Leaky Nipple

bconstant

First, thanks to all the pros who have made this board their hobby. I was looking to balance my system with new vents, and a great guy from Gorton gave me a 25 minute lesson on the phone and then pointed me here to, as he put it, get as far down the rabbit hole I dared to go.

I recently moved into a 120 year old house in NYC with a wonderfully ancient 1-pipe steam system. This has pretty much become my full-time obsession. The previous owners replaced a handful of valves fairly recently, but that’s as far as they went (didn’t even replaced broken vents) and even then the work looks pretty shoddy to my untrained eye. I have replaced the boiler and all the piping in the boiler room that leads to the mains (I am in love with it, I show it to all my dinner guests, it’s my proudest possession). Radiators all seem pitched properly with stacks of nickels and plywood, but I found one new valve that had no gasket in the stem at all (I packed it with some graphite rope), and another which has a substantial failure at the nipple going to the radiator. And this is where I’m seeking some help.

This new valve heats up and steam and water spout out of the nipple (the side pointing towards the valve stem, not the radiator side). It fills the room with a cloudy mist in short order. It’s catastrophic. Now I know why the valve was fully closed when I moved in – the previous owners had the same problem and must not have cared enough to make the guy who replaced the valve come back and fix it. The leak is dead with the valve stem closed, so at least the valve itself is working as intended.

I have already attempted a repair, but I made a total mess of it. I opened the nipple (it turned relatively easily – I was afraid of putting too much torque on it since the steam pipe below the valve looks like the Romans fabricated it) and slopped as much pipe joint compound on the threads as I could and then closed it back up. It worked really great until it didn’t and now I just get a jet of steam shooting even further. So I spent my afternoon cleaning up all this goo. Lesson learned, won’t be trying that again. My googling has found me several other janky repair options (one of which advocated for electrical tape), but I figured it’s time to ask some questions before botching this thing even further.

The vent is an Eastman made in CHINA special, which I’ll replace with a Gorton eventually but I can’t imagine the leak is because of too-small a vent or a non-functioning one, given the sheer volume of the leak.

I know just enough about this stuff to be a danger to myself and those around me, and I have a really wonderful plumber who I trust, but I would feel like such a man if this were something I could fix on my own. Any recommendations on what I could try to make this thing seal properly?

I included a photo, though I almost didn’t out of sheer embarrassment at the mess I caused. I don’t know if it will be of any value or not.

Abracadabra

Where exactly is it leaking from? It actually doesn't look that bad, unless someone tried to tighten the spud using a wrench and something went out of round. You may need a new valve. I'm not 100% sure but that looks like it might be a 1-1/4" valve. I don't believe Gorton makes shutoff valves.

http://www.supplyhouse.com/Matco-Norca-BARVY-1250-1-1-4-FIP-x-Male-Union-Steam-Angle-Radiator-Valve-4649000-p

You'll need to replace the the valve and the spud (the part that attaches to the radiator). You'll need a spud wrench to tighten the new fitting on. Don't use a wrench directly on the spud or it'll go out of round and leak. The spud need to mate properly with the valve, otherwise it'll leak. Make sure the height of the radiator is adjusted as the new valve and old valve might not have the exact same dimensions.

Spud wrench: http://www.supplyhouse.com/Webstone-25011-Radiator-Valve-Spud-Wrench?gclid=Cj0KEQiApIGnBRCFx-idn7-E2Y8BEiQAc6fQbB2aAZnbJdtflr5QJ3ZV5RBADqEdZY7jjLWpj0P_wWkaAqwg8P8HAQ

No pipe dope on the mating surfaces of the spud/valve. Only on the threads.

Abracadabra

I looked at the picture again and just thought of something. You realize the spud nut is loose right? I hope you aren't running the radiator like that. I was thinking you left the nut loose just to take a picture.

icesailor

First of all, the union nut is NOT connected. That's why you have a leak. You need to push the valve part as far against the union spud as possible. The nut should engage with your fingers and go easily at least two revolutions before it starts to get tight. If while you were tightening the nut, it seemed to be getting tight, and the nut was where you have it now, you might have cross threaded the nut with the valve. It is an experienced art to fix it and get it connected.

