The three shut-offs in your home usually sit close together, in or near the meter cupboard: the main stopcock right below or beside the water meter, the gas valve right before the gas meter, and the main switch in the consumer unit, usually top left next to the RCDs. A quarter-turn valve (blue or red lever) closes when you put the lever across the pipe; a valve with a wheel head closes clockwise. Smell gas? Windows open, gas valve off, do not touch any switch or your phone, and call the gas emergency number from outside or from a neighbour’s house. In the UK that is the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999. If there is danger to life, fire or a very strong leak, call 999.
Hey there, fellow DIYer,
The moment you need the main stopcock is exactly the moment you cannot find it.
Water is spraying out of a burst pipe. You are standing in the hallway in wet socks. And you are thinking: where is that thing again, and which way does it turn.
Every minute you spend searching costs you litres. And litres cost you floors, skirting boards, cupboards and plaster.
The same question applies to the gas valve and the main switch. Three shut-offs, three emergencies, and most people have never touched a single one of them.
This article is the five minutes you invest now so that you do not have to go searching later. I will show you where they sit exactly (including the cases where they are not in the meter cupboard), how to operate them, when to use which one, what you absolutely must not do, and which yearly check stops your main stopcock from being seized solid at the one moment that counts.
Here we go:
Overview: the three shut-offs in one table
| Water | Gas | Electricity | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you are looking for | Main stopcock | Main gas valve | Main switch |
| Usually where | Right below or beside the water meter | Right before the gas meter | In the consumer unit, usually top left |
| How to spot it | Blue or red lever, or a wheel head | Large lever or butterfly handle in the gas pipe | Large switch, often bigger than the rest |
| How to close it | Lever across the pipe, or wheel clockwise | Lever across the pipe | Down or to the left |
| When to use it | Leak, burst pipe, work on the water pipes, long absence | Gas smell, fire, work on the gas pipes, gas no longer needed | Work on the wiring, water near wiring, fire, long absence |
| Emergency number | Your own water company | 0800 111 999 (UK); the Netherlands: 0800 9009 | Your electricity network operator; the Netherlands: 0800 9009 |
| Danger to life | 999 | 999 | 999 |
Print this table, write your own details onto it and stick it inside the meter cupboard door. That is not over the top. It is the smartest thing you can do with this article.
1. The main stopcock: where the water goes off
Where it sits
In most homes, right where the pipe enters the house: in the meter cupboard, right below or beside the water meter. You see the pipe coming out of the floor or the wall, then the main stopcock, then the water meter.
If it is not there, look here:
- Under the stairs. In a lot of older terraced houses the water meter sits in a small cupboard under the stairs rather than in the meter cupboard.
- In the cellar, at the spot where the pipe enters the house (usually the front wall).
- In the crawl space, in older homes without a cellar. Annoying, because then you have to open the hatch and go down.
- By the back door or in the utility room, in some post-war houses.
- In flats: often in a shared meter room in the basement or the stairwell, with a separate meter and valve for each home. Sometimes there is another valve inside the flat itself, where the pipe comes in.
Rule of thumb: follow the pipe back from the water meter towards the street. The main stopcock always sits between the street and your installation.
How to shut it off
There are two types, and you operate them differently.
Quarter-turn valve (ball valve). A lever, often blue or red. You operate it with a quarter turn:
– Open: lever in line with the pipe
– Closed: lever across the pipe
That is all there is to it. Four or five seconds of work.
Valve with a wheel head (gate valve). Older type, with a round wheel or a knob. You close it clockwise, the same direction as an ordinary tap. That can take several full turns, so keep turning until it will not go any further.
Source: Brabant Water, a Dutch water company
What you must absolutely not do
No pliers, no pipe, no extension bar to get more leverage. This is the most important warning in this whole article.
