How to Turn Off Your Water Mains in Adelaide

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Your mains shut-off is at the front of the property, inside the water meter box, on the house side of the meter. Lift the lid, clear the debris, and identify the handle: a straight lever is a ball valve and needs a quarter turn, while a T-shaped handle or a round wheel turns clockwise, the wheel needing several full turns. Then open the garden tap at the front of the house. If the flow drops to a trickle and stops within seconds, the water is off. Never force a handle that will not move, because a snapped brass stem cannot be closed at all.

Need this sorted rather than explained? Emergency Plumbing in Adelaide. Also worth reading: What to Do Before the Plumber Arrives · Is It Worth Repairing a Hot Water System, or Replacing It?

The 60 second version

If water is running right now and you need it stopped, this is the sequence. The detail underneath explains why each step is there, and it is worth reading later, when the floor is dry.

Go to the front of the property, at or near the street boundary. The water meter sits in a rectangular box set into the ground, usually under a green, black or concrete lid.
Lift the lid. Clear away leaves, soil and spider webs so you can see what you are gripping.
Find the tap on the house side of the meter. That is the one you are allowed to operate and the one that isolates your property.
Identify the handle before you touch it. A straight lever needs a quarter turn. A T-shaped handle turns clockwise until it firms up. A round wheel turns clockwise through several full revolutions.
Turn it until it stops. Do not force a handle that will not budge, because old brass stems snap and a snapped stem cannot be closed at all.
Open the garden tap at the front of the house. The flow should fall to a dribble and stop within a few seconds. That is your confirmation, and it takes 5 seconds to do.

Where the shut-off actually is on an Adelaide property

Almost every metered Adelaide property has its meter at or near the front boundary, because SA Water needs to read it without entering the yard. What changes, and changes a lot, is what the box looks like and what has been built on top of it since. It is worth knowing which of these you have.

Pre-1940s inner suburbs, so Goodwood, Unley, Hyde Park, Malvern, Norwood and the surrounding streets, often still have the original arrangement: a meter set close to the front fence line, sometimes in a cast iron or concrete surround, with a small T-top tap beside it. The recurring problem here is not the valve, it is the 80 years of garden that has grown over it. Raised beds, buffalo runners and a rendered front wall added in a renovation have all buried plenty of them. If you cannot see a lid, probe gently along the fence line with a long screwdriver before assuming there is not one.

Postwar brick and tile suburbs, so Panorama, Pasadena, Ascot Park, Park Holme and Mitcham, generally have a plastic or concrete box near the boundary, frequently tucked behind a hedge or sitting beside the letterbox. These are easier to find and easier to open. The valve inside is often a gate valve that has not been turned since the house was built, which is a separate problem covered further down.

Infill townhouses and unit groups, common through Richmond, Torrensville, Kurralta Park, Netley and Keswick, usually have a bank of meters in a single large box near the driveway, with an isolation tap for each dwelling. The labels are frequently faded, missing, or simply wrong, because they were written when the block was built and dwellings have since been renumbered. Identify yours on a calm afternoon by shutting a tap and having somebody check your kitchen sink. Doing that at 11pm with water coming through a ceiling is not the moment.

Apartments in the CBD and North Adelaide are different again. The meters are usually in a basement car park or a services cupboard on each level, and that space is often common property controlled by the strata manager. What you do have inside the apartment is a set of mini stop taps at each fixture, and in most modern buildings an isolation valve for the whole unit in the laundry or the bathroom wall cavity. Find that one, because in a tower it is the only valve you can reach quickly.

Hills properties add a factor the flat suburbs do not, which is elevation. At Upper Sturt, Aldgate, Bridgewater and the surrounding districts the meter still sits at the road, but the house can sit 20 or 30 metres below it down a steep drive, and that fall changes what the confirmation test looks like. A 60 metre run of 20mm service line holds well over 10 litres, and the moment the tap at the road is closed all of it begins draining downhill through whichever outlet is open, so a garden tap at the house can still be flowing 30 seconds later with the mains genuinely shut. Watch the flow rather than the clock. Water that thins, sputters and starts spitting air is the buried line emptying itself, and the valve has done its job. Water that holds full pressure and never weakens is the water still being on.

Identify the valve before you touch it

Getting this wrong wastes the minutes you do not have. Somebody who assumes every valve is a quarter-turn lever will give a gate valve a quarter turn, see the water still running, and conclude the valve is broken. It is not broken. It has 4 more turns to go.

