My house is old, built early last century, and doesn’t have a shutoff at the house. My only valve is near the meter and is the type with a raised bar accross the top, like these.
My problem is that it (there’s only one) won’t turn. I have one of those big “T” handle wrenches with a device on the end which fits over the bar ob
the valve. I’m still pretty strong, and I can turn it hard enough to torque the wrench shaft, but it will not move. It’s supposed to close clockwise, but I’ve tried both directions.
So, is there some kind of trick to turn it, like a lockout or something?
Thanks,
mangeorge
BTW; mine looks more like the “corporation stop valve” in the picture. There is no homeowner shut-off valve.
Contact a plumber?
Is this GQ?
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Yep!
Tapping the valve with a hammer will sometimes crack up old limey deposits, which act like cement.
It’ll also release those busted up bits of rock into the inner workings of your valve.
Disaster may ensue, so if you try it yourself, be certain you have ready access to a plumber who can fix things if they go wrong.
Your warning is well taken. I was a little concerned as I was twisting on the wrench. If my gentle attempts continue to be unsuccessful I will indeed call a plumber. My old pipes are long past due for replacement with some shiny new copper.
I just want to switch the hot and cold lines at my bathroom faucets so that they conform to the standard, and the shut-offs there are also a little shaky.
I remember my Dad going around and exercising all the valves once in a while. He’d also remove the aerator and clean out the screen on the sink faucets. But I’m much too smart for all that. 
This is good advice. But if the valve is before the meter then it is the water co. valve. You might give them a call first, they may come out and turn it off.
When you get the water off I would add a new valve in the line feeding your house.
Do NOT attempt to muscle it open! That ended up costing a friend of mine thousands of dollars when it snapped, triggered a leak, and flooded neighboring basements.
Get a good lubricant (Liquid Wrench or WD-40), spray it and let it sit. Wiggle it a bit, and repeat. After several times, use moderate force and see if that works. If you use the tapping method that Squink suggested, do it gently and use a small, lightweight hammer.
If that doesn’t work, it’s probably cheaper in the long run to call a plumber than to take the risk of breaking your main.
The homeowner is usually responsible for the piping on the side of the meter that runs into the house and the water bureau/district/company is responsible for everything up to the meter.
Assuming that you are talking about the valve on your side of the meter, you are still better off to call the water provider and ask for help before you break something. They should be happy to help you. Ask if they charge a service fee for a visit. It is the best interests of the water system that they help you prevent a much bigger problem that might be caused by your attempt to shut off the water.
Utility companies want you to call them with locating water and power and other lines and they do it for free. If they think you might be about to break something, I think they will come out and look at it for free too.
Definitely call the water company. If that sucker breaks they’ll charge you for it. The valves in that picture show that the water is on, does yours look like that? When the water is on, the ‘bar’ will point towards the house (usually perpendicular to the street). When it’s off, it’ll be 90º off of that (usually parallel with the street).
Also, look and see if there’s anything stuck in that loop on the valve. That’s there to run a padlock through your water line if you don’t pay your bill.
The valve next to the meter belongs to the water company and they don’t like homeowners playing with it. I found out the hard way after I broke the one at my house and the water company had to shut off the water to about 40 homes to replace the valve. Fortunately for me, the water company also accepted resposibility for the faulty valve and did not charge me the $500 or so it could have cost. I would call the water company as suggested.
Is your meter outside in a pit like the photograph?
If so, are you 100% positive there isn’t a shut off in the home? Because that would be mighty rare. Sometimes they’re in strange/ hard to find places.
If it was me, I’d have a go at it again and put a little more of my shoulder into it. That valve is much less likely to break than a gate valve. Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t pound on it.
I would however get a good grip on it and lean hard into it.
But thats just my 200 pesos.
YMMV
ETA
Have you tried both directions???
Maybe you’re up against the stop and you’re simply turning in the wrong direction.
COOL! 
I’ll take you up on that offer.
haha
I had one of those last night as I was dozing off. I seem to remember seeing a valve at the back of the house, near the water heater. I’ll have a look when I get home.
As raindog mentions above, that would make more sense than no valve.
Anticipation of Discovery! What a rush.
I’ll be back.
Many years ago, I worked (as a uni student) on a maintenance gang at a NZ uni (not the one I attended). One of our jobs was removing some disused 4" gas pipes in the service tunnels. This involved swinging a sledgehammer to break the joints (a cutting disk would ignite the remaining gas in the pipes). We were not warned about the 10" water main just below the gas pipe, though, and it got damaged. The plumbing team were pretty pissed at us, and we had to come in on a weekend to help fit the replacement sections. But because the plumbing team had been less than assiduous about maintaining the water main systems, their valves were unable close off the water flow to the required sections. They had to schedule a complete shutdown, replace the sections of pipe, and service all the valves (as they should have done regularly anyhow). The higher-ups were considerably more pissed at the plumbers than they were at us for damaging the pipes in the first place.
Si
I’m a little late to the party here, but as a water system operator, I echo the advice to call them. If this valve is upstream of the meter, it’s theirs, not yours. If you break it, there’s likely no other shutoff at your service line and they’ll have to shut a section of main off, pissing off other customers. Should one of my customers do something like this, I’d be perfectly happy to bill them for our time fixing it and lost revenue from having the other customers down. If we did it, of course, we could still have to shut the street down but we’d absorb the cost.
I would not touch that valve. It will probably break. I had the same problem and here is what eventually happened. I called the plumber and he called the town and arranged that someone would come on the morning that the plumber arrived. (The guy from the town didn’t come and complained that he hadn’t been given sufficient notice. A call to the mayor resolved that.) Finally, he came with a four foot long “key”. Then he had to find the outside valve. But on the front of the house, near the bottom, a white circle with the number 28 was painted. The guy from the town didn’t know what that meant, but I did (somehow), and we measured 28’ out from where that circle was and dug a few inches into the garden where we found a valve cap. Removing that opened a long shaft into which he inserted his key and turned it off. The plumber then went into the basement and replaced the sticky valve by one that you just turn 90 degrees to close and they guy from the town then opened the outside valve and everything worked. It was expensive, but now I have a working cutoff valve. I think the plumber could have done all of it, but it was against the law. Although how that idiot from the town keeps his job, escapes me.