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How to shut off the water in a Hollywood, FL home

Start at the house valve on an outside wall, where the supply line enters the home — on many Hollywood houses it sits near a hose bib on the front or side wall. Turn it clockwise until it stops and check that a faucet inside runs dry. If the house valve is stuck or you cannot find it, the city's meter box near the street is the backup. A pressurized supply line keeps running until one of those valves closes, so this two-minute job is worth more than everything that comes after it: it is the difference between a wet room and a wet house. This page covers both valves, plus where to look inside a condo. And if the water came from a pipe that has already burst, what follows the valve is extraction and drying — the order of work is laid out on the company's burst pipe water damage page.

The house valve: first place to look

On a typical Hollywood single-family home, the main shutoff is on an exterior wall where the water line comes in from the street — often the front wall or a side wall, frequently near an outdoor faucet. It may be a round gate-valve handle (turn clockwise to close) or a lever-style ball valve (turn a quarter turn so the handle sits across the pipe). Older homes in Hollywood Lakes and Hollywood Hills sometimes have the valve low on the wall, behind shrubs, or partly buried at the wall base after decades of landscaping — a flashlight helps, and so does clearing the spot once you have found it, today, before you need it at 2 a.m.

Two cautions. Old gate valves can be stiff or can fail to seal fully after years without use; close it firmly but do not force it with tools to the point of breaking it, because a snapped valve stem turns one leak into two. And once the water is off, open a faucet at the lowest point in the house to drain the pressure — that also tells you the shutoff worked, since the flow should stop.

The city meter box: the backup

The City of Hollywood's meter box sits near the street or sidewalk, usually under a rectangular metal or concrete lid in the front easement. Inside are the meter and a valve on the street side and, on many boxes, a customer-side valve as well. One honest warning from experience: utilities differ on whether owners may turn the valve inside the meter box, so if the house valve is stuck, call City of Hollywood Public Utilities and ask before you put a wrench on the meter side. Turning the customer-side valve in the box is the safer target when one is fitted.

While the box is open, the meter itself tells you something useful later: with every fixture in the house off, a meter that keeps turning means a line is still losing water somewhere — one of the classic warning signs of a hidden slab leak, along with a water bill that jumps for no reason and a warm patch of floor.

Inside a condo unit

Hollywood Beach towers and other condos rarely give you a whole-house valve you control. Look in three places: under the kitchen and bathroom sinks for fixture valves, beside or behind the water heater, and in the utility closet where the unit's own shutoff is often mounted. If the unit valve will not stop the flow, call building management or the front desk — towers can shut a riser, and the crew will need building access, a certificate of insurance and a booked service elevator anyway, so management is part of the job from the first hour. Tell management in writing, with photos, the same day you find the leak.

Fixture valves for a single leak

Not every leak needs the whole house off. A burst supply line under one sink, a running toilet or a split ice-maker line can sometimes be stopped at its own fixture valve — the small oval handles on the wall under sinks and behind toilets — while you keep water to the rest of the house. If a fixture valve is corroded solid, do not fight it; go to the main. Dishwashers and washing machines have their own supply valves too, usually behind or beside the appliance.

Right after the water stops

1. Power: switch off breakers to wet rooms only if you can reach the panel from dry ground. Never stand in water to reach a panel.
2. Photos: every room, wide and close, before cleanup. Keep receipts for anything you buy — towels, fans, a wet-vac rental — because an adjuster will ask.
3. Move what you can: rugs, electronics, papers and small valuables up off the floor.
4. Call for extraction: the water on the floor is now a clock problem — see the first 72 hours for why, and emergency water extraction for what the crew does next.

For sewer or floodwater, skip the DIY steps beyond the valve: that water is Category 3 under the IICRC S500 standard (iicrc.org), stay out of it, and let the crew handle it in protective equipment. Rising water from outside is also a different insurance animal — it belongs to flood coverage, explained by FEMA, not to a homeowners policy. The full start-to-finish process after the valve is closed is in the restoration guide.