INSTA-POWER EXTENDS TO HARDWARE: Well, sort of. Reader Mark Cridland writes:

This evening I purchased an emergency gas/water valve shutoff “tool.” It’s not a $3.99 wrench, but a T-shaped metallic and rubber-encrusted piece with several mysterious extrusions. Here in LA, it cost nine dollars at a Home Depot outlet. Did you ever describe the crisis that compelled you to suggest this? I’m a new homeowner and I trust your judgment about many things, but the triggering anecdote might have been missed in your daily flurry of postings.

You know, I posted the advice to buy one of those but I don’t think I ever followed it up. I guess I was just trying to forget.

Well, Mark, as a new homeowner you should know that water where there shouldn’t be water is one of the homeowner’s bigger nightmares. In my case, it started dripping out of the breakfast nook’s ceiling, rather suddenly and accompanied by an ominous bulge in the paint and sheetrock. Because of the location, I was pretty sure it was a leaking supply pipe. So I shut off the water to the house and called Advance Plumbing (yeah, like that helps all of you — but they’re honest and good and fast).

It turned out to be a leaking toilet. The water was running down the back of the tank and into the floor, where you wouldn’t see it unless you got a flashlight and looked closely. It then apparently followed the line of the supply pipe for several feet before emerging into (and from) the ceiling above the breakfast nook. So I could have solved the problem by just shutting off the valves at the toilet. But there was wet carpet on the 2d floor directly above the leaky ceiling, which made me assume the leak was in the pipe. I should have known better — water leaks often appear at some remove from the actual source of the water. Had I checked more thoroughly, I wouldn’t have needed to turn off the water to the house.

But on the other hand, there’s something to be said for turning off the water fast when it’s emerging from your ceiling, rather than poking around in an effort to solve the mystery while it’s still flowing.

But if you’ve got a burst pipe (and a really bad one can collapse a ceiling, or blow out a wall, and do considerable damage in very short order) you’ll want to turn off the water to your house yourself, and you won’t want to wait an hour for a plumber or some guy from the water company to do it. And that goes triple for gas. Take a few minutes to find out where you do the shutoff, and to be sure your tool fits where you’ll actually have to use it. Sooner or later, sad to say, you’ll probably need to know this.

Oh, and Home Depot is fine, but that price difference between them and Harbor Freight is pretty much standard. There’s a several-acre (and I don’t exaggerate) Harbor Freight place here, but they’re mostly mail-order. (I think the only other one is in Camarillo). Warning: If you get their catalog, you’ll find all sorts of tools you need. And they’re so cheap it’s easy to convince yourself to buy them.