Turning hot water off at stopcock

[TheGander]

My brother will be away from home due to health issues for up to 9 months. To stop water freezing in the pipes I tried to turn it off. Eventually located the stop cock down a hole in the front garden, next to the water meter. Turned it off which stopped the cold water , but hot water carried on flowing as usual when hot tap turned on. His heating and hot water system is an old hot air system and there’s a water tank in the loft. Any suggestions for getting the hot water turned off too gratefully received. Thank you.

Drain it if you turned it off by the meter you just need to empty the tank.

Thanks Thread. Just wondering- it’s unlikely water will freeze in the internal water tank, so as long as the supply to the cold taps from outside has been drained, can I just leave the water in the hot water pipes? Not going back to the property for 2 weeks, it it’s in the south east so fingers crossed it will be fine till then.

The loft tank would take a very long time to freeze, but there will be pipes up there.

Turn on the hot and cold bathroom taps, which will drain most of them. Leave all plugs out. Preferably tie luggage labels on all the taps you have opened and stopcocks you have turned off. Write them all on a list saying where they are and put it prominently in the kitchen.

Open the kitchen and garden taps as well.

Turn off and drain tank! We forgot to do that when we were getting mums house ready to rent out. Went round to show property company around to take photos ready to advertise it to find water pouring down the stairs and through landing ceiling! Turned out there was a problem with the immersion heater, we think a decorator switched an old disused switch on and the safety cut off failed causing the tank to boil away and explode! Tank was in loft so cascaded down through loft floor, through the bedroom and landing ceiling, down the walls and into the lounge.

Luckily we had paid extra to insure it as an empty property and we were fully covered - usually required to visit weekly if empty but they had relaxed this due to the Covid lockdown restrictions! The house had been decorated and all carpets replaced so the damage was extensive and cost over £23,000 and delayed us getting tenants in for six months.

We are planning to sell the house once the current lease ends as Mum dies recently and we no longer need the rental to pay her care home fees. We will be making sure that we insure the empty house again until it is sold, turn off the water and also make regular visits!! Cannot go through that again!

Wow crochet what an emotional rollercoaster. Glad it came good in the end. Thanks for the practical tips PigletJohn, as useful as ever! I will make sure to put a sign up in the kitchen re which taps have been closed as it would be only to easy to have forgotten by the time brother comes back home.

On an unrelated note, does his home insurance cover the property being unoccupied for such a long time? I think my insurance company's maximum period is up to 30 or 60 days.

Yes, when I had one I took care to stay for a weekend at least once a month, and make phone calls that would show on the bill. The insurers required heating to be permanently on at 12C which kept it comfortably dry and was not expensive because many winters days are not much colder.

Ok, full disclosure, the property isn’t insured and hasn’t been for years 😳. Really it’s on me as my brother has long term mental illness and prior to that my father lived there and he had dementia, I have been fire fighting for years. I’m hoping my brother will move into supported accommodation when he leaves the rehab unit. In the meantime I should probably go to a brokers.

With mine, I paid an additional premium of £60 per year to be registered as unoccupied. I still had to visit once a month but this requirement was waived during Covid restrictions so I was not asked when we last visited - although it had only been six days prior to the leak.