by Steve Holder

Created on: August 25, 2007

Apartment dwellers beware! Many of the tips for shutting off the main water supply to your residence may not apply. Before you're faced with a water emergency, consider the following. (Homeowners should follow along, too, because many of these tips also apply to you.)

Single-family residences (detached homes and most town homes and condominiums) almost always have two places to shut off all the water entering the home. One is at the water meter, and the other is a valve handle close to an exterior wall outside, in the basement, or near the water heater.

To save money in construction, apartments (especially older apartments) don't always have shut off valves for each individual dwelling unit. The latest building codes in most areas now require individual shut off valves to each unit to prevent the obvious disasters, but it wasn't always so.

If you pay your own individual water bill, then your unit probably has its own water meter (unless your apartment building prorates the overall water charges). If you have your own water meter, then you should be able to shut off the water at your meter, and you very likely also have a separate shut off valve outside the apartment, in the basement, or inside the unit, just like a single-family home.

Of course, even if your entire apartment building has only one meter, you could also shut off water to the entire building in an emergency if you know where the meter is.

Whether an apartment dweller or living in a detached home, don't take much comfort in just knowing where your water meter is. You should look inside the meter box and see what it takes to turn off the water. If you find a valve handle, then you know you can quickly shut off the water if you need to.

But some meter shut off valves don't have handles and require a special tool or a wrench to close the valve. If you don't have the proper tool handy, your place could fill with water before you could get it shut off at the meter. You're better advised to understand the other alternatives you have for stopping a flood.

For instance, if you don't have a main shut off valve outside or inside your unit, you still have numerous individual shut off valves for most of your plumbing fixtures. If somehow your sink faucet blows a gasket and starts spewing water all over the kitchen, don't bother running for the main shut off valve. Reach under the sink and turn off the hot or cold water supply line to the faucet.

The same applies to your bathroom sinks. Under each is a hot water

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