Interesting that there’s such a split on the “turn off the water question”.
Several things:
I don’t turn off the heat entirely. I just stick the Nest thermostat to Eco, which I think turns the heat on at 60 or so. Also, turning the heat off isn’t a huge deal because I can use the app to turn it on again several hours before we’re scheduled to arrive home.
Everyone focused on the possibility of pipes freezing, but it’s more than that. What if there’s a random leak somewhere? I still remember the work dinner I had where my wife called repeatedly. When I finally answered, she was like, “It’s raining in the basement”. Turns out the toilet above was leaking.
It’s very easy to turn off the valve, but there is a potential downside: if you reopen the valve immediately, the surge in water pressure can damage things at the end of the line (e.g., shower valve). But if you reopen slowly, and have some lines already open, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Our water valve is very easily accessible. We have a closet in the basement that looks like this:
I wouldn’t have known about this if we didn’t have the home inspected when we bought it. Home inspections are kind of a joke, and don’t really guarantee that they’ll find any problems. But the one valuable thing it provided was a “this is how your house works” lesson as I followed the guy along. (He was the first who recommended the shutting off the water practice, but I’ve since heard/read it elsewhere.) This was very comforting to me as a first time homeowner. We’ve been here for 15 years, and I’m tempted to bring an inspector back to be like, “We basically haven’t performed any maintenance since we’ve moved here. What issues should we be fixing/monitoring?”
We didn’t go to the Bourbon Trail area for purposes of bourbon tasting; it was just a semi convenient meeting place in the middle of two families. That being said, we did go to the Willett distillery tour, which was a good way to spend an hour.
This gets very mixed reviews online, but I thought it was really good. Apparently Willett (intentionally?) does not aim for consistency in their bottles. (The tour guide made fun of Makers Mark for rotating their barrels to make sure each bottle has a uniform taste.)
Extension cords, power strips, and appliances with their own cords are fire hazards. The risk is small and despite having once awakened to exactly this kind of fire in progress, I don’t worry about it because fuck it. Fire departments used to do PSAs telling people to unplug things.
Fire is different than flood imo, because you get to start over clean in life. I kind of envy my friend who lost her house and most everything she owned in one of the big CA fires. She even says it was liberating to start over from scratch. Also very traumatic of course, but not 100% terrible according to her.
We have two shutoff valves. One is your traditional shutoff in the yard at the meter under a metal plate. I have a tool to turn it if I need to (the first time I tried it, it wouldn’t move, so I had a plumber to do it - turned out I just needed to use more force - I was afraid to break it).
The other is under the house, which is harder to access, but easier to turn. We have a walk-in crawl space, but at the spot where the valve is, you have to crawl. That one, I guess, is different than the one outside, as this would obviously shut the water off at the point it enters the house, whereas the one outside would shut it off near the street.
What’s the tool? This is where I’m stuck now. I found something. Don’t remember if it is the sprinkler valve or if I actually found the main valve. I can’t turn it at all.
NYC congestion pricing has started. This is very cool and good, but what’s even cooler is that people at Brown have put together a real-time Congestion Pricing Tracker that uses google traffic data to analyze the impact of the congestion pricing by comparing affected to unafffected routes.
For example, here’s the effect on the Lincoln Tunnel (compare orange line to blue line):
Ita probably the main valve - assuming it was in that area near the spigot.
You absolutely do not use a tool for that. Its probably a gate valve? If the water has been on for decades the valve coukd be rusted open or it could be damaged, no way to know.
Get some lubricating oil and put some on it. You can use sorm moderate strength when turning it. Dont be afraid to give it a good turn just dont use evwrything you got on it.
Also if you find out that this is some random stuck valve that isnt your main, dont call a plumber. You may be able to go through the city for free to find out where its. But your going to want to be able to get this to turn because having water that you cant turn off in case of an emergeny in the winter is going to be a disaster for you.
Waymo is amazing. So much better than Uber. Driving is better, nobody to overhear your conversations (at least not in the car lol), no worrying about someone accepting your ride, etc.etc.
Though there was one funny incident. While we were in a ride today a motorcyclists hit our side on purpose with his fist or something. It caused the car to just stop in the lane and call support. Guy was just trying to fuck with the car or us I guess. Didn’t seem like the first time he’s done it.
