Why aren’t there water shutoff valves for each room?paisha
Had an issue today with a nail going through a water supply line in a bathroom. It got me wondering if there is a practical or technical reason there aren’t typically room-specific shut offs between the master shut off and the shut offs at the fixtures? Seems silly to shut down the whole house for a pinhole, but there really wasn’t a better option.
Just asking out of curiosity to see if there are any plumbers out there.
-
5Not a plumber, so just a comment: Typically I see shutoffs at each fixture - e.g., beneath the sink, next to the dishwasher, etc. but not "entire bathroom" or "entire kitchen". – manassehkatz 12 hours ago
-
4Every valve adds another potential point of failure. Usually the house shutoff is easy enough to get at so there would be no real advantage. It's just water, seconds don't really count. – Puddles 11 hours ago
-
There is a manifold type plumbing system (Mike Holmes likes to use them) that has separate hot and cold feeds to each room. They are very uncommon. As @Puddles points out, they add one more thing that can go wrong, and they're more expensive to install. That being said, if I ever built a custom home, I would use one. – BillDOe 11 hours ago
2 Answers
The Viega Manabloc is an example of a system in which a central valve manifold uses a dedicated tube for every fixture in the house, as alluded in the comment from BillDOe.
In some US homes it's not a difficult retrofit to split the house into at least two zones. Typically the water service enters an unfinished "utility closet" space where the water heater is also located. There will be a few tees and water pipes head off in different directions to the master bathroom, kitchen, other bathrooms, etc. These pipes could be cut and valves inserted so that water can be shut off somewhat selectively.
In my own house I reconfigured the plumbing in the utility room. I have the kitchen and basement bathroom on one pair of valves (one each for hot and cold) and the laundry and other bathrooms on a different pair. These are arranged neatly beside the water heater. This has allowed me to defer replacing the shutoff under every sink and toilet, which always seem to be jammed and/or corroded to the point that they can't be shut off when it's needed most.
It's not as fine-grained as the manifold approach, but routine plumbing repairs are far less stressful when at least one toilet in the house remains functional!
Now, to actually answer your question. It cost less than US$100 in parts and several hours of work to make that change in my house. Doing the work that way during original construction would cost almost as much. It doesn't happen because the home buyer doesn't want to pay extra for it, the builder doesn't want to pay for it from his own pocket, and the plumber isn't going to do this premium/extra work for free.
It would be difficult to install area shutoffs in most residences, since they need to be accessible to be useful. The best case scenario is an access panel in the floor or wall, the worst case is outside the room in an adjoining room or closet.
Even more damning is the fact that they would, by definition, be in non-standard locations. I pity the poor plumber who's faced with a closed shutoff someplace between the main and fixture shutoff. If it's a newly purchased home, or the knowledgeable person isn't home during the service call you'd never find it.
