"Dave Osborne" wrote in message
...
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

Would you like to hear about a similar story...?

My friend asked me to fix a leaking tap on his bath yesterday, so off I goes
with the toolbox.

I tried to turn the stopcock off inside the house under the kitchen sink.
This was jammed
solid. I later discovered that the stopcock was only for the kitchen sink.
Searched all over for
a stopcock for the upstairs and found absolutely nothing.

I decided to turn the water off in the street jut outside the back gate.
This stopcock belongs
to Northumbrian Water Ltd and is one of those funny things that is turned
with a plastic tool with
an hexagonal tip. Couldn't move it at all. Used a metal tool given to me by
one of their engineers
a few years ago and still couldn't move it. It only has to turn 1/4 of a
turn and water will be off.

I rang Northumbrian Water and explained the situation to them and was
promptly told not to touch
their equipment as it would cost me if I damaged it. They then informed me,
that they would send
an engineer out to turn the water off, here's the sting, at a cost of £57.20
+ VAT. I explained, that,
their equipment was faulty and they were breaking their duty of care by not
allowing me to operate
their equipment in the case of an emergency. Do not touch it was the
warning. I rang off.

I rang again 5 minutes after and stated the problem again. I was told
exactly the same thing. I was
gobsmacked.

So, if no householder can not touch their equipment, in the case of a burst
pipe inside the house, do
they phone the water company and wait several hours for an engineer to call
and be totally flooded
out in the meantime ?

Your suggestions would be most appreciated.

James