A hose bib is born

One of the comments that my house inspector made was that he was unable to verify the front hose bib (external spigot) since the compression knob had rusted away.  I wasn't concerned about that line item since I figured I'd look into it when I bought the house.

Well, I got to looking at it:

And decided that it would make a good project to take care of.  When I started manipulating the compression fitting, and its associated internal shut-off valve I was unable to fully stop the water flow after breaking the seal. (e.g. the fittings both external and internal were old.)  I could have replaced the compression fittings, but for a few reasons below, I decided to replace the whole 'kit and kaboodle'.

I hate compression fittings as shut-off valves.  To me, (and this is the Navy talking) a valve should identify at a glance, if its open/closed and for shut-off valves, be something you can use quickly.  Compression fittings are neither of these things; however, they are cheaper and they work for most things.  As you can see from the below picture of the internal setup (after removing the dry-wall box that had been around it):

Trying to turn that knob was difficult in the box it had been in, and using a wrench in the 'box' had been even more so and all I could see was shearing the valve stem so I wasn't too keen on pushing things to the limit.

So, I removed the old piping in the above picture keeping the elbow joint near the main 1' line for the house (after shutting water off at the pressure tank, and shutting off the valve to the water treatment plant. [yes, two valve protection...the Navy rears its head...again.])

There was a clay-like piping tape around the old pipe.  Friends had been concerned for asbestos, I have ordered a test kit, since all the cold pipe in the house seems to have this tape around it, I used gloves, full body protection and an asbestos certified respirator while doing this work. After I removed the tape, I double-bagged it and will ship that along when the kit arrives.

I had a false start after soldering a threaded end to a measured piece of copper pipe and pushing that through to the inside, the length was good, but the 90 degree copper fitting was tight, and then trying to solder it would have blown hot sparks into the spaces between the walls...not something I wanted to do. (In the below pictures you can see some scorch marks which provided ample warning.)

So I built the entire copper tubing setup, this time with a ball valve as the shut-off and left a long copper pipe outside to cut last.

This did involve me going the the local hardware store twice to get tools I'll be using a lot: a drywall saw, a hacksaw for confined spaces, and a heat protective cloth.  As you can see, the ball valve shows, without a doubt, that the piping is closed.  (Also, I continued the previous installs slightly downward angle to provide a natural drain for when the pipe is winterized.)

At this point, I re-pressurized the house system, (I made a soapy mixture and sprayed it on the pipe fittings to see if any bubbles formed while the system was pressurizing.)  Everything to the shut-off valve was good/no leaks, so I opened the valve and saw out the basement window the pipe shooting water out, so I felt pretty good that things were secure.  I had opened a few faucets inside the house while draining the system, so closed them after verifying waterflow (and pushing out any air in the system.)

Next, I cut the above pipe to size, and put a threaded connector on it (so I can replace the hose bib at a later date as needed.)

Applied a few loops of teflon tape, threaded the hose bib on and...

And the final result!

I also used some hole compound to secure the inside/outside cracks to keep out the bugs.  The piping will get another box around it once I've figured out my paint scheme for the room and have moved into drywall mode.  All in all, a good education, and no leaks.