Providing water to vacant house

J

JOhnH

Touchdown! Greaser!
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I just bought the house next door to me. I plan to demolish the house in about a month, but in the meantime, I'd like to keep water in the pipes for the bathrooms. My house and the new house are about 20 feet apart and both have exterior faucets on the near sides.

Can I just run a hose with two male ends from one house to the other and keep both faucets open?
 
You could, but if you have water service, your water agency might have some backflow protection issues with you.
 
Sac Arrow said:
You could, but if you have water service, your water agency might have some backflow protection issues with you.
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That's what I was wondering about. If that is a problem, then I will just leave the house without water till demolition.
 
Sac Arrow said:
You could, but if you have water service, your water agency might have some backflow protection issues with you.
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Interesting. When the line broke between the meter and our house, we notified the water agency. They came over to shut off our service, connected one of our hose bibs to the next door neighbor's with a white (potable) hose and turned off their meter for a few days until we got things fixed.
 
asicer said:
Interesting. When the line broke between the meter and our house, we notified the water agency. They came over to shut off our service, connected one of our hose bibs to the next door neighbor's with a white (potable) hose and turned off their meter for a few days until we got things fixed.
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Like I said they might. Or might not. The agency I worked for would have had a hissy.
 
Does your new house not have a shutoff valve that you can access? On my house there's a main shutoff in the basement. If I turned that off, what you're proposing would work just fine.
 
Yes, just shut the main line from the street off, should be near the water meter, or where the water meter was. Well companies do it like that all the time if your pump fails.
 
MauleSkinner said:
If you close the main valve on the receiving house, I would think there shouldn’t be any backflow issues.
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In reality, that is true. An anal inspector might consider it a cross connection though.
 
I am guessing the water provider has a rule against running 2 homes off one service/meter. They would be loosing the base fee for the 2nd home.

I worked for a rural water system in the early 80's, 2 employees when I started and 3 when I left, 1000 services. If the water had been turned off to the house to be demoed and the meter pulled, we probably would let you slide for a month or two. You would need to cap the line from the demo house and not be an ******* for us to let it slide.
 
Who's gonna notice it if it's for a couple of months? Shut off the main to the vacant house and run the hose.
 
JOhnH said:
I just bought the house next door to me. I plan to demolish the house in about a month, but in the meantime, I'd like to keep water in the pipes for the bathrooms. My house and the new house are about 20 feet apart and both have exterior faucets on the near sides.

Can I just run a hose with two male ends from one house to the other and keep both faucets open?
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I think you need two girl ends
 
Joe_B1 said:
Who's gonna notice it if it's for a couple of months? Shut off the main to the vacant house and run the hose.
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This is my opinion. Obviously houses differ, but our water meter is by the street. That's where it's read from. If I wanted to do this same thing with our neighbors, the hose would run behind each of our fence gates and be unreachable by any water inspector without some notice. I can't imagine anybody would even notice.

It would even be a simple matter to bury it if you were real concerned.
 
PaulS said:
I have 3 in my cellar, won't cost me anything and have you been to the hardware store lately?
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Everyone in there knows me by name and can usually guess what I am in there for (based on what I have in my hand at the time). It takes me longer to chat with the staff than to find what I want and pay for it.
 
Anything involving liquids under pressure is advanced class to me.
Why does he need to turn off the vacant house water, if he is asking about providing it water, from his home?
Can we not presume there already is no water being provided, if he is wondering how to get water to it from other sources?
Maybe I am just late for tonight’s wine.
 
JOhnH said:
I just bought the house next door to me. I plan to demolish the house in about a month, but in the meantime, I'd like to keep water in the pipes for the bathrooms. My house and the new house are about 20 feet apart and both have exterior faucets on the near sides.

Can I just run a hose with two male ends from one house to the other and keep both faucets open?
Click to expand...

Legally, no. Practically, yes.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Anything involving liquids under pressure is advanced class to me.
Why does he need to turn off the vacant house water, if he is asking about providing it water, from his home?
Can we not presume there already is no water being provided, if he is wondering how to get water to it from other sources?
Maybe I am just late for tonight’s wine.
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When the previous owner discontinues their service, the city will "probably" shut off the valve. But that doesn't always happen.
If I just use city water without paying for it because they didn't cut it off, I would be stealing.
If I run a hose from my house, I need to make sure the main valve to the city supply line is cut off to prevent back flow.

But as I think about it, it's not worth the hassle. The house will be empty, so until I have it demolished, I'll probably just haul a 5 gallon bucket of water over there every week or so and pour it in the commodes and some of the drains. Even that probably isn't necessary but I have smelled empty houses before when the drains dried out and sewer gasses started coming up. I don't want that.
 
Are you guys proposing that a connection from your water main might flow across to his and back flow into the second house’s water main. That’s the same source, right?

1) it’s the same water main. The pressure in the second house cannot get higher than the pressure in the main. They come from same source right?
2) the second house doesn’t have the water turned on, so there no place for it to back flush to.

basic physics.

I’d hook it up. It’s a week, right?
 
Someone told me to pour vegetable oil into the toilet bowl and sink drains. It’ll stay in the trap and not evaporate and prevent sewer gas smell.

I didn’t try it so not recommending it but just passing that along. I have a thing about not pouring fats or oils into the house drains though so not sure I’d ever even do it.
 
JOhnH said:
I just bought the house next door to me. I plan to demolish the house in about a month, but in the meantime, I'd like to keep water in the pipes for the bathrooms. My house and the new house are about 20 feet apart and both have exterior faucets on the near sides.

Can I just run a hose with two male ends from one house to the other and keep both faucets open?
Click to expand...

Another choice is to keep a couple of 5 gallon buckets of water in the new house. 2-3 gallons will flush a standard toilet and leave you enough to wash your hands.
 
