Removing leaking isolating valve

jimd10H

I am trying to replace an isolating valve behind a basin. I can't get the olive off at the bottom of it. Following advice I saw elsewhere, I cut through the olive, and then used a screwdriver to break it off. On one side of the cut, the olive has pulled away from the pipe, but on the other it's still clamped to the pipe and the valve won't come off.

Any advice? I'm starting to lose my cool!

Thanks

Head_The_Ball

Can you carefully use pliers or similar to grip the olive and use a twisting and upward (towards the end of the pipe) movement to shift it.

Take care not to distort the copper pipe.

Ebe_Scrooge

An alternative approach to twisting with pliers - which is fine, but there's a danger of twisting the pipe. Get an adjustable spanner, adjust it so that it'll just slide up and down the pipe, but catch on the olive. Repeatedly slide it upwards sharply, this might just shift the olive. Or else hold it against the olive and tap it gently with a hammer. Don't go too heavy-handed, else you run the risk of disturbing other joints elsewhere along the pipe.

jimd10H

Thanks very much to both of you. Just before your answers came, I realised that, above the valve, there's a flexible pipe with a fair bit of extra length. So I just used a pipe slice to cut the copper pipe below the olive.

Head_The_Ball

Glad you got it sorted.

Sometimes the lateral thinking approach works best.

southcoastrgi

If you are just replacing it why didn't you just undo the two nuts & replace the valve you didn't need to remove the olives

jimd10H

The valve and olive were jammed together. I couldn't get the valve off until I removed the olive. Anyway, fixed now.