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what the f%^&, I would redo it completely, I would turn off the water at the curb stop, Install a new ball valve in copper and little higher and then make a proper connection to the pipe. All this junk is going to fail at sometime and the shut off valve will not close, this will happen at 2 o'clock in the morning when the water pressure is the greatest.
 
Just going to make a guess because you did not add a location to your profile, ether his uncle owned the plumbing supply house and he wanted him to make more money, or this is an outside wall and your in an area where it gets below freezing and it's failed several times.
Sure looks like some of that is PVC, and it should never have been used for a supply line!
Drain lines only.
I agree that PVC ball valve will be near impossible to turn once it's been there a few years.
 
I haven't seen it myself, it's at a camp and probably shut off in the off season. The wall was left open as it appears now. The pic was emailed to me for chuckles. PVC ball valves seem to work longer in the vertical position. Copper pipe fails in my area due to low pH of the water.
 
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Looks like something I would have seen at my Dads old camp on a lake.
He knew less then nothing on how to fix anything but was to cheap to hire someone to fix things right and tried to fix it himself.
Some examples: he was trying to remove and replace a water heater without shutting off the water, or draining the tank, and was using a Weller electric soldering gun to unsolder the copper pipe.
He was so proud to come up with the idea of using electrical tape to hold the trigger. :)
He had a few tabs break off his 3 tab shingles, so his idea to fix this was to just buy some as seen on TV sealer, spray it all over the area, and just lay new shingles over it without removing the broken shingles and weaving in new ones.
Every year in the spring he would spend days trying to half a** patch all the water leaks, I got tired of it and replaced all the old copper pipes with PEX and added a low point drain, and he never had to deal with it again.
 
Looks like something I would have seen at my Dads old camp on a lake.
He knew less then nothing on how to fix anything but was to cheap to hire someone to fix things right and tried to fix it himself.
Some examples: he was trying to remove and replace a water heater without shutting off the water, or draining the tank, and was using a Weller electric soldering gun to unsolder the copper pipe.
He was so proud to come up with the idea of using electrical tape to hold the trigger. :)
He had a few tabs break off his 3 tab shingles, so his idea to fix this was to just buy some as seen on TV sealer, spray it all over the area, and just lay new shingles over it without removing the broken shingles and weaving in new ones.
Every year in the spring he would spend days trying to half a** patch all the water leaks, I got tired of it and replaced all the old copper pipes with PEX and added a low point drain, and he never had to deal with it again.
Necessity is the Mother Of Invention Joe...😉
 
what the f%^&, I would redo it completely, I would turn off the water at the curb stop, Install a new ball valve in copper and little higher and then make a proper connection to the pipe. All this junk is going to fail at sometime and the shut off valve will not close, this will happen at 2 o'clock in the morning when the water pressure is the greatest.
HA! But you make a good point... this probably did happen at 2am on a Sunday morning, all the guy had was a box of parts and the nearest town was and hour away.... Sound like something I would... I mean a friend of a friend would do. Every body loves those remote cabin get aways in the mountains until Sunday morning at 2am.
 
I had a kluge like this at our last house on the connection to the water heater. It was covered in foam pipe insulation. I only discovered it when I came home day one day to find water flowing down my driveway from the garage. One of the fittings gave way and it was shooting water all over the garage. It was the old gray plastic Polybutylene plumbing pipes with notoriously bad fittings, but there were at least three more than were needed.
 

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