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
Heh. Not even fixing it.
Damn. May their sacrifice never be forgotten o7
F
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
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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).
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)
