Plumbing
Stop the water
- If the leak is at one fixture and that fixture has a shutoff valve under it, close it. Clockwise. If it will not turn by hand in a few seconds, leave it and go to the main.
- The main shutoff is usually in the basement, on the street-facing wall, near where the supply enters. Close it fully.
- Open a tap at the lowest point in the house afterwards. That drops the pressure and drains what is still in the pipe rather than leaving it to find the hole.
- On a water heater leak, close the cold inlet valve at the top of the tank. That stops the refill, which is what is feeding the flood.
Then protect the building
Once the water is off, the clock is on the damage rather than the leak. Move what you can out of the water. Lift rugs and furniture legs off wet floors. Get air moving if it is safe to do so. Photograph everything before you clean it up, because your insurer will want it and the photographs taken afterwards are worth less.
What to have ready when you call
- Where the water is coming from, if you know, and whether you managed to shut it off.
- Whether the main shutoff held. This genuinely changes how we dispatch.
- Whether there is standing water near anything electrical.
- The age of the house and of the appliance involved, if you know it.
Getting someone out
We cover Manchester and the surrounding towns, and a person answers the phone. The common emergency jobs are leak detection when the source is not obvious, drain cleaning for a backup, and water heaters when the tank is the thing that let go.
When it is over, the thing that stops the next one is unglamorous: what to check so it does not happen again.