Valve	What it looks like	How to close it	What goes wrong with it
Ball valve	Straight lever handle, commonly blue, red or orange	Quarter turn. In line with the pipe is open, across the pipe is closed.	Rarely seizes. The handle can shear off a corroded stem if you lean on it.
T-top isolation tap	Short T-shaped or loop handle on a brass body	Steady clockwise turns until it firms up, usually less than a full turn.	The washer inside perishes, so it closes but keeps weeping.
Gate valve	Round wheel, like a small tap handle	Several full clockwise turns. Keep going until it will not turn further.	Seizes when never used. The gate can also drop off the stem, so the wheel spins and nothing shuts.
Meter stop tap	On the street side of the meter, often a square or lugged head needing a key	Leave it alone unless there is no alternative.	This one is SA Water property. Use the tap on your side of the meter first.

The 4 things you will find in an Adelaide meter box

Gate valves deserve a note of their own, because they are the ones that fail people. A gate valve is designed to be fully open or fully closed and nothing in between, and it is the valve most likely to have sat untouched since 1968. If the wheel turns freely round and round with no resistance and the water keeps flowing, the gate has corroded off the stem and the valve is finished. There is no field repair for that. It gets replaced.

For leverage, an adjustable shifter or a pair of water pump pliers is enough for almost everything, and a screwdriver pushed through the hole in a shifter jaw gives you a longer arm on a stubborn T-top. What does not help is a length of pipe slipped over the handle. That converts a stiff valve into a snapped valve, and a snapped valve means the property cannot be isolated at all until SA Water shuts the service at the main. Penetrating oil, a firm grip and 2 minutes of patience beat force every time.

Turning it off, step by step

Lift the meter box lid. If it is tight, lever it at a corner with a flat screwdriver rather than pulling at the centre, and watch for redbacks living under the rim.
Bail out any water and scrape the silt off the top of the meter and the tap. You cannot grip what you cannot see, and Adelaide meter boxes fill with fine soil.
Work out which side of the meter you are on. Water flows from the street, through the meter, then to the house. The tap you want is downstream of the meter, on the house side.
Identify the handle type from the table above.
Close it slowly and steadily. Slow matters: shutting a valve fast on an old pipe run creates a pressure surge that can split a weak joint elsewhere and turn one leak into 2.
Stop the moment it firms up. Overtightening a T-top crushes the washer and makes the tap useless next time.
Open the front garden tap to bleed the pressure out of the house pipework and confirm the closure.
If the property has an electric storage hot water unit and you intend to drain it or leave the water off for a long period, switch that circuit off at the switchboard as well. An electric element that fires in an empty tank destroys itself in minutes.

A continuous flow gas hot water unit does not need to be isolated separately, because it only fires when water moves through it, and no water is moving. A gas storage unit is the same as an electric one in principle: leave the tank full and it is fine, drain it with the burner live and it is not.

Confirm it is actually off

This is the step people skip, and it is the most useful 5 seconds in the whole exercise. Open the garden tap at the front of the house. There will be a burst of stored pressure, then the flow should collapse to a dribble and stop. If it keeps running steadily after 15 seconds, the water is not off.

Still running after a quarter turn on a lever: you probably have a gate valve, not a ball valve. Keep turning clockwise.
Still running after the valve is fully closed: the washer inside has perished, and the valve no longer seals. Try SA Water's meter tap or call a plumber.
Wheel spins with no resistance: the gate has dropped off the stem. The valve needs replacing.
Water still reaching part of the house: subdivided allotments, rear flats and older properties with 2 service connections do exist. Somewhere there is a second meter or a second tap.

When you turn the water back on, open the valve slowly and open the outside tap first, then the laundry trough, before you touch the kitchen mixer or a shower. Shutting and reopening a main stirs up decades of sediment, and in the galvanised supply lines still present in plenty of pre-1940s inner-south homes there is a surprising amount of it. Sending that grit out through a hose costs nothing. Sending it into a tap aerator or a ceramic disc cartridge means a second repair.

Walk the house afterwards and listen. A hiss with everything closed means water is still moving somewhere. Check under the kitchen sink, behind the toilet, at the washing machine taps and around the base of the hot water unit, because those 4 places account for most of what goes wrong indoors.

Turn off less than everything: the 3 levels of isolation

Shutting the whole property down is the blunt instrument, and it is the right one during a burst. For everything else there is a smaller valve closer to the problem, and using it means the rest of the house keeps working while you wait for a plumber.

Fixture isolation: the mini stop taps under the vanity and the kitchen sink, behind the toilet, at the washing machine, and on the cold inlet to the hot water unit. These isolate 1 fitting and nothing else.
House isolation: many Adelaide homes have a second valve where the supply enters the building, commonly beside the hot water unit or on the wall near the laundry. It shuts the house but leaves the garden taps live.
Property isolation: the tap in the meter box. Everything off.

