Water Shutoff Valve Found Outside The House In Old Orchard Beach, Maine

On Tuesday August 1st, 2023, I received a text message from Tish. She and her husband needed to find the outside water shutoff valve, at their home in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. She told me they were available until 11:00 am and it was 9:00am now. I immediately texted her back and told her that I would be there in 15-20 minutes. This call out would be a first for me. I had never tried to find a water shutoff, in the past. How hard could it be?

Once I arrived, Tish and her husband explained that their inside water shutoff was rusted and could not be shut off, in the case of an emergency. They wanted to find the outside valve to shut water off to the house, so that a new inside shutoff valve could then be installed. As I started detecting the area, I started getting lots of hot rocks that had been placed over the lawn, and we removed them as I found them. I also found an old, large rusty railroad spike and lots of old rusty nails, but no shutoff valve. As the trash was being removed, I received a very loud signal on the CTX-3030, showing it to be in the iron range and at a depth of 0-1 inches. We scraped back the rocks, dug a very shallow hole and the spade hit something solid. Scraping back a little more soil brought the water shutoff valve into the daylight. Now Tish and her husband may contact the local Water Company to come shut their water off and have their new inside shutoff installed.