Last Updated on 4 years by Christopher G Mendla
A simple hack to make opening and closing a gate valve faster
The shutoff for my water supply is a gate valve. This takes 12 revolutions to open or close. (I don’t like leaving valves half open). It was just a little aggravating to go through that every time I wanted to shut the water off and turn it on.
One solution would be to have a plumber install a ball valve. That would mean 1/4 turn of the handle would open or close the valve. I could try that myself but I’m not sure about the condition of the street valve.
Above is a picture of the gate valve in question. It has a standard handle.
The parts needed for this project were
- A speed/spinner knob for a steering wheel. $10 from Amazon. I looked for a spinner knob that had a threaded shaft and nut at the bottom.
- A flat piece of metal. I had an angle bracket that I cut for a straight piece for the handle. The nice part was that the pre-drilled holes matched well with what I needed.
- Two bolts. The diameter needed to be small enough to fit through the holes in the valve handle.
- Two wingnuts (or regular nuts)
- Two washers for the nuts and bolts plus two larger washers.
I removed the part of the spinner knob that would connect to the steering wheel. I needed to enlarge the hole where the knob would be attached to the handle. I had a small drill press that made the job a lot easier.
One hole lined up fine with the valve handle. For the other hole, I needed to elongate the hole in the metal bar. That was simple with the drill press.
Installation was simple. I attacked the metal bar to the existing valve handle with bolts, washers and wing nuts. The nob was attached to the end of the bar.
Take it easy near the end of the opening/closing cycle. The sudden stop caused by going too fast will eventually break the valve handle
The end result was that an irritating process became a lot less irritating. As a bonus, I was able to use the clamp that would attach to the steering wheel to fix a dolly / hand truck with a broken weld.