Mobile home plumbing – What’s a Stop?

Stop is plumber speak for a valve that shuts off the water to an appliance or fixture. Stops are universal in site-built homes, but often not installed in Manufactured homes as part of their efforts to keep prices down. This is unfortunate.

Stops let you turn off the water to an individual appliance

Without a stop, you have to turn off the water to the entire home before you can make repairs. If the plumber can’t get there until tomorrow, you can’t shower, bath the kids, cook, etc.

That causes desperate people to make poor decisions using temporary fixes like Duct Tape or kinking the lines.

Considering how vulnerable mobile homes are to water damage, the inability to quickly shut off the water can result in serious damage to floors and carpet.

Mobile homes rarely have stops.

I would encourage everyone to add them whenever possible. Certainly, you will want to add one when you have the water turned off because you are making a repair.

If you have the skills & budget, installing stops would be a good weekend activity. It wouldn’t cost much and would protect you from future damage and problems.