Video: Maintaining Shut-Off Valves

CONCORD — Host, Sarah Rutan: To keep your home’s water shut-off valves functioning properly, you’ll need to follow a simple maintenance step. To learn more, we’re in Concord with Larry Williams of Absolute Plumbing and Drain, speaking on behalf of Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Rod Tehrani.

Larry Williams: You’ve got shut-off valves at your washing machine box, or you could have a faucet inside the garage. One good tip is to turn these valves off and on once a year. Imagine if you’re getting a new washing machine, the technician come in there and he goes to turn off the valve so he can put the new washing machine in place, and he can’t do it. He will tell you; I can’t turn this off. You say, well, I can go to the front of the house and turn it off at the main shut-off valve. He tells you that won’t work. It will void the warranty if it doesn’t work at the box. So, please exercise those valves once a year.

Also, behind your toilet, underneath your sink, you got a regular shut-off valve. You should exercise those once a year. Imagine in the middle of the night, one of those hose bursts, you go to turn it off, and you can’t. You’d have to turn off the water to the whole house. But if you just exercise that valve once a year, you have no problem. You can just turn it off right there underneath the sink, and you can go back the next morning and call for help.

But with that laundry box, if you don’t exercise that valve when you’ve got to replace it, the technician will come out, he have to cut open your walls, re-solder your pipes, you have to get a sheetrock person to come in and repair the sheetrock, and a painter to come back and repair the wall. But just by exercising that valve once a year you would alleviate that problem.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.