this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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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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[–] davidalso 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Damn. May their sacrifice never be forgotten o7

[–] davidalso 8 points 1 year ago

Heh. Not even fixing it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Philing_Good 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] ZapBeebz_ 4 points 1 year ago

Freeze seals are legit. They're insanely common in the nuclear world, so as to minimize the downtime on coolant systems.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] AnotherPerson 1 points 1 year ago

Got it, thanks.

[–] AnotherPerson 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] davidalso 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] AnotherPerson 2 points 1 year ago

From what I can tell it's all done from the crawl and branches off from a central lines to feed the various outlets.