Where is my water?

Is your water meter spinning like crazy?

There is a water meter, but I've never seen it. We all share one meter, and the one for my house, which is never read, is under a metal plate and for which I don't have the key/socket.

You either have a valve turned off or faulty, or other plugged pipe, or a major leak of the pipe to or under your house.

Do you have a pressure regulator where the water comes into your house? That could fail.

I've seen this hot water self-shutoff on the original hot water faucets in this 1950s house. They are a Crane "Dial-Eze" model that has a unique form of gaskets. It appears that the gasket swells under hot water, causing the flow to slow, and sometimes even stop !

Fortunately I found a source for replacement stems of the all-metal cartridge type. No more problem.

Hope you found your loss of water problem.

The neighbor I called called me back a while later. When returning from walking his dog, he saw water spraying from a spigot on the side of my house. I don't have a spigot on the side of my house, but I rushed downstairs to check it out.

Almost to the bottom of the stairs I heard wooshing. OMGosh. But I saw it was just the TV in the kitchen which no longer had a signal and was playing static.

Down to the basement, first room looked fine, but in the laundry room, water spraying up a foot from where it came from behind a wardrobe I have there. Depending on where the source is, might be 18 or 24" high.

Rained cold water on me to turn it off.

Over an inch of water on the floor. It's the sump pump on the side of the house.

Source is something to do with the valve or the pressure regulator whis is just after it.

When I go away in the winter for more than a 3 weeks, I turn off the water. A few years ago when I turned it back on, dripping from the stemp. Tightened the stem nut (boneet nut?). Didn't use that much force. Stopped twisting pretty quickly. That could have put a little strain on the pipe while I was doing it, right? but not after I let go of the wrench. 5 or more years ago. Could that have been it?

I have to wait until it dries a bit and move the warddrobe but I think this repair is beyond me. Or at least I'm not willing to find out.

Well, it never stops, but I set it at one level and a few minutes later, when the valve is not accessible, the flow is inadquate. So I'm trying to learn to set it at a higher level. This is, I think, only a 2 or 3 degree difference in how far the handle is turned.

I found the problem. I'm waiting for you guys to hire me a plumber.

So I need the water turned off at the meter outside, which has not been turned on or off in 45 years; the main water pipe to my house patched on the inside, somewhere near the presssure regulator, but maybe just a pipe.

(If that valve doesn't work, I think they can turn the water off for all

How do people handle that? Just call a plumber and let him charge his hourly rate, and most plumbers will work at a normal pace and be done in a normal time?

I do most of my own repairs, don't get into big projects, and I've never really hired somone on an hourly rate before, and certainly not an expensive skilled craftsman.

Or do they get estimates, and are estimates only estimations?

Good thing you're a wealthy Democrat with a big fat government pension. To work on city pipes, you will likely have to hire an excavator crew and at least 2 union plumbers and maybe a helper or two. No feral illegal invaders allowed on this job.

FWIW, they usually just freeze the pipe upstream of the faulty valve and then replace it. Should only take an hour, two if they have to dig.

Does your home owner's association have a property manager, property engineer, or other person who would know an appropriate person to contact? At least you might want to contact the president of your HOA and explain your issue to him/her. The bill for water usage comes to your HOA from someone somewhere. There must be a point of contact at the organization that measures the usage and sends the bill. You should be able to contact someone who knows something or at least can recommend a competent plumber. Are you sure that the leak is coming from your personal property and not the common property of the HOA? Makes a big difference in who's responsible for doing the repair and paying for it.

Is this real or are you testing us?

Block off the leak as well as you can, then maybe pack dry ice around the pipe ahead of the leak to freeze the pipe so you can quickly put a valve on the pipe. If the leak is a complete break in the pipe, hammer a dowel into it.

Well there is the company that fixes leaks in underground water mains when they leak, which has happened. I don't know if they do what two other posters have made sound like a small job after all.

You're right, the management company should know a good plumber.

I'm definitely responsible. It's in the basement, 50 feet from the propery line. These are not co-ops or condos, just private homes, even though** there is an HOA. **Well, "even though" is the wrong conjuction.

Hmmm. So maybe I can do this myself. I would like that.

I don't suppose I can use a Shark-bite even on the house's main water pipe, in the basement where, like this time, I won't know it's leaking for days. (I have reconnected two toilets with Shark-bite valves and they haven't leaked yet.)

It's wet still, and I have a heavy box of scrap metal in front of the warddrobe which is in front of the pipe. Since the box for the scrap metal is totally wet, it will fall apart. Have to get another box, move the metal, move the warddrobe and look, but I may well be able to fix this myself in a few days.

When I turned off the valve, it stopped spraying, so unless the leak is within the valve body (not likely), or where the output pipe comes out and I can't get that apart, I wont' need dry ice. But I have to see it, of course. I'll get back to you.

They now have shark-bite slip connectors, meant to fill a space of up to

I don't think they had these 2 or 3 years ago when last I looked at shark-bite products. ?????

It turns out I do have water. It's on the floor in the basement.

Turned off the water yesterday, waited so it would dry, but today I looked for the first time and saw I hadn't turned it off enough.

Maybe by tomorrow it will dry.

