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.

Any help much appreciated, as ever.

Call Severn Trent "Operational Contact Centre" 0800 783 4444 and enquire
about the location of your Controlling Stop Tap (CST) at the boundary of
your property, which will be owned by Severn Trent and be their
responsibility. Tell them that you need to move/repair the Internal
Stop Tap (IST), so you need to isolate the water at the boundary of the
property.

They will send an inspector to try and find your Controlling Stop Tap,
and if it's not there or not accessible, the inspector will raise a work
order for a crew to come and sort it out/fit a new controlling stop tap
(at no cost to you).

HTH