How Do You Shut the Water Off in an Emergency?

The minutes between a pipe letting go and the water stopping decide how much of your house is involved. That is not a skill anybody wants to learn during the event. Norfolk Water Damage Restoration responds around the clock at (757) 290-8690, and what you do before we arrive changes the size of the job.

Start at the fixture

Most leaks come from one appliance or fixture, and most of those have their own shutoff within a few feet. Under a sink there are usually two small valves, one for hot and one for cold. Behind a toilet there is one on the supply line. Washing machines have a pair behind them, and dishwashers are usually fed from a valve under the adjacent sink.

Turn clockwise to close. Older multi-turn valves need several full rotations; quarter-turn levers stop when the handle sits across the pipe rather than along it.

These are also the valves most likely to fail, because they sit untouched for twenty years and then get asked to work. If one will not close, or the handle turns without effect, move immediately to the main rather than persisting.

Know where your main is

On most properties here the main shutoff is at the meter, in a box set into the ground near the street or the sidewalk. The lid is usually metal or plastic and often needs a tool to lift, and a long screwdriver or a meter key does the job.

Inside the box there is a valve on the house side of the meter. Some are a lever, some need a meter key to turn. Note which yours is now, and keep whatever tool it needs somewhere you can find it in the dark rather than in the back of a shed.

Many houses also have an interior main shutoff where the supply enters, often in a crawl space, a utility closet or a garage. Given how much of Norfolk sits on a crawl space, that valve is frequently down there, which is worth knowing before you are trying to find it while water pours through a floor.

The water heater has its own valve

There is a shutoff on the cold inlet at the top of the tank. If the leak is the heater itself, closing that stops the supply while leaving the rest of the house with water.

On a gas heater turn the gas control to off as well. On an electric one switch off its breaker. A tank that drains while the element is still energized destroys the element, and that turns a leak into a leak plus a replacement.

Cut the power before you walk into water

If water has reached outlets, appliances or a panel, the power goes off before anyone enters. Do that from the main breaker if you can reach the panel from a dry position. If the panel itself is in the water, stay out and call the utility.

This ordering matters more than speed. There is no leak worth walking into an energized flooded room for.

Test the valves before you need them

Once a year, close and reopen the main and each fixture valve. It takes fifteen minutes and it tells you which ones have seized while there is still time to replace them.

Open a faucet somewhere in the house afterward and confirm the water stopped, then reopen the valve slowly. Opening quickly sends a pressure surge through the system that can start a leak somewhere else.

Label them. A tag on the main and a note on the inside of a cabinet door under the sink means anyone in the household can act, including a guest or a family member who has never thought about it.

What to do after the water is off

Open the lowest faucet in the house to drain the pressure out of the pipes, which stops the residual water in the system continuing to run out of the break.

Then move what you can. Get furniture up off a wet floor, or slide something waterproof beneath each leg. Stained timber bleeds into damp carpet and metal feet leave rust rings, and both marks are permanent after only a few hours. Get contents up off a wet floor and out of the room.

Photograph everything before it changes. Wide shots to establish the room, close shots of the source and the damage. Those images are what an adjuster works from, and there is no recreating them once the cleanup starts.

Renters, and houses that sit empty

If you rent, find your shutoffs anyway and tell your landlord immediately when something fails. The duty to prevent further damage applies to a tenant too, and a renter who knew where the valve was and used it is in a much better position than one who called and waited.

Properties that stand empty for stretches, which around here includes homes belonging to deployed households, should have the main closed and the system drained rather than left pressurized. A supply line that fails in an occupied house is a bad evening. The same failure in an empty house runs for weeks.