I have no idea who to call at 10:30 pm on a Friday night. My sprinklers went off as scheduled at 9 but now my yard and street is flooding because there's water POURING out of my valve box!!!

Find your water valve in the front yard, it should be near the front of the street. Pull it up and you will find a box there with a meter and a ball valve. Turn the valve until the water turns off. This will also cut the water to your house, but it will fix the problem for right now.

yeah I think that's the plan for right now, but there's SO MUCH water!

If shutting off your water meter does not stop the leak, then it's on the City side, if that's the case, call CSU Dispatch at 764-3638 ASAP.

Edit: This is if you live in College Station - even if you don't, Dispatch can probably tell you the numbers for Bryan, or Wellborn, or Wickson ...

[This message has been edited by waterworks (edited 7/10/2009 10:46p).]

Did you get it shut off?

We did--yes! Thank you for listing the number! I called and the guy came out and said he was asleep prior Our neighbor's son in law happened to be driving in and he was a former employee of the utility company in Galveston and he dug up a lot of grass and mud and shut it off with a screwdriver or something right before the poor guy got out there. Unfortunately, it's on our side of the meter--probably a sprinkler line that broke. So until it's fixed we have no water! Hopefully the SO can get to that tomorrow. I've already left a panicky message on the answering machine of Wilson's Plumbing.

Thanks you guys!!

Well if it's your sprinkler system, you should be able to shut off that system and continue to get water to the house. You can always turn it off at the blowoff valve if you can't get to the main valve. Just depends on where the water is coming from.

We had a similar issue a few weeks ago. I thought I had a leaky head, but turned out to be a leaky valve on the city's side. Now I have a nice dry mud pit in my front yard until they can resod. UCS is very good about repairs though. Especially if you know the right folks.

I spent 5 hours on Wed morning fixing a small leak at my shut-off valve, just after the meter box.
Luckily, it was not too bad of a leak and I did not have to dig a huge hole to find it.

It's just par for the course... with this drought, the ground is contracting and shrinking a lot.

You could save a couple hundred bucks if you can fix it yourself. good luck

What dave said.

You should have a separate shutoff valve just for your sprinkler system. You can close this valve and then turn your main water back on to the house.

Of course, if the leak is at the main shutoff valve for your sprinkler system, then you'll need to fix that first.

If the water is pouring out while your sprinkler system is "off", then the leak is most likely between the shutoff valve and the solenoid valves. With any luck, the installer put all the solenoid valves in one place near your main valve. If they spread them out over the yard, it will be a much more difficult job to locate and fix the leak.

Another possibility is that one of the solenoid valves is stuck open slightly. This will cause water to bubble out at the head in that zone. Sometimes it will just come out of the head with the least resistance.

Have you been able to figure out where the water is coming up out the ground?

One last thing that can complicate the situation. If you have sand and clay soil and the leak is in the clay area, the water can channel along the pipes underground until they reach a sandy area and then the water appears to be coming up in the sandy area (I've had this problem before). Water looks for the path of least resistance when it comes up. So it is possible to find a sink hole and when you did it up, you might not find the leak. This is more of a worst case scenario. Hopefully this one isn't the case.

Good luck!

quote:

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You could save a couple hundred bucks if you can fix it yourself. good luck

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Upon further investigation, it looks like one of the pipes very close to our box just snapped. I'm at work, so the best I can do is call a plumber, but the SO who is pretty knowledgable about sprinkler systems says that it snapped in the worst possible place and he doesn't think he'll be able to fix it.

I've left a message for Wilson's Plumbing with no return phone call. Anyone have any ideas? I appreciate all of the suggestions and responses.

Prince Irrigation has helped us out twice with great results. Give them a try.

I had a leak on the city side and they responded ASAP. What the guy told me was this:

If a resident turns off the water on the city side, it is a $ 500 re-connect fee and that I should have a shut-off valve installed by a plumber on my side to shut off the water, when necessary. Luckily, he didn't charge me $ 500 because we turned it back on before he got there.

darn double post

[This message has been edited by RDH80 (edited 7/11/2009 9:58a).]

The guy that came out last night didn't mention the fee to turn it back on. It was our neighbor's son that turned off the water though, not us...not that it would make a difference, I guess. That will fire me up so much, though. I don't want to have to afford the cost to fix this, let alone to turn our water back on. I will call Prince Irrigation right now. Thanks for the suggestion!

If you can't get Prince anytime soon, try the Ground Crew --822-3788 They were faster in responding than Prince (who I used numerous times) and cheaper.
Definitely try to find the sprinkler system valve and turn it off so you can get water to your house. You should have a separate box/valve for that. (or at least I do) If it isn't the sprinkler system line that broke, and is the line from the city meter to your house, then, yes, you have a problem.

The guy was real uppity last night when we mentioned that it might be the city's line. he said that it would be impossible and that he would have to turn off the whole street's water, and that it was just too far fetched that it was the city's problem.

I've left another message for Wilson, and now Prince. My SO insists on his father driving in from Houston to help fix the problem, despite that he's ill. I feel really bad and would much rather call a professional.