Its hard to explain, but if you can pull the valve away from the nut, the nut can then be pulled against the spud shoulder. Look carefully at it. The threads on the valve should ne very close to parallel. You MUST keep the plane of the nut the same as when it is against the spud shoulder. Wind the nut backwards and feel for a "skip". If you start at the Skip, you might catch it. If you can not turn it easily by hand, it might be cross threaded and wrecked. Fixing that, is an acquired skill.

bconstant

Where exactly is it leaking from?

If looking at the photo, the leak is on the left side of the nipple nut thingy. It shoots through the threads straight to the left towards the valve stem. It does not leak on the side closest to the radiator itself. Does that make sense? I can MS Paint some arrows onto the picture if that will make it clearer.

So you're saying it's possible the installers effed up the shape of the valve when they installed it?

bconstant

Haha ok guys I know the nut is loose - I had it loose on purpose to clean out the gunk I put in there and decided the less opening/closing the better since I'm scared of breaking my pipes. The nut screws shut with absolutely no problems at all. It tightens right up to the point where it should (matching all my other radiators). I can close it up and take another photo if that would help.

It leaks with it closed I promise

nicholas bonham-carter

Do I understand that the leak is from the union coupling nut, which pulls the faces of the valve, and the spud into the radiator together?
If so, it may be that the new valve is trying to seal against the original spud, which it cannot do, as valve and spud are a matched pair.
See if the spud looks as new as the valve, and if so, look around for the spuds which came with the new valves. Removal of an old spud from a radiator, in order to replace it, will make you a real man!
If the spud appears to be new, then the art of making those faces line up as you tighten the union nut, is to rock the radiator gently as you continue to tighten the nut. many people use pipe dope on the faces as a lubricant, but I use dish washing liquid. Your dinner guests will be honored to help! The faces should be parallel when you start.--NBC

Abracadabra

nicholas bonham-carter said:

Do I understand that the leak is from the union coupling nut, which pulls the faces of the valve, and the spud into the radiator together?
If so, it may be that the new valve is trying to seal against the original spud, which it cannot do, as valve and spud are a matched pair.

Ah... I think NBC got it. That spud looks new. Valve looks old. Like NBC said... valve and spud need to be replaced together. Looks like they only replaced the spud. Good catch NBC.

Abracadabra

bconstant said:

This new valve heats up and steam and water spout out of the nipple (the side pointing towards the valve stem, not the radiator side). It fills the room with a cloudy mist in short order. It’s catastrophic.

The valve in the picture does not look new.... Only the spud looks like it's been replaced.

icesailor

It may be the wrong union nut. It looks pretty old to me. There's enough scuzz on it to be the original nut. Better chance its mis-aligned and cross threaded. It needs the experienced touch of a real professional.

If you can find one.

I never have seen an easy one to re=connect. I once took out two radiators in a kitchen so they could run linoleum under the rads. I was careful to be sure that they didn't get flipped 180 degrees. Not so for the installers. They flipped one when moving it on my dolly. When I put it back, one side easily connected, the other wouldn't connect. It would connect and get tight. Too tight for my experience. I flipped the radiator 180 degrees. Both nuts slipped right on. Had I forced the hard one on, I would have ruined the valve and union. And none to replace it with. There's only one company that sells Made in China replacement valves. And they are junk.

bconstant

Ok - I've read every post in here twice. I'm taking it all in. "One thing at the time", as my foreigner father likes to say.

Do I understand that the leak is from the union coupling nut, which pulls the faces of the valve, and the spud into the radiator together?

I understand a few of these words, but yes! I think this is exactly it. After reading all these posts, I'm second-guessing whether any of this is new or not. But this radiator has been moved sometime in the last 10 years (I have a proposal from a plumber in 2006 to move it).

