Leaving a Property Empty: What to Isolate and What to Leave On
Leaving a London property empty changes your insurance before it changes anything else. Most policies name a vacant period, commonly around thirty days, beyond which cover is restricted — and some require the heating left on rather than off. Isolate the stopcock, drain the plumbing from the lowest cold tap, and check your schedule for the figure.
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What should I isolate before leaving?
Close the stopcock, open the lowest cold tap to drain the run, and isolate the washing machine and dishwasher at their own valves. For absences beyond a few days, that combination removes almost all of the flood risk.
- Close the internal stopcock clockwise until it stops.
- Open the lowest cold tap in the property and leave it running until the flow dies.
- Open the remaining cold taps, working upward, then close them all once each has emptied.
- Close the isolation valve on the washing machine and the dishwasher, because a flexible hose under permanent pressure is the commonest domestic escape.
- Empty and disconnect any hose left attached to an outside tap, and leave that tap open.
Appliance hoses earn their own step. A braided fill hose sits under full mains pressure every hour of every day, whether or not the machine is used, and it fails without warning when the braid corrodes. Closing its valve removes the pressure for the whole absence at the cost of ten seconds.
Should the heating be left on?
Frequently yes, and sometimes as a policy condition rather than a precaution. Many insurers require a minimum temperature maintained during unoccupied periods in winter. Turning everything off can breach the cover you are relying on.
The reasoning runs in two directions and they point the same way. A heated property does not reach freezing at its internal pipework, so nothing splits and nothing discharges at thaw. And where the policy wording names a minimum temperature as a condition of cover during an unoccupancy period, meeting it is what keeps the cover in force.
A property whose water has been isolated and fully drained is in a different position, because there is nothing in the pipes to freeze. The wording usually offers both routes — heating maintained, or water isolated and drained — and it names which conditions attach to each.
How long can a property be empty before cover changes?
Most policies name a period, commonly around thirty days, beyond which cover is restricted or conditional. The exact figure is in your schedule, and it is the number that decides whether an escape of water is covered at all.
The period is counted in consecutive days rather than in nights away, and a brief return does not always reset it in the way people assume — some wordings require the property to be occupied overnight, others require a stated number of nights. Read the definition rather than the headline number, because the definition is where the counting rule sits.
Notifying the insurer that the property will be unoccupied is itself a duty in most wordings. Telling them costs nothing and keeps the cover intact; not telling them is the failure that surfaces at the claim.
Does the water need draining as well as isolating?
Yes. Closing the stopcock stops the supply but leaves every pipe above it full. Opening the lowest cold tap empties that volume, so a failure while you are away releases what is in the pipework rather than what is in the main.
The difference is between a bucket and a river. An isolated but undrained property that suffers a split releases the standing contents of the run — a few litres — and then stops. An unisolated property releases whatever the main delivers for as long as nobody is there, which on a two-week absence is measured in tonnes.
What do landlords between tenancies need to do?
Treat a void period as an unoccupied property from day one: isolate, drain, maintain any required temperature, and arrange the inspections the policy names. A void of a few weeks routinely crosses the threshold without anyone noticing.
Voids run longer than intended. A tenancy ending on the first of the month with a new one starting on the fifth of the next is a thirty-five day void, and nobody counted it because nobody was thinking in the insurer’s units. Treating day one as the start of an unoccupancy period removes the counting problem entirely.
Documented inspections are the part most often missed. Where the wording names an inspection interval, the record of those inspections — dated, with photographs — is what proves the condition was met. An inspection nobody wrote down did not happen as far as a claim is concerned.
What should I check on returning?
Four things: the meter, for movement while the property was closed; the ceilings, for new staining; under every sink; and the boiler pressure. Each takes a minute and each finds a problem while it is still small.
- The meter. Compare it against the photograph taken on the way out, before any tap is opened.
- The ceilings. Walk every room and look for staining that was not there, particularly under bathrooms and under the loft.
- Under every sink. Open the cupboards and look at the tap tails, the trap and the appliance connections.
- The boiler pressure gauge. A cold reading below the marked minimum means the sealed heating circuit lost water while the property was closed.