It’s a simple fact of living in Phoenix that the water here is hard. And by hard water, I mean it is loaded with minerals. It’s safe to drink, if not particularly pleasant tasting. Region by region throughout the city, the level of unpleasantness does tend to vary from “that’s almost tolerable” to “there’s no way I could even boil potatoes with that”.
A consequence of the hard water, is that it’s also hard on plumbing fixtures. Recently, a rental property I manage had two simultaneous failures, which resulted in the entire house flooding. The first failure was of a shut off valve for one of the two washing machine supply lines (I never did find out if it was the hot or the cold). When the last tenant moved out and took their washer with them, they suspected a problem, so they turned off the water supply at the house main shut off.
The second problem, however, developed a few days later, when the landscaper came by to mow the front yard. Being a normal mid-May day (aka hot), he wanted to soak his hat in some water, so he turned on the water at the main shut off valve. He soaked his hat at the adjacent hose spigot, then thought he turned the water back off. Unfortunately, that valve broke exactly at the wrong time. The result, was that the water wasn’t turned back off, the valve in the laundry failed, and thus water began flowing into the vacant house for approximately 10 hours. It was around this time that a neighbor called me (thanks to the for rent sign in the yard) and informed me there was water running out of the garage, beneath the garage door.
I asked the neighbor to turn the water at the shut off valve, which she informed me she did. Except 30 minutes later, she called back again saying there was still water coming out of the garage. At that point, I asked her if she was able to turn the water off at the street. Fortunately, another neighbor was able to help with turn the water off at the street, and finally the flow of water in the home ceased.
The total damage: $17,500 to dry the house out, replace all of the carpet, replace most of the baseboards in the home, paint, and various drywall touch ups.
My plumber came out to fix the problems with the valves, and alerted me to a problem that I want to share with everyone. Here is a picture of the inside of the valve that broke:
Feel free to click on the picture to enlarge it. What you should notice in this picture is the thin round piece of metal that appears to be sheared in half within either side of the interior of this valve. That metal is supposed to be connected. But the hard water, combined with this valve now being 9 years old, caused this to break in the open position. The design of this valve seems to be one in which failure is almost certain, and probably right around the time you need it to work the most. The plumber noted that this type of valve will start to fail about the same time as the other fixtures within the home fail, meaning when you need it most, it’s as likely as not to let you down.
If you have a home that is 10+ years old, and this is the type of main shut off valve that you have, you might strongly consider changing the valve to a newer ball valve like this:
These ball valves only take 1/4 turn to full open or close and the connection between the valve and the handle is a much thicker, sturdier metal, which should last a much, much longer time, even with the hard water here in Phoenix.
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