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?
I can’t imagine it would be more than a couple hundred bucks assuming they can find an accessible point for it. Mine is in an unfinished room at the corner of the basement where the main line comes in and replacing it took the plumber life twenty minutes.
You can ask the plumber about coordinating with the city for shutoff. Maybe they’d know a guy?
But definitely don’t mess with it if. In my case I couldn’t find my external shutoff when I needed that internal one replaced so I had the city come locate it for me. They uncovered the plate, tested the valve and it broke immediately. Fixing it was a major excavation. The city guy told me how lucky I was that I hadn’t found it and tested it myself.
Mine is in an unfinished room at the corner of the basement where the main line comes in and replacing it took the plumber life
RIP poor plumber
Damn. May their sacrifice never be forgotten o7
Heh. Not even fixing it.
F
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Crazy thing is, one of the methods plumbers use to install a shutoff valve if they can’t turn off the city point is to freeze the pipe before where the new shutoff valve is to be installed. I always thought that was wild.
That’s Cool
Ice cold
Freeze seals are legit. They’re insanely common in the nuclear world, so as to minimize the downtime on coolant systems.
Yes this is the way to go. I have a shutoff near the pipe that the city water comes in but the valve was nonfunctional. I had to schedule a plumber, then ask the city to shutoff my water on that day, the plumber came and replaced the valve, and the city came back to turn on the water. Basically the same process applies to you but with installing a valve rather than replacing one.
Got it, thanks.
Mine comes in in our crawl space but I can’t get to where it comes in becasue of a sewer line that runs the width of the crawl and I can’t fit past it.
And I assume the line branches before it travels up into the walls? Or is there a chance it branches after it leaves the crawl space, in which case you could consider opening a wall for the valve.
From what I can tell it’s all done from the crawl and branches off from a central lines to feed the various outlets.
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.
There is a pretty slick automatic water shut off that you can put wireless sensors at places like outside of a sump pump well or in a tray under the hot water heater. If the sensors detect water, they tell the valve to shut. I think they run a couple grand all in, but it is cheaper than having to gut your basement because the sump pump failed during a downpour.
There are several. I have one as I mentioned in my comment: it’s called a Phyn Plus. It works with and without sensors. I have some in strategic places like under the water heater.
It actually caught a leak, although it wasn’t from the plumbing. It was rain getting into the chimney and dripping into a puddle in the boiler room that set off one of the sensors. I like the cable-style sensor they have – it’s like a 4-foot-long headphone cord, but the whole length is a water sensor, so if any part gets wet it goes off.
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.
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Thanks for the clear and straightforward answer. 😊
My mother just had a plumber try to charge her that much to replace the valve in the toilet tank. (Not the feeder but the one in the toilet we’ve all done before in 15 min) she figured out how to DIY it
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.
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.
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Pretty sure a random fitting company isn’t paying for marketing on Lemmy.
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Now we’re accusing people of being shills for posting relevant responses? Lemmy really is turning into Reddit
We have had a fairly large surge in new users recently into the Fediverse, that’s not at all suspicious to me
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 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!
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.
Don’t use a ball valve unless you can trust your self to always do it slowly the shock to the system if you slam it closed can break old lines. The proper valve to install is a globe valve.
I have one, but it’s lost under grass that grew over it. Yours might be the same. Anyone know how to locate it?
This. My house is a 1957 with the original box, was a pain in the ass to find. It took me like an hour of searching to find it. I mow over it without seeing it. Virtually impossible to see.
Poke around with a Johnson bar until you hear a metallic sound. Then bury some single mode fiber next to it.
A metal detector may work depends on what else is around.
Maybe? I’d have no idea where to look that I hadn’t already.
Probably on a straight line between where it comes in and the road. But there might not be anything at the surface. A friend of mine had to get the city to come fix his line due to a break on their side, and they had to go down probably five feet before they found it. But that was in New Hampshire, because they have to have it deep enough that it won’t freeze. If you don’t have freezes, yours might be different.
I’m in the Pacific Northwest at about a thousand feet elevation so the ground does freeze here. I have an idea where it comes into the crawl so maybe outside that area?
Get a poker, find the street valve and where the plumbing enters your house and poke between the two spots until you find it. Alternatively you could pull your plans from the city.
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.
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 🙏
Just shut the water off at the street and put a shutoff on your main before it enters the house. Worth doing if you ever have a need for it should ideally be right before a hose bib so you can drain your line.
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)
