Replacement gasket/washer for steam valve shutoff

Michael P. Bourque

I want to replace the gasket/washer on all the shutoff valve for each radiator in my home. My local plumpbing supply house says they do not carry them, and to use packing rope instead.

This does not sound like the right approach to me. Seems like it would be ideal to by a sheet of rubber or some other material and stamp out the size I need for a custom fit.

Does anyone know of a product like this? Is it ok to use packing rope? I use packing rope for the upper nut seal, is that ok too?

If not I will probably replace all the shutoff valves with new ones from my supply store.

Chris V

washers

I use teflon tape and it has never let me down.

Al Letellier

packing for valves

Rope is OK on the stem of the valve, but won't work for the seat washer. Look in your yellow pages for a distributor that sells packing and seals, or rubber products. Tell them your application and you should be able to buy what you want. But check carefully the condition of the valve, it's seat and the "socket" for the disc. It might not be worth repairing.

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Bryan_5

Michael,
Are you sure you need to replace the gasket for your valves? Just a quick story when I bought my house and had no knowledge of my steam system I had spitting valves. I thought well I should replace the packing on my valves. It helped but not completely. They still hissed. You can see what the steam did to my wood trim near my valve after years of this. What I found out latter was that the valves were not the problem. What my problem was air could not get out of my system so it would escape through the only place it could which happened to be at the valves. After adding some Gorton #2 vents to my steam mains and dry return all of the hissing and water hammer was gone. Your post is almost identical to my first post on the WALL and I found that there was much more to getting the system to work correctly than I would have ever thought.

The biggest lesson I have learned from the WALL is that the problem usually doesnt lye in the room that is giving you your problem.

Good luck
Bryan