leaking water main
I was helping my landlord move some plumbing the other day (he redoing to a downstairs bathroom) and we discovered the main water valve leaks when closed. It is a gate/globe type valve and leaks out the stem, so the problem appears to be with the packing and should be easy to fix (although we may just replace and save the valve for something less crucial), if we could shut the water off further upstream. I looked at the meter, but I see no obvious way to shut the water off there. I tried to down on the nut above the packing, but it didn’t want to move and I was afraid to crank on it.
The leak was manageable; we used a bucket and moved what we wanted to move anyway, but I like the idea of being the shut off the water to the house in case anything else goes wrong. (Actually it did: as soon as we turned it back on we blew about apart some piping going to the washing machine we never touched. It seems the previous owner thought you only had in insert copper pipe a little over 1/16” into an elbow before soldering. I figure that was just waiting to happen, and was glad it happened when I had all my plumbing gear out, but now I’m paranoid about the rest of the pipes.)
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