Plumbing – Saddle valve won’t turn off

First, a silly question for you. Are you sure the valve is not a 1/4 turn ball valve, and are you sure it has not turned off the water supply to the tank. If the answer is no to both questions, then we have to assume the valve is defective and we go to plan two. Now you have two jobs ahead. First, replace defective valve with a 1/4 turn ball valve and second, replace the wax ring with rubber flange. Before you can attack the valve replacement, you must turn off the main water supply, usually found at meter or pressure tank. After you have turned off the water supply. open a couple of faucets that are below and above the valve you want to replace. This will drain water from the system and avoid a lot of water held in pipes above the toilet valve from rushing out all over the place when you unsolder or cut the old valve out. Without seeing exactly what configuration your valve is attached by, I cannot advise you if it can be unsoldered. Another option may be to secure the body of the valve with a wrench and see if you can remove the cartridge retaining nut with a separate wrench. This will avoid the fear of ruining the copper in the wall. you may be able to replace just the guts instead of the entire valve. A pic of your set up would be helpful.

Saddle valves are terrible as actual valves. They are a cheap/easy way to tap an existing water line, but that's it. After you use them a few times, you just can't rely on the needle to cleanly seal against the punctured hole of the copper pipe, and to cleanly come back out again.

In your case it also looks like there may be some galvanic corrosion on the valve, which might also be corroding around the needle and blocking flow.

Replace with a better valve

There are many ways to do this of course, but it basically means:

• removing the existing saddle valve
• cutting out the small piece with the hole in it
• putting in a tee
• putting in a valve

If you really can't get any water to come out of the compression valve, then this would be the best way to fix it (and probably never have an issue again).

Use a real downstream valve

You can get away with using a saddle valve.. if you never actually use it as a valve.

Basically, use the saddle valve but put a better valve downstream. In your case, you can use a 1/4" or 3/8" (I can't tell from the photo) compression valve on the flexible copper tubing -- assuming you can get water to come out of the saddle valve.