It may be the wrong union nut. It looks pretty old to me. There's enough scuzz on it to be the original nut.

I'm willing to bet it's not - the scuzz is mostly paper towel fuzz. The nut looked a lot better before I started screwing with it. And it unscrewed so beautifully I couldn't imagine it was very old? I dunno, wouldn't be the first bet I've lost.

Ah... I think NBC got it. That spud looks new. Valve looks old. Like NBC said... valve and spud need to be replaced together. Looks like they only replaced the spud. Good catch NBC.

This sounds like it may be the likely issue.

I closed the nut and took NBC's advice about rocking the radiator gently to get the contact right. The nut tightened beautifully just like it was originally, but when I looked closer I could see that it's still a bit skeewampus. I attached another photo here - is this what cross-threading is? Doesn't look like I aligned it right after all, even though it felt nice and I was able to finger-tighten it pretty far.

icesailor

That's old, and that's cross threaded. If you took the radiator off/out, and didn't change the spud, that's cross threaded. The problem when it is cross threaded is that once you do it, it always wants to go on wrong again.

Experience and finesse can usually get it back. Some are much harder than others. You really have a dilemma. Especially if you have wound it up tight like in the last photo.

Fred

When all is said and done, at this point, you need to have the valve and spud replaced and the the valve needs to be lined up perfectly with the radiator spud before you tighten the nut up or you will cross thread the new one too.

bconstant

icesailor said:

That's old, and that's cross threaded. If you took the radiator off/out, and didn't change the spud, that's cross threaded. The problem when it is cross threaded is that once you do it, it always wants to go on wrong again.

Experience and finesse can usually get it back. Some are much harder than others. You really have a dilemma. Especially if you have wound it up tight like in the last photo.

Fred said:

When all is said and done, at this point, you need to have the valve and spud replaced and the the valve needs to be lined up perfectly with the radiator spud before you tighten the nut up or you will cross thread the new one too.

Understood.

I started this by assuming the whole valve would need to be replaced (which I'd have my plumber do), so I figured as long as I didn't break the steam pipe or the radiator, it was worth getting a little hands-on education. Failing to fix it probably hasn't set me back much further than I was when I began! I'll give it another go and if it's no-good, I'll close it up and wait for the experts.

Thanks for all your help and advice, guys! I appreciate it immensely - you can all come over for dinner any time.

I took some more photos, maybe they will come in handy for another amateur. Abra, on a normal day I'd take your advice and grab that spud wrench and get going on this thing, but honestly I'm scared to death of the steam pipe. It looks too old for me to be banging around on it. I found a video of a dude who used a hack saw to pop the threads off an old pipe to avoid torquing it, but I can see that ending in tears, too. I'll close this valve up and wait for the spring for a pro to do it.

You can see in one of the photos how the radiator and the valve don't line up - you have to tip the beast a fair amount to even get the nut to reach the threads at all. Maybe this is how the cross-threading started in the first place? I tried a few more times to get the finesse down, but it wasn't having it. One thing I'm sure of - it was like this before I started. So while it was probably likely that I would have messed it up on my own, I can lay the blame here down range a bit and retain a bit of my pride

Again, thanks a ton!

Fred

Is that a hole I see behind that valve thread (in the second picture) or just a fleck of dirt?

icesailor

That valve will come of right smartly. Its already been off. You can see the Teflon Tape and Rectorseal in the last photo. The valve may have been replaced before and the radiator end has been replaced and Tefloned. I don't know what your idea of a "Spud Wrench" is, but I call them radiator wrenches. If it is the same, and you put part of it inside the fitting on the radiator, move the radiator back and insert the wrench. Engage the lugs, fully. Try to turn it. It will come out. As far as the valve, always use TWO wrenches. There's plenty of room below the valve for the back up wrench. Use a piece of pipe on the brace wrench so you have to pull harder on the valve wrench. That way, you don't have any pulling on the pipes below.