But I found the problem. A hole bigger than a quarter, a full 1 inch, in the presssure regulator body!! How can that happen? No wonder it was spraying a foot high!!

And it turns out my 2-door away neighbor had the same problem. Townhouses, built at the same time with same model parts.

I'd like to warn my neighbors and give them a way to tell in advance when this is going to happen. Any suggestions. plainly, if I'd pushed on the spot that corroded through the brass case a week before it broke I could have broken it right then and known there was a problem, but there must be a better way? Should all such valves be replaced at 45 years? I thought brass didn't corrode?

Do you think I'll have trouble unbolting the old one, 45 years old?

Or finding the right replacement? 1 inch.

Or adjusting it to the same pressure it used to be? Need I buy a gauge that screws onto the garden faucet? or should I just settle for whatever pressure the new one has?

Should I install a sharkbite, 1/4 turn valve also, while I'm at it. The current gate valve works well enough afaict, no leakege when tightly closed, though when I go away in the winter and turn off the heat and the water, it's a question: Should I turn off the faucet to the laundry sink in the basement and risk a small leak/drip from the main valve refilling the drained water pipes, which may then freeze and crack? OR Should I leave the cold spigot open in the laundry sink and risk the laundry sink filling up and overflowing onto the floor? OR Should I take the plug out of the laundry sink drain and risk an overflowing stream while I'm gone that backs up water into the basement, more water than would overflow in the second choice?

It's for real. I seem to have had more than my share of 'floods'.

Not in chronological order:

Stream rises after rain, getting higher than sewer line that parallels it, overflows manhole, fills sanitary sewer and backs up into my basemaent, one of 4 in this n'hood that are, it seems, lower than the top of the manholes. After second time I call the Dept. of Sanitation and the man volunteers to put water-tight manhole covers on two manholes, but he says it won't help! Sure enough, it doesn't help. Put rubber cork with 2 bricks on top of them in the sink. Water lifts it right up, not surprising considering the water pressure is enough to fill a sink more than 12" deep. Install checkvalve in the sink drain. Doesn't work. Maybe lint keeps valve from closing fully. Washing machiune has no lint filter, only a lint chopper. Finally ram a 1x2 between the cork and a shelf attached to the wall and with 50 pounds of stuff on it. Keep it that way all the time except when doing laundry. This works.

Water heater leaks a little bit for days, but I mistake the water on the floor for left over water from the last time basement sink backed up. Finally after days, water heater leaks fully, reaching the adjacent room.

Washing machine cold-water hose leaks and sprays 3 feet high, soaking and ruining my DC phone books. Replaced with steel covered hose. Clerk says he sells lots of them, always after one leaks. This one I could hear the water running in the pipe even when I was in the second floor bathroom.

Milky plastic hose to humidifier on furnace leaks, even though under no special stress, spraying all over work bench and drawers with tools. Replaced with copper.

Kitchen sink hose, maybe the one to the dish washer, leaks, soaks through floor into basment, raining from the laundry room ceiling.

Finally, main water pipe leaks and sprays up two feet. I assumed the water was cut off for a repair in the n'hood and don't do anything for

There were, I think, 2 or 3 other novel ways it got wet that I can't remember now.

Also had a leak from toilet tank where it meets the base, but the water all ran into the toilet!

Also had very small leak from bathtub, water supply I guess, that came out of the dining room fixture, ran down the chain and all went into the globe surrounding the light. I would empty the globe before the water level reached the light bulb (a hot one in those days). This stopped altogether after a couple years, 37 years ago.

Also had leak from bathtub water supply, which I didn't know about until I got out of the bath and found water pouring into the dining room below. This made the carpeting wet and seems to have damaged even the subfloor in one 10x10" area, which is now soft. But I can't tell without lifting the carpet. When i first got here 40 years ago, I noticed that 2, maybe 3, of my neighbors had ceiling damage in the same place, houses built by the same people, but I seemed to be free of the problem. Until a couple years ago.

Only the bathtub leaks and this last basement leak represent problems with the house.

The others were things brought in to the house, the humidifier supply hose which came with the humidifer that I bought (use copper, not plastic), the washing machine hose, the dishwasher supply hose.

Surprise! A one-inch hole right in the valve body!!!

But the valve works pretty well so still don't need dry ice. ;-)

Miscellaneous related questions:

In a video about replacing a pressure regulator, she puts 5 or 6 layers of teflon tape around the threads and then used pipe joint compound on top of that!!! Isn't this big time overkill? How many layers would one use? I've done smaller stuff before, used only 2 layers and it didn't leak. I'm doubtful I could get the nut on with 5 layers, or it would bunch of tape that is there. And I thought the purpose of the tape was to replace joint compound? The plumbess is a girl so I'm especially doubtful. :-()

She says the regulator she's using has a built-in thermal bypass and that when the water heater increases the presssure in the system, it should open up and allow the water to flow backwards into the municipal system. I thought that was exactly backwards from what was supposed to happen. I thought that systems now are supposed to have an expansion tank so that increased pressure fills the tank more so that water DOES NOT flow into the municipal water supply.

Because the pressure drops in the pressure tank until the pump turns on, which then slows or reverses the drop.