water
"Well blow me down". Quote from Popeye the Sailor Man
I appears that IBC does offer an air handler that can be connected to their tankless water heater (does not need to be the Combi)
I am personally not a fan, but is an approved use by the manufacturer. So I will look into the manual to see what may be causing the lower DHW temperature during the winter season while the air handler is not calling for heat.
Re: Trying to understand wiring for heating system
Let's try again. You MUST use the X1/X2 terminals to control the gas valve on the boiler. That's a millivolt system, and must not be connected to anything else.
Re: American Standard Aqua Seal Faucet
Hi, As @hot_rod says, replace the seat. Also, a little teflon or dope on the seat threads will help insure no drips.
Yours, Larry
Re: American Standard Aqua Seal Faucet
It is always wise to replace the complete stems and the seats when you rebuild old faucets. Then every seal is new.
That is a nice design stem and seal, properly rebuilt it should work fine.
Home Depot has the kits also. Available without new handles.
hot_rod