I live in a 15year(ish) old townhouse and need to change my tap washers.
I have a weird type of mains tap and am having lots of issues trying to turn it off.
The bit to grab is a rectangular "tab" that sits out from the tap body. I guess it is about 1cm in height, 2cm long and about 3 or 4mm thick
Not only is there little room to grab, it is on an angle and it is also seized. I can move it about 1/16th of a turn with a little effort but then it is well and truly firm.
At least it has arrows with "on" and "off" written on it
Does anyone have any ideas that I could use to get some grip on it to turn it?
Is there a tool out there for this specific tap? If there is then the few plumbing shops I asked in brisbane don't about it.
Cheers
Ring your water company as the meter is owned by them. Tell them there is a fault with the meter and you cant turn it off. They will log it as a non urgant fault and should fix it with in 2 weeks. At no cost to you.
Depending on how much dicking around you want to do, you could maybe get a bit of metal pipe, cut a slot to fit over the tab in one end and drill a hole in the other. then fit the slot over the meter valve tab and use a screwdriver in the hole to turn it. Macgyver style.
Or just do what the guy above said and put the job off for a couple of weeks if it's just to fix tap washers.
If you are living in a "town house" I could assume it is part of a body corporate.
There should be a separate valve/stop cock for each unit in order to isolate water supply to each unit. It may be located under your kitchen sink or it may be located in a utilities room on the premises. They are usually locked.
However many group title buildings do not have them.
Be careful what you are doing here as you could cause yourself some big liabilities if you isolate the whole building complex.
Changing tap washers in your own residence I believe is still legal for non qualified people.
Switching off the water to a whole building complex I believe is legal only by a qualified person.
Thanks for the replies.
I had already called the council and they said it was a body corp issue, because it was not the main turn off point for the complex.
I had thought of many "macguyver style" levers, but had nothing on hand to "adapt"
I had even tried a very short shifter but the jaws were too short and the tab bit started bending
I rang one of the plumber listed on the body corporate website. He said that he hadn't been to our complex but he said that it was probably a ****ty type of plastic tap except that it normally had a plastic lever. Most probably the lever/handle has broken off leaving that little tab bit.
I ended up digging out the side of the hole enough to stick a bigger shifter in there. And with a lot of gentle loving it slowly, slowly turned
Use a basin wrench and if it's still too tight to turn, use a cresent wrench onto the basin wrench, that's a poor man's meter key.
It should probably be replaced...
Just call a plumber and book it in. They are generally a pleasure to deal with.
You'll probably only need to call them six or seven times to remind them you want the work done. Then after a couple of weeks of waiting, you can probably call them again to remind them they haven't turned up when they said they were going to...
It's meant to be turned off with a meter key which is a long T-handled tool, there's nothing wrong with it, they are stiff.
If you don't have a meter key use a basin wrench which is what you use to install faucets. And for additional leverage attach a crescent wrench to the side of the basin wrench.
In the US when it is in the off position two holes line up so they can padlock it when you don't pay your water bill.