Or call your pro. Its actually a gravy job for some Pro. A couple of hour job in a warm place.

bconstant

icesailor said:

That valve will come of right smartly. Its already been off. You can see the Teflon Tape and Rectorseal in the last photo. The valve may have been replaced before and the radiator end has been replaced and Tefloned. I don't know what your idea of a "Spud Wrench" is, but I call them radiator wrenches. If it is the same, and you put part of it inside the fitting on the radiator, move the radiator back and insert the wrench. Engage the lugs, fully. Try to turn it. It will come out. As far as the valve, always use TWO wrenches. There's plenty of room below the valve for the back up wrench. Use a piece of pipe on the brace wrench so you have to pull harder on the valve wrench. That way, you don't have any pulling on the pipes below.

Ok this is great. Yes we are talking about the same kind of wrench - Abracadabra posted a link to one above.

Can you illustrate the concept of the backup wrench? I understand the concept - the second wrench is to make sure the fixed piece (the pipe) isn't turning or receiving any torque from the wrench on the valve (right?). I just don't quite understand physically how it will work. A wrench on the pipe below the valve isn't going to keep the pipe from turning, since the pipe is round. What am I missing here?

Fred said:

Is that a hole I see behind that valve thread (in the second picture) or just a fleck of dirt?

No, I believe it's just a gap in the joint compound and the flash on my phone made it look like a hole. I'll have another look, but I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if there was daylight coming in when I pulled the radiator out!

FranklinD

I went through this with my 'new' bathroom radiator (on hot water). I ordered a few new valves from SupplyHouse.com and they all came with new 'spuds' (the nipple into the radiator). I also ordered a spud wrench - it was very inexpensive.

When I assembled mine, I didn't use any dope or compound or anything on the mating surfaces of the spud to valve interface. Sealed up perfectly.

I did have to use a pretty large pipe wrench to get the old spuds out of the 'new' (to me) radiator. They didn't want to budge. They ended up squished (brass) but that was okay as I had new ones.

bconstant

FranklinD said:

I did have to use a pretty large pipe wrench to get the old spuds out of the 'new' (to me) radiator. They didn't want to budge. They ended up squished (brass) but that was okay as I had new ones.

How would the spuds end up squished? The spud wrench turns the spuds from the inside on two ridges, right? How would more torque bend them out of shape?

I've watched this quebecois dude accomplish this like, four times now I think. He pulls the nipple out at the 5:30 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS6kTtUvGH8

Slowly building my confidence to try this. Maybe once warm weather kicks in I'll give it a go.

bconstant

Just an update for this.

I finally caved and decided to fix this radiator. The vent came off the steam riser with almost no problem at all. I used this thing to hold the pipe while I turned the vent.

The nipple was a much more difficult prospect. As Hatterasguy mentioned above, the little spuds stripped straight off. I was really hoping I would be the lucky one and this would have been easy, but I wasn't, and it wasn't. I used a hacksaw just like Bob shows in his video, but when I went to hit it with the chisel I didn't get the desired results. So I ended up using the hacksaw to take out a whole section of the nipple, after which I was able to knock the whole thing free and it screwed out freely. After that, installing the new hardware was no problem. I tried not to over-tighten anything, and I paid special attention to cross threading, since the radiator doesn't sit flush on the floor due to warping it would be pretty easy to make the same mistake that the previous plumber made when installing this thing in the first place.

I was really nervous with the hacksaw - I didn't want to mess up the radiator. I think I did as well as I could have given that I've never done this before - you can definitely see evidence on the radiator itself that I was there, but the threads are intact enough that I don't think this is an issue, it's only some light scratching. I have another radiator to do and now that I know what to look for I feel confident that this one I can do without leaving a trace.

Thanks for all your help everybody!

Fred

Way to go!

bconstant

I just did another one of these (last one, hopefully).

This time I had to hacksaw the valve off the steam riser - it was welded on there pretty good.