Old valves can seize up with limescale or turn brittle over the years. Put a pair of pliers on one and it snaps off, and then you have a hole with water blasting out at full pressure, at exactly the moment you were trying to solve a problem. That is a leak the size of a bucket a minute that you can no longer stop yourself.
Seized solid? Call a plumber or your water company. Do not force it.
The yearly check (two minutes, genuinely do this)
This is the tip it all comes down to, because a main stopcock you never use will seize up.
- Close the main stopcock fully, once a year.
- Then open it fully again.
- Does it feel stiff, or do you have to put effort in? Have a plumber look at it before you actually need it.
Put it in your calendar, for example alongside testing your smoke alarms when the clocks change. Two minutes a year.
Important detail: once you have had the main stopcock closed, open it back up slowly. A pipe that goes to full pressure in one go can give you water hammer, that hard banging noise in the pipework, and that is no good for your installation.
When do you use the main stopcock?
- For a burst or leaking pipe. Straight off. Think afterwards.
- For work on the water pipes where there is no separate valve.
- When you are away for a while. For holidays of more than a week this is the cheapest water damage insurance there is. Watch out: if your boiler has an automatic filling system, or you have a fridge with a water supply, have a quick think about what that means.
- In frosty weather with an empty house. Stopcock off and drain the pipes, otherwise they will freeze and split.
Often you do not need the main stopcock at all
Almost nobody thinks of this, and yet it keeps the rest of your house in water while you make the repair. In a lot of places there is already a local isolating valve:
- Under the basin and the kitchen sink there are usually two small isolating valves (cold and hot). Handy for a dripping tap or replacing a trap.
- Behind or beside the toilet there is almost always a small valve for the fill pipe.
- At the washing machine and the dishwasher there is a separate tap. Turn that off when you go away for a week, because a burst washing machine hose is a classic insurance claim.
- The outside tap should have its own indoor valve with a drain-off point. See the next section.
- At the boiler there is a filling valve and usually an isolating valve on the flow.
Go round these valves once and test them. If the isolating valve under the basin no longer works, you know that now instead of later.
Outside tap: its own job, every autumn
An outside tap left full of water over winter will freeze and split, and the annoying part is that you only find out in March, when you open it and the water runs in behind the wall.
Here is how to do it properly, some time in November:
- Close the indoor valve (the isolating valve inside, before the pipe passes through the wall).
- Open the outside tap and leave it open.
- Open the drain-off point on the indoor valve (often a small screw or nipple), so the bit of pipe between inside and outside empties. Put a bowl underneath.
- Leave the outside tap open all winter. That gives expanding ice somewhere to go.
If you have a frost-proof outside tap (a long type that shuts off inside the warm wall), you can skip this, as long as the hose is disconnected, because otherwise the frost protection does not work.
2. The gas valve: where the gas goes off
Where it sits
In the meter cupboard, right before the gas meter. You see the gas pipe come in, then the valve, then the meter. It is usually a chunky lever or a butterfly handle.
In flats the gas meter can sit in a shared meter room. Even then, the valve sits right before your meter.
How to spot it: in older installations the gas pipe is often black or yellow painted steel; newer connections are often yellow plastic up to the wall of the house. The valve always sits on the street side of the meter.
How to shut it off
Just like a quarter-turn water valve:
- Open: lever in line with the pipe
- Closed: lever across the pipe
By hand. No tools.
There is a valve at every gas appliance too
Besides the main gas valve, every gas appliance has its own little valve: at the cooker, at the boiler, at a gas fire, at a gas water heater. These are often small levers or knobs.
Useful to know: if you smell gas at one specific appliance, you can isolate that appliance without taking the whole house off gas. If you smell it in the hall or at the meter cupboard, the main gas valve goes off.
Smell gas? This is the drill
Learn this, because in the moment itself you will not be thinking clearly.
- Open windows and doors. Straight away. As many as you can.
- Close the main gas valve in the meter cupboard, if you can get to it safely.
