I turned off the inside water valve so I could remove an old water softening unit. I capped off the compressed pipes and then turned the valve back on. No water is coming out of our faucets! I have left two of them open. It's 40 degrees outside, and 8:23 pm, so I don't think it's frozen. Where has my water gone? Is this some kind of weird vacuum lock because air got into the pipes? Thanks for your help.

Hi craniac, it sounds like the valve may have frozen shut, you say that you capped off the compressed pipes? Did you tie the two ends together? You have an inlet and an outlet side that need to be tied back together if there is no bypass valve. If the two ends are connected then its probably the shutoff valve.

I ended up connecting the two pipes with sharkbite connectors and plastic pipe--they're exposed--because I am terrible at soldering pipes. So everything seems to be working, and now maybe the pillbugs will go away once everything dries up.