philo writes:

On 03/19/2017 12:45 PM, Kurt V. Ullman wrote:

snip
Yep.

Or if you call a plumber they can turn it off at the street as well.



One thing to try though would be to open it up and try again.
Had a friend one time lightly tap the valve with one of those rubber
hammers. He did it twice and the second time it worked. His theory was
that he dislodged whatever was causing the problem. Mine was that it was
5-6 time he had moved the valve back and forth and that is broke it up
enough.
Anyway.. one of those things that might work and there appears to
be no good reason not to try it.

One day the water company was to replace the water meter. When I came
home from work to take a shower, the water was off. I figured the guy
just forgot to turn it back on.

When I went down in the basement the valve was tagged "out of order."

It was off, but due to stripped threads could not be turned back on.

Since it was summer, I said, "what the heck" I put on my swim suit,
took it apart and at least got the valve open again.


With water squirting all over the place, I think the Three Stooges
would have been proud of me.

I eventually had a plumber replace it as the pipe coming in was lead
and I did not know how to deal with it.

I once had the main water shutoff start to leak.
A plumber came and gave me an estimate of 3K to open the street
and shut off the water. (This was in NYC in the 70s.)

A neighbor helped me fix the valve.
He spent $5 and bought a chunk of dry ice
which we put on the pipe just before the leak, while it
was squirting water. The water froze solid, and I opened the
valve and replaced the gate with a gate I had lying around.

So, fixed it myself for $5 instead of the plumber for $3000.

The lesson is, there is more than one way to shut off
the water.

As for this leak, if the water is leaking out full force,
you should say so. Something would be wrong.
If it's just a drip, it may be residual water in your
pipes.

It always helps if you describe the problem with as
much detail as you can provide.

--
Dan Espen