Emergency Utility Shutoffs

Every home owner or renter should know where to find the emergency shutoffs for each utility in their home. This seems like common sense, but is not something that even occured to me until recently. I live in Austin. It doesn’t often get cold enough around here to freeze pipes. We also rent, so we tend to move fairly frequently (and don’t work on the property we live in). But we learned the hard way (luckily with no real disaster), that you should know how to cut off your utilities…

The first weekend we moved into our house, my husband and his brother, who had helped us move, were in the backyard about 9:00 PM. For some reason, they decided they needed to use the hose. Now, the house we are currently in was built in the 1950’s. And I think that the pipes or faucets are all original. Also, my husband is a large, strong man. You might see where this is going. At 9:00 PM, in the dard, my husband managed to break the faucet off the outside water line, and water began rushing out.

We rush down to the emergency shutoff valve, which is located on the pipe running from the street to the house, in our front yard. This pipe also appears to be about 50 years old. Also, the shutoff has what is known as a “blade handle” which means we don’t have the proper tool to shut it off. I start making phone calls, trying to find the City of Austin water utility emergency number, and then calling and sitting on hold for 20 minutes (so much for emergencies).  In the meantime, my husband managed to get the water turned off. Luckily, with enough time left to make a last-minute run to the home improvement store to get a new faucet and the proper tool to shut off the water, should this happen again.

Each utility will have an individual shutoff, which will be located in a different place depending on the region you live in and the specific utility services. It is good to know where each of these shutoffs are (they might be in a basement of crawlspace, or on the exterior of the house, possibly in the yard near the curb) and what, if any, tools you will need to shut them off. If you have an emergency, you may need to shut them off quickly. Also, if you live in an area prone to natural diasasters, you may need to shut them off before evacuating (or even if you are ‘riding out’ a storm), to ensure that any damage done to the structure of your house is not furthered by broken pipes, electrical fires, or leaking natural gas. For more information, read Bob Vila’s post on utility shutoffs. If you are working on plumbing, or other home projects, check out some of our MindBites.

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