Backflow preventer leak help
Hi, my wife and I are new home owners and we bought our house and moved in this last October, I got help and advice from a neighbor to winterize the sprinklers who was familiar with this as he was doing it for the last owners.
One of the things he showed me was taking the backflow preventer off. Well I’ve turned the water back on as it’s warming up and I’ve noticed water leaking up from the connectors that connect it to the two pipes after I put it back on and tightened them. This neighbor moved away and I was given advice from someone else to just replace the connectors, but they won’t fit up over the top of the pipes as there is a piece at the top (no idea what anything is called, I’m a noob.) the piece is clearly threaded on and I’ve done everything to try and get it off including using channel lock pliers to try and hold the pipe and counter twist from my pipe wrench, but I can’t get the top piece loose. If anything, the entire pipe begins to twist, rather than just the top.
So I guess I’m looking for advice on trying to get it off, or if I even need to get the connectors off to fix the leak. I took a few pictures, any advice would be helpful so I can attempt to do it myself before turning to someone else to do it for me. Thank you for any advice anyone can give to this idiotic new home owner.