A Leak Is Running: What to Do in the First Five Minutes

What do I do in the first minute?

Isolate the supply, then call. Closing the internal stopcock — under the kitchen sink in most London homes, clockwise to shut — stops water entering the property. Everything after that minute deals with water already inside the building rather than water still arriving.

1. Close the internal stopcock.
2. Call 07446 375079.
3. Open the lowest cold tap in the property.
4. Move what sits under the leak.

The order is the instruction. Isolation comes first because every second of a live main adds water to a building that is already taking it. The call comes second because an engineer starts travelling while the rest of the list is being worked through, and the person on the line talks the caller through anything the valve refuses to do.

The internal stopcock is the valve that isolates the whole property’s cold supply. Closing it stops water arriving and does not empty pipes that are already full, which is what the third action deals with.

The water is off — why is it still running?

Open the lowest cold tap in the property and leave it running until it stops. Pipes hold their contents after the valve closes, and a loft cistern on a gravity-fed system keeps feeding outlets for several minutes. Draining the run empties it through the tap instead of through the break.

Two volumes keep moving after the stopcock shuts. The first is the water standing in the pipework itself, which drains downward under gravity to whatever opening is lowest — the break, unless a tap is opened lower. The second is a cold water storage cistern in the loft, which is not fed by the stopcock at all once it is full and continues to supply the taps and the hot cylinder until it empties.

A gravity-fed system is one storing cold water in a loft cistern and feeding outlets by height rather than by mains pressure. A property with a sealed, pressurised system holds far less standing water and drains down faster. The test is the same in both cases: run the lowest cold tap until the flow dies, then check the leak.

What do I move, and what do I put underneath?

Move what is under the water before you deal with the water. Five things come clear first: contents on the floor below, anything electrical, rugs and soft furnishings, stored paper, and anything in a cupboard beneath a wet ceiling. A container catches the drip afterwards.

• Contents standing on the floor below the leak. Water finds the lowest point and spreads outward from it.
• Anything electrical. Extension leads, chargers and appliances come out of the room before anything else is arranged.
• Rugs and soft furnishings. These hold water rather than shedding it, and a wet rug on a timber floor damages the floor.
• Stored paper. Documents, books and photographs are the contents least likely to survive drying.
• The contents of a cupboard under a wet ceiling. A cupboard beneath a saturated ceiling takes the collapse as well as the water.

The container comes after the moving, not before. A bowl under a drip catches water and buys nothing while the room around it is still full of things the water is reaching.

What do I photograph before anything is moved?

Photograph six things while the leak is still in place: the whole room, the wet area at its full extent, the source, the contents where the water reached them, the meter reading, and the ceiling from below. Note the date and time on each.

• The whole room, from a doorway, so the extent has a context.
• The wet area at its full extent, before any of it starts to dry back.
• The source, where it is visible — the split, the fitting, the failed joint.
• The contents where the water reached them, in position rather than after they were moved.
• The meter reading, which fixes the volume lost against a date.
• The ceiling from below, including any staining, sagging or dripping.

Photograph the contents in place first, then move them. Where an item has to be moved before it can be photographed, photograph the position it came out of as well. Both are ordinary requests from a loss adjuster and neither is recoverable afterwards.

Four of the five minutes are spent stopping water. The fifth is spent on evidence, and the reason for spending it there is not a plumbing reason at all.

Why do the photographs come before the drying?

Record the damage first, because drying removes the evidence of it. Escape of water is the insurance term for sudden water damage from a burst or leaking pipe, and a claim is assessed on what the damage was, not on what a dried room looks like a week later.

A claim is settled against a record. Drying equipment arrives within days on most escape of water claims, and it works — which is the problem, because a floor that has been dried reads as a floor that was never wet. The photographs taken in the first five minutes are the only record of the state the claim is actually about.

Three details make the record usable rather than decorative. The date and time on each image, taken from the file rather than written afterwards. A fixed viewpoint, so the same corner appears in the first photograph and the last. And a meter reading, which converts an impression of a lot of water into a number a claim handler can work with.

When does this need an engineer rather than a bucket?

Call immediately on four conditions: water arriving under mains pressure, water reaching a light fitting, a socket or a consumer unit, a ceiling bulging or dripping, and a stopcock that will not close. Each of the four puts the property out of safe use.

• Water under mains pressure. A split on the rising main discharges continuously and does not slow.
• Water at a light fitting, a socket or a consumer unit. Two trades and one immediate risk, and the electrical side comes first.
• A ceiling bulging or dripping. Saturated plasterboard holds standing water and fails in one piece.
• A stopcock that will not close. The property has no means of isolating itself, and the next failure has no answer.

Everything outside those four is a booked appointment rather than an emergency. A dripping tap, a weeping compression joint under a basin and a cistern refilling too often all wait for a window, and all three are quoted before an engineer travels.

Related

• emergency plumbing
• repair service for burst pipe
• escape of water insurance claim