But the nipple came out with the pipe wrench without even a complaint. Let me tell you, after children laughing, the dull scraping sound of that brass turning in that cast iron is maybe one of the most satisfying sounds found in nature.

The new valve wouldn't screw down as far as the old one - in order to get another turn I would have had to use too much torque and I wasn't comfortable with that. So I shimmed up the radiator instead to meet the valve. Hopefully it's on there far enough.

ChrisJ

bconstant said:

I just did another one of these (last one, hopefully).

This time I had to hacksaw the valve off the steam riser - it was welded on there pretty good.

But the nipple came out with the pipe wrench without even a complaint. Let me tell you, after children laughing, the dull scraping sound of that brass turning in that cast iron is maybe one of the most satisfying sounds found in nature.

The new valve wouldn't screw down as far as the old one - in order to get another turn I would have had to use too much torque and I wasn't comfortable with that. So I shimmed up the radiator instead to meet the valve. Hopefully it's on there far enough.

What size wrenches were you using on what size valve?
If you used 24" wrenches on an 1 1/4" valve and put it pretty tight until you felt that "starting to bind" feeling, it's fine. After you torque a certain amount of pipes you start to recognize the feeling. It goes from easy, to less easy, to less easy and then there's a point where it starts binding, this is about where you want to be. Not too tight, not too loose.

Brass seals really well onto or into steel, much better than steel into steel.

All fittings and pipes will thread together slightly different. Some deeper than others, it's just how it is.

How many turns do you think you got?

Fred

Likely you got it tight enough. New valve are slightly different than the older ones. A shim under the radiator is pretty common practice. Just make sure the radiator is pitched in the right direction.

bconstant

I don't know if I quite got it to that "binding" point. I'm a bit scared to push the limits. I can't say how many turns I got - maybe 4? Maybe it was 3.

Either way it's snug on there. I'm using a 24" wrench and it was starting to require using my body weight and spittle coming out of my mouth to make it go another quarter turn, so I stopped, backed up, and shimmed up the radiator. I did make sure to pitch it properly. The shims I used are pieces of paint mixing sticks, and I'm slightly concerned about their long-term viability for this. It was going to take too many quarters to achieve the same result (I needed 3 pieces on the front, 4 on the back).

KC_Jones

bconstant said:

so I stopped, backed up, and shimmed up the radiator. .

You didn't turn it back the other way did you? That would be a big NO NO.

bconstant

KC_Jones said:

bconstant said:

so I stopped, backed up, and shimmed up the radiator. .

You didn't turn it back the other way did you? That would be a big NO NO.

Yes I did. Maybe a quarter turn at most. If I hadn't the valve wouldn't line up with the radiator properly.

KC_Jones

And this is the "feeling it" part Chris was talking about. You need to feel if you are getting close enough before you get to the final resting place. To do what you did correctly you either get the additional turn or if you already went past the alignment point back it all the way off and start over. Loosening the fitting even a little isn't really an option. This is a one way street, tighten only, if you need to loosen you take it all the way off and start over.

bconstant

Ok, is that to avoid cross threading? Can you elaborate why? I'm happy to go back and start over, just want to make sure it's worth it

KC_Jones

Basically, so it doesn't leak. Backing it off might turn out ok, it might leak. The only sure fire way to know it won't leak is to not do it.

bconstant

Understood, thanks.

bob_46

bconstant, don't worry. this is low pressure steam the only thing easier to hold is popcorn .

Fred

It's going to be fine. Leave it as it is. On the rare chance it does leak, you can start over then but I think it will be OK. BTW, many people use checkers as shims. That last a long, long time.

nicholas bonham-carter

To avoid cross threading, turn the threaded pieces in reverse, until you feel the threads drop into one another, then "righty-tighty". This also works well on wood screws, where cross threading can reduce the hold of the screw in the wood.
Don't forget to put some dishwashing liquid on the mating faces of the Union, so they can ease together without damage, galling, etc.--NBC