If you just don't want the traps to go dry, go to wally world, buy a couple of gallons of RV antifreeze, and pour some into the traps. Be sure to get the mostly non-toxic glycol kind, not the alcohol kind. Pretty sure it works like the automotive glycol, in that it doesn't evaporate, so you'll be set. This is standard practice to freeze-proof cabins for the winter.
 
Are any of your neighbors named Karen?:D

I'd just run the hose over there...
 
Same guy owns both houses. Who cares if its connected with a hose and running off one meter? The city still gets their money :dunno:
 
JOhnH said:
When the previous owner discontinues their service, the city will "probably" shut off the valve. But that doesn't always happen.
If I just use city water without paying for it because they didn't cut it off, I would be stealing.
If I run a hose from my house, I need to make sure the main valve to the city supply line is cut off to prevent back flow.

But as I think about it, it's not worth the hassle. The house will be empty, so until I have it demolished, I'll probably just haul a 5 gallon bucket of water over there every week or so and pour it in the commodes and some of the drains. Even that probably isn't necessary but I have smelled empty houses before when the drains dried out and sewer gasses started coming up. I don't want that.
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Backflow ain’t gonna be a thing unless the City, or whatever, main loses pressure. And even then it’s not a thing for your concern which is the dirty side plumbing. 5 gallon bucket once a week is way overkill. P-traps don’t evaporate that fast and it just takes a cup or two to fill them up. Measuring the time it takes a commode to evaporate dry will be measured in months, not weeks.
 
Rushie said:
Someone told me to pour vegetable oil into the toilet bowl and sink drains. It’ll stay in the trap and not evaporate and prevent sewer gas smell.

I didn’t try it so not recommending it but just passing that along. I have a thing about not pouring fats or oils into the house drains though so not sure I’d ever even do it.
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Hadn’t heard that one before but yeah, that would work. It’d just take a little skin floating on top to inhibit evaporation. Not enough at all to cause ‘grease in the drains’ problems. Thanks for the tip. I have a place that sits empty for months at a time.
 
.

A the very least you could just run your garden hose to the other house and fill the toilet or sink whenever you need to.

Personally I liked your original idea outdoor tap to tap and make sure incoming city tap is turned off .... every house has a shutoff tap no matter where the meter is .

.
 
JOhnH said:
Can I just run a hose with two male ends from one house to the other and keep both faucets open?
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kyleb said:
Legally, no. Practically, yes.
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Timbeck2 said:
Same guy owns both houses. Who cares if its connected with a hose and running off one meter? The city still gets their money :dunno:
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I had this same thought. IS it illegal? I suppose this would vary by jurisdiction.

It's not stealing water, he owns both houses so is still paying for it. Yes, there would be an additional base charge for the service, but that (in my mind) is more of a utility company policy than a legal issue. Functionally, it makes no difference whether he fills water jugs in one house and then walks them over to the other, runs a hose from one house through the window into the other, or connects the two taps.

I suppose it could be illegal from a "code" standpoint due to backflow possibilities, etc., but I don't know enough about that to for an opinion, and as stated, the water main should be shut off anyway.

However, public utilities I think do often have laws protecting them (right or wrong...) so it's very dependent on local laws.

Some parts of the country have very unregulated utilities. I saw this for the first time in Dayton, Ohio. I don't think we got to choose where our water came from, but we definitely had to select from several natural gas, electricity, and garbage pickup suppliers.
 
Are you going to demolish to rebuild, or demolish to have a bigger yard? If rebuilding, won’t you need to open a new account with the municipality, or whoever supplies the water, anyway? Why not go ahead and do that now? If demolishing to have a bigger yard won’t they need to disconnect and cap off the sewer to the house? Can you go ahead and permanently disconnect the water and the sewer now?
 
Plano Pilot said:
I am guessing the water provider has a rule against running 2 homes off one service/meter. They would be loosing the base fee for the 2nd home.

I worked for a rural water system in the early 80's, 2 employees when I started and 3 when I left, 1000 services. If the water had been turned off to the house to be demoed and the meter pulled, we probably would let you slide for a month or two. You would need to cap the line from the demo house and not be an ******* for us to let it slide.
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That depends on how the connection fee is assessed. Normally, it's a one time fee when the service is installed, and it stays with the house. If it is assessed with the bill, then there is the argument that there is a loss. There is a loss of a standby fee (base charge with no water usage) but on the other hand there is one less service that needs 'standby' status.

bflynn said:
Are you guys proposing that a connection from your water main might flow across to his and back flow into the second house’s water main. That’s the same source, right?

1) it’s the same water main. The pressure in the second house cannot get higher than the pressure in the main. They come from same source right?
2) the second house doesn’t have the water turned on, so there no place for it to back flush to.

basic physics.

I’d hook it up. It’s a week, right?
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For a residential house to house connection, 99.9% of the time you're going to be absolutely right. A common example of a prohibited cross connection is an interconnection with a residential (or commercial) service to an industrial system, where there could be foreign pressures and contaminants present. And yes, industrial plumbing systems are surveyed for cross connections and appropriate backflow protection devices employed internally to separate potable from process water.
 
RussR said:
……. I don't think we got to choose where our water came from, but we definitely had to select from several natural gas, electricity, and garbage pickup suppliers.
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That’s a thing. The Water company is usually a Government entity. City, County but often a District. They can slap a Lien on the property and record it. Then they can Foreclose. This is why it’s common that Landlords include water with the rent. Other utilities can’t Foreclose on the property. They have to go after the customer personally. Even though it may be a subordinate lien time wise to other liens, the Gov Liens will be superior to other liens like Mortgages and mechanics liens when it’s time to split up the money.
 
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