Plea for help with main water supply problem

[Greenie67]

Hi, New to this forum and looking for any advice anyone can offer please, as we are now at a total loss as to what could be causing our supply problem.

Basically, we have no water supply to the house. This started on Tuesday 21st Dec, when temps reached minus 15. I went through all the usual options, i.e. heating pipes, putting hot air into the air space under the floorboards, pouring hot water onto the pipes. 7 days on we still have no water, even though it has been quite mild for the last 3 days. Couple of neighbours also lost their supply, but they managed to get theirs thawed out by last Thursday, by going through the same methods I applied.

Water company came out today and checked mains supply from the street, and that is running fine. Plumber also came out and confirmed that we have no water coming in from the main pipe. He took the internal stop tap off and there was no water there.

We are at a loss now as to what has happened to our water. Everyone I have spoken to reckons that even if the pipe was originally frozen, it should have started to thaw by now, but we havent even had a drip from our taps since this started. The problem is obviously between the stop cock in the street and the stop tap in the house. Any suggestions as to what else could be causing this would be much appreciated as we are getting increasingly frustrated.

Thanks for any advice - all suggestions welcomed.
Ian

 

[studips]

water board left mains stoppy on did they? when you turn it off and back on, you do get a good few turns on it?

you are getting not a drop right?

a pipe shallow enough to freeze in a prolonged period, will take a long while to thaw - do you know where it runs? how deep?

is it small bore lead or poly, or are you on newer 20 or 25mm mdpe?

 

[doitall]

Seen water meters freeze before now, could be worth checking if you have one.

Freezing can wreck them by the way.

 

[tryitandsee]

Does the internal stop cock open when turned, did the plumber check. Perhaps the internal bits are broken shut, but looks like it's turning. Boiling water on cold metal may have snapped something!!

 

[studips]

apparently his plumber took the head off the internal stopcock.

have you tracked back along the pipework to look for an older abandoned stopcock?

funny it should be dry when he took the head off.

 

[Greenie67]

Hi Guys, thanks for the quick responses.

No, we do not have a water meter. The property is a fairly new build as well (4 years), so no chance of an abandoned stopcock.

The piping into the house from the main is the blue heavy guage plastic, about 1 inch thick, that is what I poured the boiling water on, but to no avail. As to how far down it is, without digging it up we can only assume it was put in to the regulation depth when the developers were building. It does look like the stopcock in the street is at the right depth.

The plumber took the internal stop tap apart to show it was working and he also checked that the water board had turned the mains back on (which they had). But there was nothing at all, not even a drip.

I think the reason it was totally dry was maybe because I had evaporated any water in there when I heated it up (I had steam coming out of the open tap).