But honestly Ive seen way more packing failures from guys cranking down on the gland nuts way too hard than from any water hammer. You tighten those things like youre torquing lug nuts and the stem drags, then the valve wears uneven and you blame the system pressure. The real issue is most people never check the manufacturers spec for that packing torque. And if the water hammer was that bad, youd see pipe movement or the whole valve body cracking, not just a weepy seal. Plus adding a check valve or slow close device costs real money and downtime, while a simple re-torque takes five minutes and fixes it 90 percent of the time. Honestly feels like an overthinking engineer answer when the practical fix is right there.