This Old House - How to Rebuild a Hose Spigot | Ask This Old House

Okay, so you've got an outside garden faucet, and the issue is that when we moved in, the feed to this faucet had been turned off. I figured out why, and when I turned it back on, you can see it's leaking.

All right, now how old is this house?

It's a little over 30 years old, so I would imagine this outside garden faucet is original, about 30 years old. Oftentimes I would come out and see this and just replace it with a brand new faucet, but tell me about the basement. Is it finished?

It is finished, and the shut-off is in the ceiling, behind that finish, so that might make it a little tougher. Why don't we start by actually trying to repair it first?

Okay, that'd be great. So you know where the shut-off is, right?

I don't. You're going to turn it off, sure?

Okay, all right. How'd you do? Great, got it, all shut off. Good.

All right, there are a lot of different ways to shut water off and a lot of different types of valves, and I brought a few along to help understand, and I've cut them in half to make it easy. So this is called a gate valve. This goes back to the beginnings of modern plumbing, and what it has is a guillotine. As you turn that handle, it rises, and water passes through. But now look what happens: I turn it and close it. I turn it down, and it wedges tight to make a really tight watertight seal, without a washer.

Now, this was always used on water mains because it was an important valve, but over time these stems could actually wear out, and sometimes they'd break in the closed position. They gave way to this, which is called a ball valve. The handle tells you the direction of flow. If you look right here, you can see there's an opening, and the water passes through. Now, when I turn this handle, this ball turns, and so now here's the opening, and look at this: it's completely sealed again, without a washer right here.

But these two valves are really expensive. The most common valves that are used are compression valves, and that's what this is right here. I've cut one, a valve just like this, in half to help understand it. You can see what's going on inside. Here's the water right here. Now it has a stem right here, and as you turn the handle, that stem rises. You see the washer at the bottom right here. It goes down against the bottom, and the bottom thing is called a seat, and that will hold water tight.

Now, in your case, I see water dripping out right here, so that suggests it has something to do with the washer right here, or the seat that it sits against. If I saw water leaking up right here from the stem itself, I would look at the top, to the thing called the bonnet. Now let me loosen that, and you'll see there's a little gasket up in there. You see it right here. So now, when you tighten that nut, it compresses that gasket, so no water leaks here. That's not the issue you have.

So we're going to take this valve apart and see just what's going on inside. Let's see if we can get this apart with some water pump pliers. For good measure, I'm going to hold back with a wrench. There we go. Come on, there we go. First time apart in 30 years, I bet. Oh, there it is. Okay, so there's our washer. It's pretty scored in there. I don't see any break. Normally I'd see a break right here.

Now we want to try to get this screw out. This hasn't been taken out in 30 years either, so wish us luck. We want to have really solid downward pressure onto that screw. Good. Sometimes they break off, and then you have to replace the whole thing. All right, so there's the screw. Okay, now I want to pry this old one out. All right, so now reach in there. I've got a package of assorted washers, and let you dig around there and see if you can find one that matches that size.

That's too small. Let me see. Yeah, way too small. Yep, this one looks about right. Not bad. Now there's two sides to it. See, this one has the size on it. You don't want that. You want the nice smooth side, right there. So there's that. Then we want to go in with our screws. These screws are actually made out of a metal called Monel, so it won't rust over 30 years. All right, so let's get that snug down. Okay, this should take care of your leak.

But while we have it this far apart, I'm going to actually rebuild right here, the bonnet. That means I take two wrenches and break this nut from this top gland. Okay, I'm going to hold that back first. Okay, so there's that top nut. Reverse my plier. Okay, so now you can see there's a little space right there. Didn't you see it? We're going to fill it with some Teflon packing. Just open that up and give me about enough to go around one to one and a half times. Right, that's like a rubber string. Yep, good, good.

So now we want to wrap it around the stem itself. I'm going to hold it right there and try to turn it right around on itself, and if I get it right, I should be able to bring the bonnet down. As I tighten this up, it compresses that Teflon right against the stem. Right. Okay, so now let's put it back in. You know what you've got to do, right? Turn the water back on, go down. All right, so how do we do?

Much better, but we have a slight little drip right here. Let me tell you what I think is going on. Here's that cutaway, right? You remember what we did. We changed that washer right here. We repacked the bonnet right here. But there's one more part of any valve, and that's the seat, the part where the washer sits against. So let me show you what I think is going on. I think we have a little score mark right on the existing seat down here, but it doesn't mean we're in trouble, because we can actually use a cool tool.

This is actually a valve reseating tool. Look at this: there's a grinder wheel at the end. The kit comes with a variety of different sizes, and now I can thread this down into the place where the stem used to go. Watch. Okay, now once that's in, watch what happens. Now I can come down here and turn this clockwise, and it'll actually put a new machine finish on that old seat. That means we should be able to clean it right up. It means you've got to go and turn the water off one more time. No problem.

All right, okay, so see how nice and shiny it is down there at the seat? Yeah, it looks great. That washer will seat perfectly. Now put this back in. Guess what I'm going to ask you to do again? Turn the water off. This is your exercise program. All right, all right, so water is on, water is off. Let's see how it does. It's holding. That's great. It's the way it's supposed to be, and we've really got a brand new valve now, with what we've done.