Water where it should not be? The emergency line is answered by a person, 24 hours a day, every day of the year — and we will talk you to your shutoff before anybody gets in a van. Call 000-000-0000
If you smell gas, leave the building and call your gas utility's emergency line from outside — do not operate switches on your way out. Never stand in water that has reached an outlet, an appliance or an electrical panel; cut the power only if you can do it safely from dry ground, otherwise leave and call the utility. General guidance on this page is not a substitute for a licensed plumber looking at your own building.
In order
The first six things to do
Stop the water
The main shutoff is usually in the basement where the service enters the building, often beside or just after the meter. Turn it clockwise until it stops. If the problem is one fixture, its own stop is under the sink or behind the toilet.
Keep away from electricity
Never stand in water that has reached an outlet, an appliance or the electrical panel. Cut the power at the panel only if you can reach it safely from dry ground — otherwise leave the area and call the utility.
If it is a water heater, shut its cold inlet
The valve on top of the tank, on the incoming side. That stops it refilling itself, which is what turns a leak into a flood.
If it is sewage, stop using every fixture
Every flush and every sink makes it worse. Do not run the washing machine or the dishwasher. Keep people and pets out of the affected area.
If you smell gas, leave first
Get everyone outside, do not touch light switches, and call your gas utility's emergency line from outside the building. They come around the clock and they make it safe. Call a plumber afterwards.
Then call, and tell us three things
What is happening, whether you have managed to stop the water, and whether anybody in the household is elderly, unwell or very young. The third one changes your place in the queue.
Do this today
Find your shutoffs while nothing is wrong
Every one of these takes a minute to locate and is impossible to find calmly at three in the morning with water coming through a ceiling. Walk round with somebody else in the household so two people know.
- The main. Where the service enters the basement, usually near the meter. Turn it fully off and fully on once a year so it does not seize.
- Every fixture stop. Under each sink, behind each toilet. If one will not turn, it is a $95 job now and a disaster later.
- The water heater's cold inlet. On top of the tank. This is the one that stops a leaking heater refilling itself.
- The washing machine valves. And check whether the hoses are original rubber — braided stainless replacements cost very little.
- The outside taps. And their inside isolating valves, which is what you shut before a freeze.
- Label them all. A luggage tag and a marker. We do this free on every service-agreement inspection.
Frozen pipes
The Queens winter special
Preventing it
Keep the heat on in every room that has plumbing in an outside wall, open the cabinet doors under sinks on the coldest nights, insulate exposed pipe in crawl spaces and unheated basements, and never turn the heat off when you go away.
If a tap runs slowly or not at all in a freeze
That is probably ice. Open the tap, leave it open, and warm the pipe gently along its length with a hairdryer or a heating pad, working back from the tap. Never use a torch or an open flame on a pipe.
If it has already burst
Shut the main, open the lowest taps in the house to drain the system, and call. Do not turn the water back on to check — that is how a manageable leak becomes a ceiling.
After a thaw
Do not assume you got away with it. Ice splits copper lengthways, and the split often only opens under pressure weeks later. A joint that has started to weep after a freeze is telling you something.
Right now
Water coming in? Call, do not email
The emergency line is answered by a person at any hour of any day. The first thing we do is get the water stopped — often before anybody leaves the shop, because your shutoff is faster than our van.