This is an odd one. The only whole house shut off is on the city side of my meter and the person from public works I talked to said only the city could operate it and if it were to break while I operated it I could be held financially liable.
Does anyone know of a ballpark price to get a plumber to install on my side of the meter?
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Do you have a water softener? Usually that’s the first ingress point into your house, even before the hot water heater (normally). Most of those will have a shutoff value near it. It won’t get your outside faucets but at least it’ll get everything in your house.
Water softeners often don’t have a shutoff valve. The valve on them is a bypass valve. Water will still flow, just not through the softener.
Depends on where/how it was installed. Code where I was at required a shut off right before it, independent of the bypass (and I almost called out the bypass on my original post to account for that)
This is great info. I’m basically in OPs same situation and I do have a water softener. I will be checking this out tomorrow for sure…
Thanks 🙏
Had a pipe burst in a rental in Seattle. No shut off. I called the city and they came out and installed a shut off the same day.
Give em a call and see if they’ll put one in.
I saw this in youtube when I was watching videos about propress, planning a whole house plumbing redo.
http://easyfitisolator.us/
I think it’s only available in the states, but you don’t even need to shut off the main to install the shut off valve.
There’s also the c/plumbing at lemmy, they might be able your question.Yeh I think these are currently like $400-500 here in Canada. My boss just ordered one (or something similar), interested to see how they function.
I had to install shutoffs in a unit this week and building management refused to shut the water off (for the floor).
I used a Rigid Super Freeze and it worked really well. Installed all 5 shutoffs without a disaster.
Full disclosure, I’m a carpenter/project manager, not a plumber by trade.
Rented from United Rentals, which is North America-wide I believe.
While doing some repairs prior to closing on my house the previous owners found their shutoff didn’t close all the way and their plumber had a way of freezing the line in order to install a new shut off. I have no idea on the details aside from a 2nd hand retelling but I thought it sounded interesting at the very least.
Cutting a pipe and adding a valve is a really simple thing and should only be expensive to the extent that any plumbing job is expensive.
I would specifically ask for a quality 1/4 turn ball valve - there’s no point in cheaping out on that part when you’re mostly paying for labor. And as long as you’re doing that, you probably want two of them. For the same reason the city doesn’t want you touching theirs, you should have a shutoff that you actually use when you need to do plumbing work in the house, and one before that that you never touch unless it’s an emergency and you can’t shut off the other one.
For a bit more expense, you could consider an automatic shutoff leak detector. I have one called Phyn that keeps track of water usage, tests for pressure drops every night, and detects unusual flow patterns and can automatically shut it off.
Are you 100% sure? I thought we didn’t have one and it turned out to be in the kitchen pantry behind a plastic shield. I had looked for it with a plumber when we originally bought the house. Years later another plumber told us we had to have one because of code (in my state in the USA) and since the house was fairly new (less than 20 years old).
Mine was built in the 80s. I spent the morning crawling around my crawl space. There may be one down there but I can’t find it or it’s beind the sewer line I can’t get past, which just means I don’t have one. There is a knob in my garage which I have no idea what it goes it. I have turned it till it won’t turn both ways any nothing has happened that I could find.
There is a chance it’s “outside” in some sort of deep box but that seems unlikely unless you are in the south.
You need a plumber unfortunately and if you really don’t have one it might be a grand or more. Schedule with water company to turn it off at the street, cut, add a good modern shutoff in a useful location (which might require changing layout) and so on.
Good luck, but I would not do it myself based on the comments so far. Just fyi.
There is a knob in my garage which I have no idea what it goes it. I have turned it till it won’t turn both ways any nothing has happened that I could find.
Ohhh, THAT’S why my lights kept getting brighter and dimmer!
