Home Improvement

I can't imagine it would be more than a couple hundred bucks assuming they can find an accessible point for it. Mine is in an unfinished room at the corner of the basement where the main line comes in and replacing it took the plumber life twenty minutes.

You can ask the plumber about coordinating with the city for shutoff. Maybe they'd know a guy?

But definitely don't mess with it if. In my case I couldn't find my external shutoff when I needed that internal one replaced so I had the city come locate it for me. They uncovered the plate, tested the valve and it broke immediately. Fixing it was a major excavation. The city guy told me how lucky I was that I hadn't found it and tested it myself.

Cutting a pipe and adding a valve is a really simple thing and should only be expensive to the extent that any plumbing job is expensive.

I would specifically ask for a quality 1/4 turn ball valve - there’s no point in cheaping out on that part when you’re mostly paying for labor. And as long as you’re doing that, you probably want two of them. For the same reason the city doesn’t want you touching theirs, you should have a shutoff that you actually use when you need to do plumbing work in the house, and one before that that you never touch unless it’s an emergency and you can’t shut off the other one.

For a bit more expense, you could consider an automatic shutoff leak detector. I have one called Phyn that keeps track of water usage, tests for pressure drops every night, and detects unusual flow patterns and can automatically shut it off.

While doing some repairs prior to closing on my house the previous owners found their shutoff didn't close all the way and their plumber had a way of freezing the line in order to install a new shut off. I have no idea on the details aside from a 2nd hand retelling but I thought it sounded interesting at the very least.

I saw this in youtube when I was watching videos about propress, planning a whole house plumbing redo.
http://easyfitisolator.us/
I think it’s only available in the states, but you don’t even need to shut off the main to install the shut off valve.
There’s also the c/plumbing at lemmy, they might be able your question.

Had a pipe burst in a rental in Seattle. No shut off. I called the city and they came out and installed a shut off the same day.

Give em a call and see if they'll put one in.

Are you 100% sure? I thought we didn't have one and it turned out to be in the kitchen pantry behind a plastic shield. I had looked for it with a plumber when we originally bought the house. Years later another plumber told us we had to have one because of code (in my state in the USA) and since the house was fairly new (less than 20 years old).

I have one, but it’s lost under grass that grew over it. Yours might be the same. Anyone know how to locate it?

Do you have a water softener? Usually that's the first ingress point into your house, even before the hot water heater (normally). Most of those will have a shutoff value near it. It won't get your outside faucets but at least it'll get everything in your house.