Odd length freeze proof faucet

Hello all,

I had the nice experience the other day of hearing water running outside when the weather in Dallas had dropped to 20 degrees. I went out, and found the faucet running so I turned it off and the whole faucet came off in my hand. Of course the ensuing 3/4 jet of water had an interesting affect on my clothing.

After turning off the house water - and changing clothes, I went out and found the freeze proof faucet had sheared off at the brick line. I was very lucking in that two pairs of vise grips and a pipe wrench managed to remove the faucet stem from the wall. So off to the hardware store I went at 8:00 at night, bought both and 4 and 6 inch faucet and returned home. I looked at the broken stem and found it to be 4.5 inches long! So I taped the 6 inch faucet and screwed it in. All is well except the faucet flange sticks out 1,5 in from the wall so I can not secure it.

Long story, but my question is what can I do about this? There is not a 4.5 inch faucet.

Thanks in advance

Hugh

I don't know the answer to your question, but is there any way you could adjust the supply line?

It is rare that a new frost free matches the length of the old one.

Many times, we need to access the pipe behind and make an adjustment.
And that is why God created plumbers.
Or handy homeowners.

Exactly what has to be done depends on how the connection is made to the supply line. It could be very simple. Or not.

If you've got marginal insulation or air leaks, an even longer one might be good! That would put the actual water further in the wall cavity or joist bay away from the outside. 4.5" isn't all that far and depending on the insulation and available heat in that area, might just freeze again. The guts of the frost free valve are at the interior end, but if that's still in an area that can freeze (likely what happened to yours), the new one won't be any better.

If you have any access on the inside, even very tight, you can add a shutoff and make the transition without sweating using these, available at the big blue box.

http://www.apollovalves.com/pipemaster/pipemaster.asp?zoom_highlight=pipemaster

Say, 1/2 IPS on one side to screw to the sillcock, and 1/2 cu compression on the other side.

Since I live where freeze is really really rare, I'll bite; What is a freeze-proof faucet?

Bob

Bob2 said:

Since I live where freeze is really really rare, I'll bite; What is a freeze-proof faucet?

Bob

Click to expand...

Its an outside sillcock or also known as a wall hydryant. The stem is long enough to shut off the water on the inside of the home. The shortest I seen them is 6" and seen them as long as 18"

Woodford makes quite a few silcocks that are for a 4" Wall.
Model 14, 17CC, & 27CC... These are for non-freezing areas only.

http://www.watcomfg.com/Woodford/WFDIndex.htm

Well the answer turned out to be quite simple. The silcox was made by Arrow and Arrow makes their silcox out of simple parts that are sweated together. The part that had broken was just the 3/4 copper pipe. So I purchased some pipe, cut it to the same length as the part that had broken. I then took the silcox apart, and sweated the new pipe into the old parts of the silcox. This made an exact match.

To answer some of the questions posted:

Getting to the pipe in the wall would have been quite the task including removing tile on the inside kitchen wall to get at it. I wanted to avoid that.

Thanks for the idea.

Hugh