On Wednesday, May 22, 2019 at 1:23:38 PM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote:
writes:

On 5/22/19 11:57 AM, Dan Espen wrote:
micky writes:

I just got back from a trip. Had turned off the water and drained the
pipes so no chance of pipes freezing. I've done this at least twice
before, but this time, when I turned the main house valve on, water
dripped from the valve. Quite a bit.

Is there any way out of this other than having the city turn off the
water to the house so a plumber can replace the valve?

Hmm, they say that the memory is the first to go.

It's been posted here before, dry ice.

Just put a chunk of dry ice on the pipe and water will stop flowing.

Once saved me thousands of dollars.
Damn plumber told me the city had to turn off the water.
I had the damn valve, the total repair cost was the cost of the dry ice
5 bucks.

Sometimes, like our house, there is not enough pipe sticking out of
the basement wall to apply dry ice.

Unless you can dig a hole in yard outside basement wall down to the pipe.

Yes, I can imagine that can happen. In my case I had about 2 inches.
Since all I had to do is unscrew the bonnet and drop in a new gate valve
I suppose I could have put the ice right on the valve.

There was quite a bit of water flowing from the leak.
The ice stopped it "cold".

--
Dan Espen

If I was replacing it, I would use a ball valve. Very easy to quickly
turn on and off and less likely to leak, in my experience.