How to Turn Off Main Water Service

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Tim Gipson and I'm going to talk to you about how to turn off your main water supply. Now this is something you may want to do if you're going to do some plumbing replacement. If you don't have shut-offs in a particular part, if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night and you hear very loud rushing noise, you may have a leak in the house. So you want to make sure that you know where your main water line shutoff is. Now in most modern homes and first I'm going to start by setting up my step ladder, 'cause most modern homes are going to have a supply line that's coming into the house and usually in the garage area. So we want to set up - start by accessing this by setting up our stepladder, and as always we want to make sure that we're firmly secured on the stepladder, that an older stepladder like this that the shelves is down and that the two brackets on the side are down and locked. So to access the valve, and it's easy to find in the house because it'll be the largest line that's coming out of a wall into the interior garage. There is a just a straight cutoff valve and you see I'll pull this down, so now that this handle is exposed, this is in the off position. So now, with that off, you'll be able to go and you might want to go to a sink, main sink, your kitchen sink, and you'll want to put on both the hot and the cold water to make sure that you drain the pressure out of the system. So that's something to keep in mind even after you turn off this valve, there is still some pressure and water in your system. So if you are going to be doing some type of repairs you want to run one of your sinks to make sure that you relieve that pressure before you disconnect any lines. Also keep in mind you'll see this other valve this is particular valve for the water heater. So this is an individual valve and this is what you'll find under your kitchen sink, in your lavatories, going to your commodes, you have individual water line shut-offs for those too. Now keep in mind on older homes and even some existing homes, that some of these main cutoff lines are outside the home. They'll be clearly marked in a green box and you'll either have a valve such as this or as this, or in some cases you have a long black tea handle where you put that down into the hole and turn it off. So, it's very important to make sure as a homeowner that you locate where your main shutoff to your house is. So I'm Tim Gipson and that's how you shut off your main water line."