- Do not touch a single electrical switch. No light switch, no extractor hood, no doorbell, do not pull a plug out. One spark is enough. That goes for the main switch too: do not touch it when you smell gas.
- No flames. No lighter, no candle, no cigarette.
- Go outside. Take everyone in the house with you.
- Only call once you are outside or at a neighbour’s. Your phone can spark too. In the UK the National Gas Emergency Service is on 0800 111 999, free and open day and night. In the Netherlands it is the free national number 0800 9009, which puts you straight through to the network operator for your region. Elsewhere, your gas emergency number is on your bill and usually in the meter cupboard. Write it down today.
- If there is danger to life, fire or a very strong leak: call 999.
Source: ACM ConsuWijzer, the Dutch consumer authority and Liander, a Dutch network operator
An important nuance about who to call: if you smell gas at the pipe, at the meter, or somewhere in the house with no obvious source, that is the network operator’s job. If you clearly smell it at a gas appliance (cooker, boiler, water heater, gas fire), that is your installer or your service company, because the network operator is not responsible for your appliances.
Why you can smell gas: natural gas has no smell of its own. An odourant is deliberately added (tetrahydrothiophene, that characteristic rotten egg smell) so that you smell a leak long before it becomes dangerous. So the fact that you can smell it does not automatically mean you are in immediate danger, but it does mean you follow the drill.
And if you have come off gas?
More and more homes no longer have a gas connection. Two things to know:
- Closing the main gas valve is not the same as being disconnected. As long as the connection is there, you pay a standing charge and there is gas in the pipe up to the valve.
- Permanent disconnection and removal of the connection is arranged with your network operator. There are costs involved, and it is not a DIY job. There is a seal on the gas meter and the service pipe, and you are not allowed to break it yourself.
3. The main switch: where the electricity goes off
Where it sits
In the consumer unit, usually top left. You recognise it because it is often bigger than the rest, and it is marked “0” and “1”, or “off” and “on”.
The consumer unit sits in the meter cupboard in the hall, sometimes in a cupboard under the stairs, in the cellar or in the outbuilding.
What is what in the consumer unit
This causes the most confusion, so let me be clear:
The main switch. Shuts down the whole installation in one go. This is the “everything off” button.
The RCD (residual current device). Larger switch with a test button (T) on it. It watches over a group of final circuits and trips on an earth fault: when current leaks away to earth, for example because someone touches a wire or because water gets into an appliance. Modern units usually have two or more.
The MCBs (the “fuses” or final circuits). A row of smaller switches, each for one circuit: kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, outside. These trip on overload or a short circuit.
The RCBO. A combination of the two above in one module, with a test button on it, for a single circuit. Increasingly common in newer and upgraded units.
Which one do you use when?
| Situation | What you do |
|---|---|
| One circuit keeps tripping | MCB for that circuit off, unplug appliances, put them back one at a time |
| Part of the house is dead | Check whether an RCD has tripped, and reset it |
| You are going to work on a socket or a switch | MCB for that circuit off, and check it is dead with a voltage tester |
| Water near wiring (a leak above a consumer unit, a flooded cellar) | Main switch off, and do not go into the water |
| Fire or a burning smell from the installation | Main switch off, call 999 |
| Long periods empty, or a holiday home | Main switch off, but think about the freezer and the heating |
The most important safety rule: flipping a switch is never the same as knowing there is no voltage left. For work on the installation the rule is: switch off, secure against being switched back on, and test with a proper voltage tester. If you are not sure what you are doing, this is work for a qualified electrician.
Two things the main switch does not do
1. The cable before the main switch stays live. The stretch from the network operator’s cut-out, through the meter, up to your main switch simply stays live. That is the network operator’s work, and it is sealed as well.
2. Your solar panels keep producing voltage in daylight. The inverter does shut itself down as soon as it no longer sees the grid, but the DC cables from the panels to the inverter are live in daylight, often at a considerable voltage. Anyone working on a solar installation has to allow for that, and needs the right knowledge and tools for it.
