What to Do If a Pipe Bursts

Turn the water off at the internal stop tap, then open every cold tap in the house to drain the pipework down. If water is anywhere near wiring, sockets or light fittings, turn the electricity off at the consumer unit. Switch the heating off. Then start ringing people. In that order, and the second step is the one nearly everybody skips.

Draining down matters because the pipes hold a surprising amount of water after the stop tap closes, and all of it is still heading for the hole. We are a Gas Safe registered and OFTEC certified business based in Bearsted, and burst pipes are the call we take most in a cold snap. What follows is what to do, where to find the things you will need, and why bursts happen when they do.

The first few minutes

In our experience, turning the water off and opening the taps works better than turning the water off alone, because the pipework holds a great deal after the stop tap closes, and draining it down is often the difference between a wet floor and a ceiling coming through.

Open the cold taps rather than the hot ones first, and open the highest ones as well as the lowest. Water needs air behind it to leave a pipe, so opening a tap upstairs helps everything below it empty. Once it has run through, the pipework has given up most of what it was holding.

If you can safely get a bucket or a bowl under the leak, do. If it is coming through a ceiling and the ceiling is bulging, that is water pooling above a plasterboard sheet, and a small hole made deliberately in the lowest point of the bulge lets it drain in one place rather than bringing the whole sheet down. That sounds alarming and it is genuinely the lesser damage.

Find your stop tap now, not then

The single most useful thing in this article is to go and find your stop tap this week, while it is daylight and nothing is wrong. Turn it off and on again to check it actually works, because a stop tap that has not been touched in fifteen years quite often will not move, and finding that out during a flood is not the moment.

We have found that seized stop taps are far more common than people expect, particularly in older Kent housing where the original brass tap is still in place. If yours will not turn, or turns without doing anything, that is a small, cheap job to sort now and an expensive one to discover later. Do not force it, because a stop tap snapped off at the spindle turns a manageable problem into an immediate one.

What not to do

• Do not touch anything electrical if water is near it. That includes switching off at the socket rather than the consumer unit, and it includes light switches in a room where water is coming through the ceiling.
• Do not turn the heating back on to dry the place out. If the leak is on the heating side, the system needs isolating rather than running.
• Do not patch it with tape and leave it. Repair tape and clamps are genuinely useful for getting through the next few hours, and they are not a repair.
• Do not start pulling up flooring or cutting into ceilings before photographing everything, because that is what your insurer will want to see.

What your insurer will want

Escape of water is one of the most common household claims there is, and what slows a claim down is almost always the evidence rather than the damage. Photograph everything before you start moving it, including the water while it is still there, the source once you can actually see it, and anything that has been damaged.

Keep whatever gets taken out, at least until somebody has seen it. A section of split pipe is worth holding onto, because it shows what happened rather than relying on anybody's description of it afterwards. And keep the invoice for the emergency work separate from any repair or making good that follows, because insurers frequently treat the two differently.

Why pipes burst, and when

Most bursts are freezing, and the timing catches people out. Water expands as it freezes and splits the pipe, but the split does not leak while the ice is still in it. The flood arrives on the thaw, which is why a cold snap produces a wave of calls a day or two after the temperature comes back up rather than during it.

That is also why the vulnerable pipes are the ones in unheated spaces. Lofts, garages, outbuildings, and any run in an external wall or under a suspended floor. From working with customers across Kent, the two that come up most are a loft that was insulated properly at floor level, which keeps the heat downstairs and leaves the pipes above it colder than they used to be, and an outside tap that nobody isolated before winter.

Bursts that are not freezing are usually age or movement. Old imperial pipework, joints disturbed by building work, or a slow corrosion pinhole that has finally gone. Those tend to show as a stain or a damp patch first, which is worth acting on rather than watching.

What happens when we arrive

An emergency call-out starts from £80. The first job is making it safe and stopping the water rather than making it pretty, so a burst usually gets isolated and capped or repaired the same visit, with anything cosmetic left for afterwards.

If the pipe that has gone is one of several in poor condition, we will say so rather than repairing one and leaving the rest. And if the leak is on the heating side rather than the mains, that is a different job again, because a system that keeps losing pressure has often been leaking quietly for a while before anybody sees water.

Stopping it happening

Lag the pipework in lofts, garages and anywhere else unheated, and pay attention to the runs nearest an outside wall. Isolate and drain the outside tap before winter. If you are going away in cold weather, either leave the heating on low rather than off entirely, or turn the water off at the stop tap and drain down. A plumber can do all of that in a morning and it costs a fraction of one burst.

So, water off, taps open, electrics off if water is near them, heating off, then call. And go and find that stop tap before you need it. We cover Maidstone and the rest of Kent from Bearsted. If you have a burst now, get in touch and call or text 07710 544484.