OK to attach cleanout valve to a wye?

JeffGuy

I had a mod-con heating system installed last fall, and was very happy with the installation job and contractor I hired to do it. There was lots of 1-1/2 black pipe and near-boiler copper installed, plus 1-1/4 gas line. An old gravity hot water coal conversion boiler was taken out, and relocated to the back wall of the house where the mod-con could vent. What you see in the picture is the return water that used to go into the old boiler, but now it goes up and over to the new boiler.



Everything is great, except what you see in the picture. There are two slow leaks in this section of pipe (on either side of the wye), so a cut has to be made and a union added.



Now to my first question. This is the low point of all the heating pipe in my house, and is quite a bit lower than the boiler (which is wall-mounted). There is a lot of 2" and larger pipe holding water. As you can see there is no cleanout valve here - just the wye plug. Is the thread on this compatible with a half inch threaded steel pipe?In which case would it be OK to replace the plug with a garden hose valve to allow the water to drain out through a hose?



Thanks!

JeffGuy

works fine

Maybe this was too obvious to get an answer (it probably would have helped if I had named the parts correctly - not a cleanout valve but a boiler drain and not a wye but a wye strainer), but I went for it anyway and found it worked fine. Now I'll be able to do a gravity cleanout without carrying 1000 buckets of water from the basement.