Worth knowing too: your solar panels supply no electricity to your home during a power cut. That is a mandatory protection: if they kept feeding in, you would be putting voltage onto a network that engineers are working on.
Test your RCD every six months
An RCD is a mechanical part that can stiffen up if you never use it. And you only find out it no longer works at the moment it matters.
Here is how you test it:
- Switch off appliances that do not cope well with a sudden power cut (computer, NAS, some boilers, and anything running a programme).
- Press the test button (T) on the RCD.
- It should trip immediately and cut the power.
- Push it back up.
Nothing happens? Then the RCD is faulty and needs replacing. This is not a “ah, it will probably be fine”. A non-working RCD is the very protection that is supposed to save you if you touch something live.
NEN 1010, the Dutch standard for electrical installations, works on testing at least once every six months. Every six months is the common rule of thumb elsewhere too. Handy memory hook: tie it to the clocks changing, at the same time as your smoke alarms and your main stopcock.
Source: Advies Elektrotechniek on NEN 1010
What you never do yourself: the seals
On the gas meter, the electricity meter and the water meter there are seals: small lead tags or plastic strips from the network operator or the water company.
You are not allowed to break them. If you do, it is a serious matter: it is treated as a possible attempt at fraud, and the costs and consequences are substantial. Even if your intentions were good.
What you are perfectly entitled to do: operate the main stopcock, the gas valve and the main switch. Those are not sealed, and they are there precisely for you.
Is a valve seized, or does something need doing to the connection itself? Call the network operator or your water company. It costs nothing, it is what they are there for, and it saves you a world of misery.
The five-minute check: do this today
Run through this once and you have it sorted for years.
1. Find all three shut-offs and look at them. Main stopcock, gas valve, main switch. Do you now know which way they have to go? If not, look back through this article.
2. Test the main stopcock. Closed, open, gently. Stiff? Call a plumber.
3. Test the RCD or RCDs. Test button, does it trip? Reset it.
4. Go round the local isolating valves. Basin, sink, toilet, washing machine, outside tap. Do they work?
5. Get some light into the meter cupboard. Seriously. Most meter cupboards are pitch black, and most emergencies happen in the evening. Hang a simple battery lamp or a torch on a hook in there. Those five pounds are the best spent five pounds on this whole list.
6. Put an emergency card inside the meter cupboard door. On it:
– where the main stopcock is and how it closes
– where the gas valve is
– which circuit belongs to what (this is the most underrated tip: label your consumer unit with a label printer or a marker, “kitchen”, “bathroom”, “outside”, “washing machine”)
– the emergency numbers: your gas emergency number (0800 111 999 in the UK), your electricity network operator, your water company’s fault line, your installer, 999
7. Make sure the people you live with know it too. A shut-off that only you can find is a shut-off that fails half the time.
8. Keep the meter cupboard clear. No stack of boxes, no coats, no vacuum cleaner in front of it. You have to be able to reach it in the dark with wet feet.
Smart help: leak detection and water shut-off systems
While you are at it, this is worth considering: there are automatic water shut-off systems you fit to the main pipe. A system like that measures your usage and closes the pipe automatically when it sees a pattern that looks like a leak, for example water running for hours on end. There is usually an app with it that sends you an alert.
Simpler still: individual water alarms, small sensors on the floor by the washing machine, the boiler, the dishwasher and under the sink. They beep or send you an alert as soon as they get wet. They cost very little and often warn you hours before you would notice anything yourself.
For anyone who is away regularly or has a second home, this is an investment that pays for itself with a single prevented claim. Budget somewhere in the tens per unit for individual alarms; a complete automatic shut-off system including installation sits more in the order of several hundred and up, depending on the brand and whether you have it fitted.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the main stopcock for the water in my house?
