# General Business Category > General Business Forum >  No Stopcock on municipal water meter

## Justloadit

Where are we going.

A while back I had a water leak on the municipal side of my water meter in Johannesburg. I contacted the municipality, and a couple of days later I noted that my drive way was dug up, and the leak was fixed. I thought to myself, great the fixed the leak, and got the driveway fixed up.

A couple of weeks back, I needed to shut my water as I was fixing some water pipes in the house, and as always grabbed by pliers and made way to the water meter box, to shut off the stopcock. To my amazement, it was gone, no longer there. I thought to myself, heck, I must be blind or something. Scrutinized, and made sure that there is no stopcock anywhere, and could not find one. Fortunately, my house does have a stopcock at the incoming side of the house, where the pressure regulator resides. Did my repair, and made a mental note that I must contact the municipality to find out where the stopcock is.

I finally remembered today that I must fix this problem. So decide to phone the municipality, after being shunted around and waiting for an hour, fortunately I have free minutes to burn on my cellphone contract, I get through to a droid, called Thandisa, who says that no longer put stopcocks in, and that I must get my plumber out to put put a stopcock in, and to call the municipality to shut the water off while he is doing this, and that they would charge me R800.00 to do this task. I then said that this is not logical, so she transferred the call to someone called Adore, and he reiterated the same story, and that this bright idea was introduced, because people were stealing the stopcocks to use on their own systems. So I asked what to do if there is a leak between my pipe from the water meter to the stopcock I have in the house, and he replied that I would have to call him to come out and turn the water off while we repaired the leak, and that they would charge us R800.00 for this service.  So I asked him, what would happen if this leak occurred say on a Saturday night, of a long weekend, who would pay for the water while we waited for them to pitch up to shut the water off, which probably only would happen on Tuesday, and he said my problem.


WTF who was the idiot that made this decision?

So what must i do now?
How do I fix this problem?
Will a private plumber come in now and place a stopcock immediate after the water meter, to turn the water off in the case the pipe between the water meter and the pressure regulator ever leaks, as it has done once before?

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## IanF

How would they know if you put in a stop cock? They way they read the meters I doubt they would see it. I hope this doesn't happen to me as a stock cock was fitted for us before the meter about 15 years ago.

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## Justloadit

Hi Ian,

They have no problem if you fit the stopcock yourself, the municipality has just relieved itself of this basic responsibility.
Anyway being a plastic pipe, it's not a big thing, simply use a g clamp, or bend the pipe will stop the water flow while you fit the stopcock on the incoming side. The plastic fittings make this a simple process. The situation here is that by law, you are not allowed to touch the pipe before the municipal meter, so effectively one would be contravening the by law, but cutting the pipe and inserting the stopcock.

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## murdock

http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/s...er-meter/page2

it did happen to me...

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## murdock

> Hi Ian,
> 
> They have no problem if you fit the stopcock yourself, the municipality has just relieved itself of this basic responsibility.
> Anyway being a plastic pipe, it's not a big thing, simply use a g clamp, or bend the pipe will stop the water flow while you fit the stopcock on the incoming side. The plastic fittings make this a simple process. The situation here is that by law, you are not allowed to touch the pipe before the municipal meter, so effectively one would be contravening the by law, but cutting the pipe and inserting the stopcock.


there is a stop cock before the meter...i took a pic of the device they used to close it and made my own one.

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## ajpscp

> there is a stop cock before the meter...i took a pic of the device they used to close it and made my own one.


Any update on this matter, I have a similar situation and the quoted rate is now R 1,500 to turn-off the tap!!!!!!

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## newBix

As far as I know the municipality is responsible for the pipe running towards your water meter. Thus if the meter fails or get stolen or if the pipe leaks before it enters the meter then it is not your problem. If you have no way to stop the water flow it is there responsibility. 

I can imagine if you suffer damage that you will have interesting story to tell the judge. I don't think they can keep you responsible for something that you are not legally allowed to work on?

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## Justloadit

In the meantime they cut your water and electricity, till the matter is sorted, which could take up to 5 years.

Rather prevent the problem, it is far easier.

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