The mini stop taps are worth a paragraph on their own, because they are attached to the fittings most likely to fail. Braided flexible hoses, the silver corrugated ones under every vanity and behind most dishwashers, are consistently named by Australian insurers among the leading causes of internal water damage claims. They are a wear part, not a permanent fitting. The braid corrodes from the outside in, usually in a damp cupboard, and when it lets go a 15mm hose delivers water at full mains pressure into a closed room until somebody notices.

Check yours. Rust staining on the braid, a bulge, or even 1 or 2 broken strands means it is at the end of its life and should be replaced now rather than after. While the cupboard door is open, turn the mini stop tap beside it off and on. If it is seized, that is the valve that will not save you.

Whose water is it, yours or SA Water's

The meter is the dividing line, and knowing which side of it you are standing on decides who pays. Everything on the street side belongs to SA Water: the main under the road, the service line to your meter, and the meter itself. Everything on the house side, including the pipe running across your own front lawn, belongs to the property owner.

Water surfacing in the road, the footpath or the nature strip, or running out of the meter itself: report it to SA Water on 1300 SA WATER (1300 729 283). That line runs 24 hours and work on their side is not charged to you.
Water anywhere past the meter, including a wet patch halfway up the front lawn: that is a private service line and a private repair.
A meter that keeps ticking over with every tap in the house closed: there is a leak on your side, running 24 hours a day, and it is on your next bill.
A blocked sewer rather than a water leak: different system, different rules, and the overflow relief gully in the yard is the first thing to look at.

When you do call, the useful information is: whether the water is off, where it is coming from, and whether it is clean water or sewage. Marc is a licensed plumber and gas fitter with 20 years on Adelaide houses, he works out of Westbourne Park, he discusses the price with you before the work starts, and he sends a text with an arrival time before he sets off. Knowing when somebody is turning up is worth a great deal when you are standing in a wet hallway.

Questions we get asked

Where is the water mains tap in an Adelaide house?

At the front of the property, at or near the street boundary, in a rectangular meter box set into the ground with a green, black or concrete lid. Inside you will see the meter and a tap on the house side of it. That tap isolates your property. Units and townhouses usually share a single larger box near the driveway with 1 tap per dwelling, and apartments generally have their meters in a basement or a services cupboard. Hills properties often have the box at the road a long way above the house, sometimes shared with the neighbours on the same driveway, so check the labelling before you turn anything.

Which way do I turn the water mains off?

Clockwise, with 1 exception. A ball valve with a straight lever handle needs only a quarter turn, and it is closed when the lever sits across the pipe rather than in line with it. A T-top isolation tap turns clockwise until it firms up, usually less than a full revolution. A gate valve with a round wheel turns clockwise through several full turns and must be closed all the way. Turn it slowly: shutting a valve quickly on old pipework sends a pressure surge through the house that can split a weak joint somewhere else.

The valve will not turn. What should I do?

Do not force it. A brass stem that snaps leaves you with a valve that can never be closed, and the only remedy then is SA Water shutting the service at the main. Try an adjustable shifter or water pump pliers for a better grip, a screwdriver through the shifter jaw for extra leverage, and a squirt of penetrating oil with a couple of minutes to work. If it still will not move, close the fixture stop tap nearest the leak instead, and call a plumber. Seized valves are common in Adelaide simply because nobody ever turns them.

Should I turn the water off at the meter or inside the house?

Use the smallest valve that solves the problem. A leaking flexi hose under the vanity is stopped at the mini stop tap beside it, and the rest of the house keeps working. A burst inside a wall or a hot water unit dumping its tank needs the property isolated at the meter. Many Adelaide homes also have a middle option: a valve where the supply enters the building, often beside the hot water unit, which shuts the house but leaves the garden taps live.

Do I need to turn off the hot water system when I shut off the mains?

Not if you are leaving the tank full for a short period. If you are draining the tank, or the water will be off for a long stretch, switch an electric storage unit off at the switchboard first, because an element that fires in an empty tank destroys itself within minutes. A continuous flow gas unit needs nothing done to it: it only ignites when water flows, and none is. A gas storage unit follows the same rule as electric, so do not drain it with the burner live.

Who do I call for a burst pipe in Adelaide at night?

If the water is surfacing in the road, the footpath or the nature strip, or coming from the meter itself, it is SA Water's asset and their 24 hour fault line is 1300 SA WATER (1300 729 283). If it is anywhere past the meter it is a private repair and you need a licensed plumber. Shut the property off at the meter first, then call: an isolated property is no longer getting worse, which changes the job from an emergency into a repair and usually saves money.