In most homes it is in the meter cupboard, right below or beside the water meter. If it is not there, look under the stairs, in the cellar near the front wall, in the crawl space or by the back door. In flats the water meter is often in a shared meter room in the basement or the stairwell. The rule of thumb: follow the pipe back from the water meter towards the street, because the main stopcock always sits between the street and your installation.
Which way does the main stopcock turn to shut it off?
That depends on the type. If you have a quarter-turn valve with a lever (often blue or red), it is open when the lever is in line with the pipe and closed when the lever is across the pipe. If you have an older valve with a round wheel or a knob, you close it clockwise, just like an ordinary tap, often several full turns. Open it back up slowly afterwards to avoid water hammer.
My main stopcock is seized. What now?
Do not force it. Do not use pliers, a pipe or an extension bar to get more leverage. Old valves can seize up with limescale or turn brittle, and if the valve snaps off you have a leak at full pressure that you can no longer stop yourself. Call a plumber or your water company. This is exactly why you should open and close the main stopcock once a year as a precaution: then you discover the problem at a quiet moment instead of during a flood.
What should I do if I smell gas?
Open windows and doors, close the main gas valve in the meter cupboard if you can get to it safely, and do not touch a single electrical switch: no light switch, no extractor hood, no doorbell, no plugs. Do not use any flames. Go outside or to a neighbour and only call from there. In the UK that is the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999, free and open day and night; in the Netherlands it is 0800 9009. If there is danger to life, fire or a very strong leak, call 999 immediately. If you clearly smell it at a gas appliance such as your cooker or boiler, call your installer, because the network operator is not responsible for your appliances.
What is the difference between the main switch and the RCD?
The main switch shuts down your whole installation in one go; that is the “everything off” button. The RCD is a protective device that trips automatically as soon as current leaks away to earth, for example from a faulty appliance or if someone touches a wire. You recognise it by the test button marked T. Alongside those, your unit has MCBs for the individual circuits; they trip on overload or a short circuit. For work on a single socket you switch off the circuit concerned, not the main switch.
How often should I test my RCD?
NEN 1010, the Dutch standard for electrical installations, works on at least once every six months, and six-monthly is the common rule of thumb elsewhere too. To test it, press the button marked T; the switch should trip immediately and cut the power. If nothing happens it is faulty and needs replacing, because then your most important protection is not working. Switch off anything that copes badly with a sudden interruption first, and tie the test to a fixed moment, for example when the clocks change.
Should I turn off the main stopcock when I go on holiday?
For an absence of more than a week that is sensible, and it is the cheapest protection against water damage there is. At the very least, turn off the taps for the washing machine and the dishwasher, because burst supply hoses are a classic cause of damage. Do bear in mind appliances that need water, such as a boiler with automatic filling or a fridge with a water supply. If you go away for a longer stretch in winter and turn the heating off, closing the main stopcock on its own is not enough: the pipes need draining as well.
Am I allowed to break the seal on my meter myself?
No. There are seals from the network operator or the water company on the gas meter, the electricity meter and the water meter, and you are not allowed to break them. It is treated as a possible attempt at fraud, with hefty consequences and costs. The main stopcock, the gas valve and the main switch you are perfectly entitled to operate; they are there for you and they are not sealed. If something needs doing to the connection itself, call the network operator or your water company.
While you have your head in the meter cupboard anyway, this is also the moment to look at how much energy runs through your house and where it leaks away. In Energie Verpulveraar I go through the energy hogs in the home and the measures in order of return, with the numbers alongside so you can work out for yourself what it would save you.
Do yourself a favour. Close that main stopcock today, once, and open it again. If it turns stiffly, you know it now, on a Tuesday afternoon with dry feet, instead of at night with a burst pipe.
Cheers from Fred Schouten, handyman and DIYer through and through
PS: that lamp in the meter cupboard. Just do it. Every emergency I have ever seen up close started with someone holding a phone torch between their teeth in the dark, hunting for a valve they had never touched.