On Tuesday, November 27, 2012 5:42:14 PM UTC, stuart noble wrote:
snip

You can't beat having your own in the street, especially one of the new
plastic variety. About half the internal stopcocks I've encountered over
the years don't work for one reason or another

Oh yes - the first time I needed to use the one in my present house I found it turned the water nearly, but not quite off. I can live with that for replacing a tap washer, I thought...
What I wasn't prepared for was the fact that when I tried to turn it on again the flow didn't increase - turned out that the little brass jumper inside was so worn that after I disturbed it it migrated around to the outlet of the stopcock and stayed there...