As one of our Customer Service Representatives at Dagley Insurance, I have the privilege of speaking with our fantastic clients each and every day.
Often, I come away from these conversations having learned something not only to pass along to other clients, but also a little nugget of knowledge for my own family.
Recently, I had a conversation with a woman who had damage to her house from a water leak. After discovering the leak, she tried in vain to reach her husband who was out of town and finally resorted to calling her insurance company. As the water damage mounted, they told her that she needed to turn off the water immediately and walked her through how to go about shutting of the water supply to her house. The woman said that her claim would not have been so extensive had she known right away how to turn off the water in her home.
As I began to file this information away as a tip for our insurance clients, I realized that I wasn’t quite sure how to turn off the water in my house either! Had I been in the same situation, I would have had to Google it or watch YouTube video while the water flooded my home! In polling a few others, I found that I wasn’t alone. And so began the great quest, which in reality required no Googling or YouTubing, but just a walk across the hall to speak with our handy agents.
Now, for those of you that already know how to shut off the water supply to your house and are thinking that the rest of us are little lost lambs, please just remember that we all have strengths and weaknesses. Ask me how to shut off a child’s water works after a scraped knee and I’m all over it.
If you’ve ever wondered what the box below is on your property, it’s the water meter and your key to turning off the water supply to your home. If you’re like many of us, you may be thinking so that’s what that box in my front yard is for! Now you know.
If you don’t have a water meter key (doesn’t everyone have one of these lying around your house?):
You can simply use a crescent wrench and screwdriver to turn the valve to the “off” position.
And, voila! Your water should now be off.
I learned that in many new houses, you can also shut the water off by a simple valve on your water heater. Watch the video below to see how simple it is!
Now, here’s to hoping that the both of us will never have to put this knowledge to use!