Hey, so I need to replace some crappy supply stop valves as a consequence of trying to replace a bathroom faucet. I'd like to only inconvenience myself as little as possible at the moment, so I'd like to just do the "hot" side first. Another problem here is that I don't know where the house's main water shutoff valve is (but could do some more looking on this).

To simplify things and make sure I can get the right stuff, I was thinking I'd like to remove just the hot side's angle stop valve (which I believe is a compression type). Before I do that though, I'm wondering the easiest way to "run out" of hot water. I can shutoff the hot water heater's supply valve, but should I also flip the breaker on the water heater when I do that so it doesn't burn out from being "dry" and on or something? Or is that no worry?

Thanks in advance,
Josh

Hello Josh,
First try to locate the main supply S/O valve, or close the S/O valve at the city water meter , also if you close the cold water supply to the water heater will work too and you don't have to flip the breaker, to replace the compression type angle valve see the image below, good luck.

John

Very cool John, thank you for the excellent image as well! Indeed I think it would be best to just bite the bullet and shut the water off at house's main valve, I guess I'll just have to track that thing down.

Also, from your image there, it looks almost like the compression fitting (if that's even the right term) that goes onto the copper tube - the thing pointed at by the top blue arrow of the two on the bottom-right of the image) may actually allow the rest of the valve assembly to be detached? I'm wondering because I'd think that would be #1 on the tube part of the image above - so does that actually not come off when the rest of the valve is taken off? (that would be cool, because there's like 1" or so of pipe behind it, coming out of the wall.. I could probably replace the "#1" that's on there now if it unscrews, but there's just NOT much room to work with here).

Thanks again,
Josh

When you loosen the #1 the nut stays with pipe you don't need to replace the nut just the angle valve, buy a new angle valve see the image below, remove the nut from the new one and install it on the pipe you will be OK, good luck.

John

Very cool indeed, John. I think I located the house's valve... but I KNOW I found a crawlspace down stairs! Thanks for all the help - I'm so far ahead of schedule on this project that I obviously had some time to kill... obviously ;)

JM