Where can you shut off your water or electricity to your whole house? If you don’t know, you should. It will likely be in a time of emergency that you should not have to think, but only react.

Let’s start with the water system. You walk in the door and there is water coming from the ceiling. That’s bad… It could be a broken pipe or it could be an overflowing toilet. It really doesn’t matter the cause. The immediate need is to shut off the water! If you have city water, there is a pipe coming through the foundation wall, generally on the street side of the house. There is a handle or lever that ties the water from the street water main to the piping inside of your home. Righty tighty, lefty loosie. Turn it clockwise until it is tight. If it is a lever handle, open will be parallel with the pipe, turn it ninety degrees until it is perpendicular to the pipe. The same applies to a well system. The well pipe comes through the foundation and is tied to a (almost always) blue holding tank. At the bottom of the tank are the same type of valves. Use the same shutoff procedure.

Now let us move onto electricity. Before your unscheduled emergency, check the electric meter on the outside of your home. Generally, the electrical panel is directly inside that panel or immediately below it in the basement. If the electrician that installed it could not get the panel within ten feet of the meter, your main breaker (shutoff) is hiding under a little cover below the meter. In most cases, the main breaker will be inside the panel box on the top. The house circuit breakers operate right to left and the main operates up and down. Inside the panel box, down is off. This will shut off the power to the entire house.

If you are not comfortable with any of this, call your contractor for a fifteen minute lesson in emergency preparedness.

In future columns I will be discussing. Please insist on a Building Permit. Please email questions or suggestions for future articles to sspurrell@nbict.us

Neighborhood Builders, Inc (NBI) has been building and remodeling on the shoreline since 1986. No job is too big or too small. Please call Stephen Spurrell at 203-453-3777. Connecticut Home Improvement #522685 New Home #8

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