I just had a similar situation. Where the grey concrete city meter box is a few feet toward your house should be your lawn sprinkler box, it might be over grown with grass. The main water line should come from the grey city box a few feet and then you should have your sprinkler system pipe coming from it like a "T", which then goes into your lawn sprinkler box to the little valve things.

You have a main water cut-off in the grey city box and if this is where the guy shut the water off, you will have no water to your house. Follow the main pipe from your grey box to where the "T" is where the sprinkler pipe meets the main water line and there should be another cut-off valve. This cuts off the water to your sprinkler system but allows water to get to your house when the main (grey box)line is on. If you find all this then turn off the "T" valve cutting off water to your sprinkler system and turn on the main line and there should not be leaks. If there is just turn the main line back off. e-mail me at and I will check that in a little while. If you have more questions leave you phone number & I will call you back in a while.

[This message has been edited by csmotorcop (edited 7/11/2009 11:40p).]

This has happened to us TWICE on a Saturday before. We called Roto Rooter each time as they work on the weekends and they came out and fixed it on Saturday.

ZTGA

Thank you csmotorcop--I think they are fixing the problem now; I hope, anyway. It turns out that it WAS the main water line and not our sprinkler system that broke, but it's just on our side of the box. This happened almost a year ago and Wilson Plumbing came out and fix it for $400. They did such a great job that now we're having to do it over again, less than a year later.

not such a good job then (boo for them). That stinks.

csmotorcop, edit your msg and delete your email address (or change to clively--at--cstx.gov etc.) so the spambots don't harvest it!

We don't need College Station's Finest getting too much spam at work...

Wow, you called CSU, THEN turned off the water? I hate to be a troll, but wouldn't the polite thing to have been to turn off the water, try to narrow down the problem, THEN call CSU in the morning?

Tell whoever mows your lawn to stop running over the water meter box...

it wasn't mowing over the meter box that started the flooding.

and i had no clue what to do, and in order to stop the water from running we needed to call them. shortly after i did, our neighbor walked out and helped us.

all better now i hope.

That's a rip off for them to charge you to resume the water supply. We have a house and needed the water turned off. I called the city because the shutoff valve didn't work. The dispatcher got all upset with me saying that I am not supposed to be messing with the water shutoff valve and that they come out any time of day or night to help you. Nothing was ever said about the fee to do this. Man, you'd think for the money we pay for reading our meter each month that they'd offer you 1 or 2 of these gratis each calendar year.

When we had a leak in the front yard..the city showed us how to shut it off. Never even mentioned a fee.

$500 fee for shutting off the water to the house? What a joke! So, if you need to replace a valve under a sink, they want to charge $500 to let you shut of the water supply? What a crock.

Thank you tailgate, I did not know that. I didn't know how to edit it either until I started playing with the icons on the screen. And who says city employees caint be taught!

Actually, I turned it off and told the guy I did...but I turned it back on before he got there..he just told me about the $ 500 reconnect as an FYI---maybe he was lying?

Interesting. Never heard the $500 reconnect thing.

FYI, there's actually two valves in the ground. There's the square concrete/metal box with the meter in it, which has the city's valve in it and us mere mortals are not to touch that valve. Within 18 inches I think of that valve, closer to the house, there is a valve that's usually in a round box with a plastic lid, and that's the one we're supposed to turn on and shut off ourselves if we need to turn the water off to our house.

The only time we should call CSU to turn the city side valve off is if the break in the line is before the home side valve or if it's an emergency and we can't find the home side valve.

I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the plumber didn't do it right the first time unless it broke in exactly the same place. Ground movement and plastic pipe don't always get along. It could be a defective piece of pipe that just got brittle over time. Is the pipe plastic or older metal or copper pipe. Metal pipes will rust over time, even galvanized. They simply rust from the inside out. Any number of things could have broken the pipe.

There is no reason you can't use the valve at the meter to shut water off...

Super, many houses were not built with a redundant shut off valve. The only benefit to them is that you don't have to buy or make a tool to be able to easily turn it open/closed

the $500 reconnect fee sounds more like what happens if you're delinquent on a bill. The gas connection is the same way...both are ridiculous.

We had sprinkler issues a few years back. Gushing water from the ground, etc. Being new homeowners, we had no clue what to do. We thought it was the main valve and so we called the city. A very nice gentlemen came out, turned off the water, checked everything, and then we realized it was actually a biusted sprinkler pipe. He turned the city water back on with no issues, and even showed us where to turn off the sprinkler valve and helped us narrow down the leaky spot. He was very helpful. We never got a bill. That fee sounds a bit bogus to me.

Any city employees to confirm or deny the fee?

Rebel, I thought the redundant shutoff was per the IRC 2003, and therefore would be required to pass inspection in CS for any houses built since it was adopted here... But I'm not a plumber or a code inspector, so I could be very wrong.

Lots of people in my neighborhood have let grass grow to cover their shutoff valve cover, although the city does make sure to keep the city valves clear.