On Mon, 22 Jun 2015 01:33:17 -0400, micky
wrote:

A friend's house was designed by an architect to be his own house, about
8 years ago, until he sold it last year.

It has all kinds of gadgets, including a generator hard wired in, solar
panels in the back yard, alarm installed when the house was built,
Rinnai hot water (that I didn't understand), two big breaker boxes, only
half full but still with 45 breakers total,

Probably some garden faucets were hiding behind bushes, but the one on
the patio was a pipe, almost an inch in diameter that came out of the
wall one inch and then turned downwards. That part was 4 or 5 inches
long with a ball valve in it. And not the standard garden threads on
the end of that. Despite that there was a garden hose not connected
to but right next to this spigot. (I wish I had looked at the ends of
the hose.)

What was I looking at?

My friend told me she thought she had freeze-proof garden faucets but
she must be totally confused. Her pipes didn't burst last winter, but
future winters may be colder.



Does the place have fire sprinklers? If so, that sounds like a test
port that is opened to be sure the sprinklers are full and that flow
will set the alarm off.