Shut off your water: the one-page manual

Smell gas? Stop.

Leave the house. Call 911 or your gas utility from outside. This manual is for water.

Built before 1950

Go to the basement wall that faces the street. Follow the pipe in from the foundation to the first valve with a round wheel. Turn it clockwise until it stops. Turn it slowly: a wheel that won't turn is not yours to force, because an old valve can snap.

Built 1950 to 1979

Look in the basement or crawl space, on the front wall or beside the water heater. A round wheel takes several turns. A lever takes a quarter turn: across the pipe is closed, along the pipe is open.

Built 1980 to 1999

Look in the utility room, the garage or beside the water heater, where the pipe comes through the wall. The valve is usually a brass lever. Across the pipe is closed.

Built 2000 or later

Look in the garage, a utility closet or the wall behind the water heater. Find the bell-shaped brass fitting. The main shutoff is the lever just ahead of it. If you see several colored tubes on a manifold, the big handle ahead of the manifold is the main.

Cannot find it, or it won't turn

Go outside, near the street. A lid in the ground marked WATER covers your meter. The valve there belongs to the water utility. Do not pry it with pliers. Open the lowest cold tap in the house and call.

Then, in this order

• Open the lowest cold tap to drain the pipes.
• Turn the water heater off at its breaker, or turn its gas control to off.
• Photograph the wet, the pipe and the valve.
• Call, and say what you shut off, whether water still runs and where it is wet.

Freezing night coming?

Open the cabinet doors under sinks on outside walls. Let one cold tap run at a thin drip. Know where your shutoff is before the thaw, because that is when frozen pipes let go.

Call

Fuller Plumbing, Spokane. (509) 555-0100. Emergency line, 24/7: Colleen answers by day and Rodney at night.