GMM wrote:
Six months ago, Severn Trent (or their contractors) came along and re-
piped all the water mains in my road. Unfortunately, I was away at
the time, so didn't get to see how everything worked or have a chat
with the blokes doing it.
I would very much like to change one of the internal stopcocks in the
house as I'm doing up the room and it leaks just a tad. I know they
will come along on request and turn it off for you, but I'd rather not
have to take a day off just to do this job, so I was hoping to deal
with it myself (after all, it's not exactly complex/dangerous etc etc
to turn a tap off for a bit!). I had a look over the weekend and
couldn't see how to get at the shut off in the street.
The access is now in a circular plastic plate about 8 inches across
with a key hole. Of course, the key hole is full of asphalt from
where they re-surfaced as part of the job. Even digging all that out
doesn't help a lot as I can't really see what's going on. Does anyone
know how these things are opened and, particularly, whether the keys
are available anywhere? Everything I've found so far seems to be too
small for the job.

Presumably the stopcock you're trying to access is the water company's
own, and presumably will turn off the water for the whole area not just
your house. So not surprising that it's locked to prevent you getting
at it!

You ought to have a separate outside stopcock which just isolates your
own property - sometimes they are missing but frequently the hatches get
lost or buried - have you checked for one?

David