What’s that piece of metal sticking out of your lawn? Kitchener crews can explain | CBC News
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Every spring, plants and flowers begin to pop out of the ground. But this year, some people are noticing a cast iron cover popping up from lawns, gardens or driveways.
It’s called a curb stop box, and that cover is the mechanism that turns off the water from the street to a house.
Tammer Gaber, manager of operations for gas and water with Kitchener Utilities, says it’s an easy fix to put them back in place, but homeowners shouldn’t do it themselves.
“Give your water utility a call and they’ll come out and assess it. We don’t ask the property owners to knock it down with a hammer because you can end up damaging that cast iron cap,” said Gaber.
“You could damage the threads. And worse yet, if that force gets transmitted down to that valve that we showed you, that curb stop valve, that could cause a leak.”
Gaber says the unit is designed to be even with the sidewalk or lawn.
Every spring the water utilities in all area municipalities receive calls about the protruding cover tops caused by the frost and thaw.
“So in the winter time you get a lot of frost heave. The water service is at about six to seven feet. So it doesn’t heave up and down, but the curb stop box will push up,” said Gaber.
“And then when everything thaws, it’ll drop back down and sometimes it’ll raise it a few inches.”
Spring is here and flowers aren’t the only thing popping up from the ground. A combination of frost and thaw is causing curb stop boxes to pop up from the ground. That’s the metal thing on your driveway or front lawn that shuts off the water from the street to the house. Tammer Gaber, Kitchener Utilities’ operations manager, recommends homeowners call the city to have them tapped back into place.
What is that?
CBC K-W decided to look into the issue of pushed up curb stop boxes after several people posted pictures online asking what they were.
A post on a Cambridge reddit thread asked “What is that?” and posted a picture of the protruding curb stop box.
“Hello Homeowners, need help finding someone who can handle that thing in the photo. It’s becoming very annoying now that it’s above the floor. Any ideas who can help?” the post said.
The post had 49 comments with people offering advice, or questioning what exactly the object was as well.
