Water, water, every where...oh crap, where's the shutoff valve?

Lesson #2: If something is wet and you don't know why, find out immediately.

Sounds obvious, I know, but you might be surprised.

Cabinets under bathroom sinks hold lots of things--TP, reading material, cleaning supplies, and most importantly, pipes.

These are our pipes ("our" referring to myself and Dear BoyFriend who has entered into this adventure with me). These pipes, despite being the path for much water, should be dry. The area around these pipes should also be dry. So if something near these pipes, say the plastic TP packaging or the reading material, isn't dry, you need to find out why.

Don't assume it's because something got splashed or it's humid or your cat who likes to play in the water you leave for her in the sink got a little rambunctious one morning. Find out for sure.

We didn't. We waited, both of us assuming it was something small. Until one day, too long after noticing the first moisture, I noticed a puddle.

When inside, puddles are bad. You need to avoid them if you can, and I'm not talking about getting DBF to lay his coat over it so you can step down off the curb without sullying your stilettos. I'm talking about paying attention to water and finding out where it's coming from...pronto.

So let's take a look at those pipes again, this time with visual aids. That big red arrow is pointing to something you should be familiar with...the shutoff valve.

This, my friends (humor me, I like to think more than 1 person reads this), is your friend. If water is dripping, leaking, or gushing, turn this off. Righty tighty, lefty loosey.

Once the water is off and the dripping, leaking, or gushing has ceased, cleaning the mess and assessing the problem are the next steps...but we'll get to those later.

First things first, the many shutoff valves and where you may find them.

You've seen the one under the sink for the faucet. Remember, there are 2 of these...one for the hot and one for the cold. The sinks are all pretty similar, 2 water pipes, 2 shutoff valves.

Let's take a quick tour of the rest our house and its shutoff valves.

We have 2 hose bibs and their shutoff
valves both look like this:

Our shutoff for the whole house and 

both pipes for the washer look like this, too, 

though the washer pipes run vertically.

The water heater's is the red knob on the right-hand pipe

which is the pipe that brings the water into the heater.

Last stop on our tour is actually a minor detour. This isn't a shutoff valve, but it is a very important thing to be aware of...the little door. The little door is on the opposite side of the wall from our shower. Behind that little door are the shower pipes, and that's a good thing to know.


(Ours aren't actually that crooked, that was me, leaning over to get the picture.)


One last note on shutoff valves, they don't like halfway. They should be all the way open or all the way closed. They'll be happier and longer lived for it...and you, by extension, will be happier, too.