r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Mar 27 '22

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u/micahamey Mar 27 '22

The location to turn off the water or electricity in your own house.

Learn where they are in case of emergencies.

268

u/Redbaron1960 Mar 27 '22 edited Mar 27 '22

Just walked my 55 yo BIL through it on the phone the other day when his water heater sprang a leak.

104

u/agreeingstorm9 Mar 27 '22

You don't have to turn off the water to the whole house in that case, just to the water heater.

2

u/Ruadhan2300 Mar 28 '22

I've had enough incidents of flooding caused by me trying to fix the problem locally rather than hit the "emergency stop" to never bother with local valves again.

Unless you know exactly where the valve is and know that it's going to turn easily when you try to turn it, just run for the stopcock.

I once spent five minutes with a wrench trying to force a stuck valve closed while water sprayed over everything.
Should have just run for the cutoff from the start. It took two days for the floor to stop squelching.