Raising radiator valve by 1/2"

parity_check21

Hello,

I'm putting in a tile floor that will add some thickness to the surface. There is no slack in the pipe to pull it higher. I am afraid to take a monkey wrench to this fitting. If I crack it, my entire home's steam circuit will be compromised.

Any suggestions? I guess I could dig the radiator down into the subfloor and tile around it, but it will not look nice. It is boxed in with a metal panel but the bottom legs are exposed as evident by a previous owner painting the red on the bottom 4".

ethicalpaul

It looks like a very short nipple under the valve. Can you replace it with a slightly longer one?

Or is that the fitting you are afraid of cracking? I wouldn't be afraid of the fitting cracking but it might be hard to get enough torque on the nipple.

But careful use of an angle grinder to cut off the top of the nipple, and then extra careful use of a sawzall to cut the nipple from the inside while not damaging the fitting's threads (much) should work.

I assume you don't have access to this from below to put an opposing wrench on it?

parity_check21

I have limited access below. The elbow is sandwiched in between some bracing. More space further down the line if I need to cut the whole thing off and cap.

tim smith

pretty close to where you could use nipple extender. Or as other said, change out nipple if you can get safely out. alternately take out those pads under legs and if legs are solid we have cut off the extra 1/4" from legs to make up difference. (last resort almost).
Tim

parity_check21

how do I take the nipple out? Start with the valve first?

parity_check21

I can torque the nipple but not sure how to separate the valve from the old nipple, might have to buy a new valve too.

tim smith

use 2 wrenches, one on nipple for back up to prevent torque on the fitting in floor then other on hex of valve. Spin valve off. Still going to be tricky and you might want to get a fitter to do for you if unsure about it. Can be costly mistake.

JUGHNE

If you get a new valve then you have to change the "spud" coming out of the radiator.
Something you may not want to do.
It is a matching union that seldom matches anything new.

You can get a nipple extender which is female on one end and male on the other.
This will make the valve too high but you can then come up with a good looking pad for each end of the rad to raise it to match the valve.

Remember to slope the valve end of the rad to get the condensate to drain back down the pipe.

Also an opportunity to install a 1 piece floor flange on the pipe to cover the hole in the floor.
Shop around for a good looking chrome one.

SteamFTW

What diameter pipe? They make a thing called a "nipple wrench" (aka "internal pipe wrench") which grips a pipe on the inside, and the part you put a wrench on sticks out the end of the pipe. Comes in pretty handy when you've had to cut a short nipple, and (1) there isn't enough pipe sticking out to get a wrench on, and (2) you can't/daren't cut the rest of the nipple out. Just don't drop it down the riser.

mattmia2

SteamFTW said:

What diameter pipe? They make a thing called a "nipple wrench" (aka "internal pipe wrench") which grips a pipe on the inside, and the part you put a wrench on sticks out the end of the pipe. Comes in pretty handy when you've had to cut a short nipple, and (1) there isn't enough pipe sticking out to get a wrench on, and (2) you can't/daren't cut the rest of the nipple out. Just don't drop it down the riser.

I wonder how well this would work for the spud, I don't seem to see it tried much before cutting it out. There are also several designs of this.

parity_check21

I got frustrated and just sawed off like 3/8" from the legs of the radiator then filed the edges down. Problem solved. I have plenty more work to do, I just felt this was opening up a can of worms. Thanks for the suggestions.