More and more water utilities are using hydraulic software solutions to predict the working of their water distribution network. Simulating pressure control valve in the steady state context, because of the unknown status of the valve, may cause a problem of convergence or even lead to unrealistic results. The objective of this paper is to present a method to determine the correct status of pressure control valves. Contrary to Epanet that treats this problem as an integer-programming problem, the valve status problem is relaxed to become continuous and formulated as a least-squares criterion. The friction factor served as a status control variable, which is minored by a nonnegative lower limit (for an open valve) and less than a large positive number representing a closed valve. A focus is made on the resolution of this constraint by a projection method. The implementation of the method within the Porteau hydraulic software leads to convincing and enhanced results. Three simple case studies are shown as a demonstration.