Where Is My Water Meter Box, and What If the Valve Will Not Turn?

Every emergency plumbing article tells you to turn the water off at the meter. Almost none of them tell you what the box looks like, where it is on an Auckland property, or what to do when the valve will not budge.

We open these boxes most days. Here is what is actually in there.

What am I looking for?

A rectangular plastic box set into the ground, with a lid sitting flush with the grass. Auckland lids are commonly blue or black, and the blue ones usually have WATER METER moulded straight into the plastic, so once you spot one there is no doubt about it.

Lift the lid and you are looking at a water meter, a chain or wire seal, and a valve on one or both sides of it. The valve on the house side of the meter is the one that shuts off all the water to your property. You will hear plenty of New Zealanders call the whole thing the toby, which is the old name for the same box and the same valve.

The pipe running into the box is the other giveaway. Underground water mains in New Zealand are blue. If you dig anywhere on your property and find blue plastic pipe, that is your drinking water supply. Nothing else underground is blue, which is exactly why the colour was chosen.

A water meter box opened, showing the meter, the seal chain and the isolating valve

Where is it on my property?

Look along the boundary closest to the street, in the berm or just inside your front fence. It is often within a metre or two of the letterbox, because that is where the connection came off the street main.

Common hiding places, all of which we have dug out ourselves: under a hedge that has grown over it, under bark or garden mulch, buried when a driveway was widened, or sitting under twenty years of lawn clippings. If you cannot see a lid, feel for a hard flat edge underfoot along the boundary line.

Which way do I turn the valve, and how do I know it worked?

Clockwise to close, the same as a tap. For a lever, closed is when the lever sits across the pipe rather than along it.

To confirm it worked, go inside and open a tap at the lowest point in the house. Water should run for a few seconds and then stop to a dribble. That is also the right thing to do straight after shutting it off in an emergency, because it drains the pressure out of the pipework instead of leaving it sitting against the failed section.

Is there a faster valve at the house?

Usually yes, and it is worth knowing where it is before you need it.

In most Auckland houses the shutoff inside the property is at the hot water cylinder. That is where the incoming main is brought up and valved, so the cylinder cupboard is the first place to look rather than the last. Contrary to what a lot of overseas advice says, it is generally not under the kitchen sink here. What you find under a sink is an isolating valve for that tap only, which is useful for changing a mixer and no help at all in a flood.

Apartments and units are a different situation again. The shutoff for your dwelling is usually outside it, in a service cupboard, a riser or a common area, and often it is not marked. This is genuinely hard for an owner or tenant to work out alone, and it is not a failing on your part. Ask the body corporate or building manager to show you where your isolating valve is, and take a photo of it. Doing that on a quiet weekday is a great deal easier than doing it at midnight with water coming through a ceiling.

The box is full of dirt or water. Now what?

Very normal. These boxes have no bottom, so soil washes in and water sits in them after rain.

Scoop the dirt out with your hands or a trowel until you can see the meter and the valve. If it is full of water you can usually still feel for the valve, but be careful reaching into a box you cannot see the bottom of. Once it is clear, take a photo on your phone so the next person is not doing this in the dark.

It will not turn. Should I use a bar on it?

No. This is the part worth reading twice.

Old brass gate valves seize solid because nothing has turned them in twenty years, and the spindle inside is the weak point. Put a long bar on it and you will snap the spindle. At that moment you have gone from a leak you could not stop to a leak nobody can stop without an excavator, and the water keeps running the whole time.

Hand pressure only. If it will not move, ring Watercare on 09 442 2222 and tell them the valve at the meter will not turn. The meter and the valve at it are their asset, so it is their repair. In the meantime, isolate what you can inside the house at the cylinder or at individual fixture stopcocks.

A corroded water meter dial inside its box, with the red sweep hand visible

I shut it off and water is still running

Two possibilities, and they point in opposite directions.

If water is still coming out of your tap at pressure, you have most likely shut the wrong box. Shared driveways in Auckland often have several meter boxes in a row, one per dwelling, and they are not always in the order you would expect.

If the flow has stopped but the meter is still turning, the leak is on the street side of the valve, which makes it Watercare’s. We had a job in Birkdale where we repaired a leak at the meter box connection and the meter still crept round afterwards, which told us there was more going on underground rather than inside the house. A meter that moves with everything shut off is the single most useful piece of evidence you can give a plumber.

I live in a unit. Do I even have my own meter?

Often not. Multiple units on one lot frequently share a single connection and a single meter, which means shutting it off cuts the water to your neighbours too.

If that is your situation, it is worth knowing before an emergency, and worth having an individual isolating valve fitted at your own unit. It is a small job that turns a whole-block shutdown into a five minute one.

If you are not sure what you are looking at, send us a photo of the open box. We would rather answer that on the phone than have someone snap a spindle. Call us if you need it sorted properly.

Common questions

Who owns the meter, me or Watercare?

The meter and the valve at it belong to Watercare, and the pipework from the point of supply into your house belongs to you. In practice that means a fault at the meter or on the street side is Watercare’s to fix at no cost to you, and everything from there to the house is yours. If you are not sure which side a wet patch is on, the meter test settles it.

Can I turn the water off while I go on holiday?

Yes, and it is not a bad idea for a long trip, particularly in an older house. Turn it off, then open a tap to release the pressure. The main thing to know is that a valve which has not been touched in years may not want to turn back on smoothly, so do it once while you are still home rather than discovering the problem on your way to the airport.

The lid is cracked or missing. Does that matter?

It matters more than people think. An open or broken box fills with soil, which makes the valve unreachable in an emergency and can corrode the fittings. Replacement lids are cheap. It is also a trip hazard on a berm, and worth sorting before somebody puts a foot in it.

Why is the underground pipe blue?

Blue identifies drinking water under the New Zealand colour convention, so anybody digging knows immediately what they have found before they cut into it. Cream or black polyethylene, and older galvanised or copper, all turn up on Auckland properties too, depending on the era. If we replace a section of underground main, it goes back in as blue.

What if I rent?

Find the box anyway and tell your flatmates where it is, because in an emergency you will get to it long before anybody else does. Shutting the water off to stop a flood is the right call and no landlord will object to it. After that it is a call to the property manager, and if the water has to stay off, say so clearly, because that makes it an urgent repair rather than a routine one.