Plumbers!!! Stopcock doesn't work!!

Not a ‘help – swim for it!’ emergency but the ball valve in the toilet is broken, and hence it’s dribbling continuously out of the overflow. A job I’d happily do apart from the fact I can’t switch the mains off to cease the flow to it!! The valve turns ok but the water keeps coming. I don’t want to force it and wreck the stopcock, any tips??

I’ll save my rantette about Thames Water’s Homecare service till later.

Have you not got a stopcock in the street
If so turn it off, and replace stopcock inside with a new one

The stopcock shuts off the supply into your house. There may be a tank in the loft that’s filled from the mains and that in turn fills the toilet, so it won’t stop until the tank in the loft is empty.

If there is a tank in the loft, there is usually stopcocks on these to shut the supply off to the toilet.

There may also be a individual ball valve in the pipe feed to the toilet. Follow the feed pipe back a bit and you’re looking for a flat screw with a slot head in it. Turn the slot so it’s 90 degress to the direction of the pipe and the water will shut off.

And if you were to sign up for Homeserve plumbing insurance it would be a month before you could call an emergency plumber for free.

Nope, checked all that. And even if it was off a header in the loft, with the stopcock off the mains water tap in the kitchen keeps on coming, so that’s still an issue.

I suspect the one in the street may be needed if this doesn’t get freed up by some plumber’s trick. And given it’s hidden deep in a cupboard, that might not be an easy task.

I am on Homeserve for the last 4 years. But they won’t come to fix the cistern because the overflow pipe goes out of the wall, and down the side of it, leading to a wet wall, but because it’s not inside the house I’m not covered.

That’s why I started trying to do it myself and then hit the stopcock issue, which (fingers crossed) will be.

It sounds as if what you think is the stopcock is not actually the stopcock 🙂

Homeserve are completely and utterly useless anyhow.

You’re gonna have to turn it off in the street with one of these

http://screwfix.com/details.htm?id=71652,

Cheaper versions are available

99% sure it is – thicker pipe than the rest, coming through the floor and then one side heading to the tap and the other up to the roof.

but because it’s not inside the house I’m not covered.

Presumably the bog, with the faulty part, IS inside the house?

That’s really shoddy, I’d not accept that.

Can you call Homeserve about your faulty stopcock? In any case I’d stop messing with it in case the front of the valve comes off and that would be trouble.

How brave are you feeling? You could try freezing the pipe and installing a ball valve which will allow you to sort out the toilet.

A kit like this Freeze Kit should do it.

On a plus note, if it doesn’t work you’ll then have a leak inside your house and no way of shutting it off. 🙂

If the stop cock defiantly need replacing you need to freeze the pipe then replace the valve. Do this by buying a pipe freezing kit (~£15). Freeze the pipe (pray it has worked) quickly replace the stop cock and pray nothing goes wrong in the process.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=pipe+freezing+ki#q=pipe+freezing+kit&hl=en&prmd=ivnsfd&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=PS4STqDlNMLQhAf34-n_DQ&ved=0CFoQrQQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=a897125e371f4ba0&biw=1280&bih=916

Or hire an electronic pipe freezer, do all of the above but have more time (as much as you want as long as you don’t have a power cut) and better reliability of frozen pipe. Hire is about £50 per day.

http://www.hss.com/g/68816/Pipe-Freezer-12-42mm-240v.html

I’d go for option 2. Worth the extra expense for the reliability.

Yes to both. If the stopcock had worked it’d be fixed by now but as it isn’t that’s what they’ve been called for. If they’d came for the cistern and a sub £10 part and opted to use a freezer kit instead then I’d be none the wiser that the stopcock’s packed in. But as they refused to do the cistern, that forced me to try to turn the water off and hence where I am now and potentially a bigger job to claim for.

And before anyone says it – yes i could perfectly easily replace a float valve myself so why’d i call them first, because they’ve had 4 years money off me and I though sod it, you don’t have a dog and then bark yourself.

Edit: ball valve I’d do; stopcock, no way. They’re going to have to do that……

When faced with a similar situation, many years back-
I’ve ‘tied up’ the ballcock(with my boot lace) – flushed the cistern repeatedly before pulling it all apart to replace the worn washer (Or flip it over and pack it out with blue tack.)
Just before the torrent engulf the overflows capacity I did drop the split pin pivot – so bent a galvanised nail in the hole – bodged yes -but sound for at least a couple of years.

In hindsight I’d only do it this way again, to a soundtrack of the ‘sabre dance’

If you have a modern plastic parts cistern- go easy with the mole grips.

edit – (If you turn on all the other clod water taps downstairs)plastic pomagne corks will jam into most old style taps seat whilst you fiddle with their washers- now who wants me to bleed their brakes?

Ball valves been tied up as described (using the modern zip ties and a kitchen knife technique) so at least it’s not leaking. But it’s my downstairs retreat with a year of back issues for perusal, so it needs to be back in action asap.

do not attempt to freeze the pipe unless you know what you are doing.. renting one at 50 quid would prove you dont as a pro kit are 99 quid to buy..
what to do depend son how much the flow has been reduced by turning stop cock to closed position. if it has been greatly reduced but not stopped, the trick is to open all the cold and hot taps in the property and get on with the job when you have all the tools and materials to hand. as a tip i always use vqlves with brass tails so you dont get any cross threading with plastic fittings. use boss white as a sealant and you should be okay
if the flow isnt dimished much turn it off in the street ( best done as everyone goes to work) make sure you have all the bits req. before you do and that you can get your piliers and adjustable in and on the compression fittings.. not a straightforwrd job as often there is no pipe slack allowing the fittings to be easily removed. although even a stinker can be done under an hour if your firm with it . alternatively dont replace it just put another in as close as possible eg same cupboard, often simpler and easier to reach next time

Not being funny but… Are you sure the stopcock is being fully closed when you tighten it down ?

If they’ve not been used in a while, they can get properly stiff just at the last bit due to their design. Mine closebeasy, but then get hard at the final close off.

be careful if you try to get an extra 1/32 of a turn.. never will you get as wet if it lets go…

I’m pretty sure it isn’t being fully closed because if it was then the water would stop. And that last nanodegree is what I’m leaving to the expert, with knowledge, and insurance, and everything.

So is there a cold water storage tank in the loft? Just tie up the ballcock in the loft tank, then turn on bath taps to drain down the tank.

If you haven’t and the whole house is mains pressure, then see if you can call out homeserve to sort out the stopcock itself 🙂

Irrespective of whether the toilet is mains pressure or not (and it is) the stopcock doesn’t work so they’ve been called for that now. Before it is actually needed….

We seem to have two stopcocks in the house, an old one under the floorboards by the front door that doesn’t work and a new one under the kitchen sink that appear to shut off all water to everything in the house.

So… depending on the age of the house, your stopcock may not be the stopcock?

he’s been and gone. Got the flow right down but it still isn’t going off, but he’s showed me my meter one (which i didn’t know I had) so i can use that for now and sort the other at my convenience.

renting one at 50 quid would prove you dont as a pro kit are 99 quid to buy..

You know of a place that sell an electric pipe freezer for £99? I’d like to see this.

^^+1 normally looking at about 5-10x that!

Cheapest option: http://www.toolstation.com/shop/p38656
I was amazed how long it took before pipe freezing was mentioned.