Tried to fix a leaky pipe and flooded my own basement

Was tightening a compression fitting under the kitchen sink in my 1920s house in Portland last Saturday. Turned the wrench too hard and cracked the old brass nut clean off. Water sprayed everywhere for a good 3 minutes before I found the shutoff valve behind a box of old Tupperware. Anyone else had a simple plumbing job turn into a disaster real quick?

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2 Comments

uma_lopez3mo ago

OH man that SUCKS. I bet that old brass was already brittle from decades of Portland's hard water, you probably just finished it off. One thing nobody brings up is that in houses that old, the shutoff valves are often the same cruddy brass and will break if you even LOOK at them wrong. You might want to swap that shutoff valve out for a modern ball valve while you're drying out, trust me, it's a cheap upgrade that saves your bacon later. Also check your insurance, my neighbor had a similar flood and his old policy actually covered the water damage from a plumbing fail like that.

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jessicamiller3mo ago

Actually read an article about Portland's hard water specifically eating through old galvanized pipes from the inside out, and it said a lot of those brass fittings from the 70s and 80s have a higher zinc content that makes them way more prone to that stress cracking. One guy on a plumbing forum said he replaced a shutoff valve in a house built in 1968 and the brass just crumbled in his hand like a stale cookie. Really makes you wonder how many of these old valves are just waiting to go at the worst possible time too.

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