Simple Checks Before Calling an Emergency Plumber

Start With the Stopcock, Not the Phone

When water is coming through a ceiling or pooling around the washing machine, the instinct is to ring someone straight away. That's understandable, and sometimes it is exactly the right call. But in most homes there is a step that takes under a minute and can turn a serious insurance claim into a mop and a bucket: turning the water off.

Family-run plumbing firms see it every week. A customer panics, waits forty minutes for an engineer, and by the time he arrives the damage has crept through two floors. More often than not, the fix was within arm's reach the whole time. A little local knowledge — and a torch — is worth more than a fast response when a pipe lets go at 11pm.

Find Your Stopcock Before You Need It

Every home has one, and most people have never looked at it. The internal stopcock is usually under the kitchen sink, in a downstairs cloakroom, under the stairs, or in the airing cupboard. It's a brass tap on the incoming mains pipe, and it turns clockwise to close. Give it a quarter turn and the flow should slow; turn it fully and it should stop.

Two things are worth doing today, while nothing is wrong:

• Find it, and make sure everyone in the house knows where it is.
• Turn it fully off and on once, gently, to check it isn't seized. A stopcock that won't budge is a problem you want to discover on a dry Tuesday, not during a flood.

Some older properties also have an external stopcock at the boundary, under a small metal cover in the front garden or pavement. That one needs a stopcock key or a long-handled tool, and it's the one to use if the internal valve has failed or the leak is between the two. Keep a note of which is which in the kitchen drawer.

Know Which Valve Does What

Beyond the main stopcock, most modern homes have small isolation valves on individual appliances. They're the little brass fittings with a slot on the side, usually on the flexible tails beneath a basin, behind a toilet, or on the feed to a washing machine. A flat-head screwdriver turned a quarter turn so the slot sits across the pipe shuts that branch off without killing the whole house.

This matters because you can isolate the failure and leave the rest of the family with working taps, a flushing loo and a hot shower. Feed-and-expansion tanks in the loft and cylinders in the airing cupboard often have their own gate valves too. If you can shut down one branch rather than the lot, do it.

Look for Leaks in the Usual Suspects

Once the water is off, a slow walk around with a torch will often tell you exactly what you're dealing with:

• An overflow pipe dripping outside. That white plastic pipe poking through the wall is usually telling you a ball valve in the loft tank or WC cistern isn't shutting off properly.
• A cistern that trickles. If you can hear water running long after the flush has finished, the flush valve or washer has had it.
• Damp patches around the base of the toilet, under the sink trap, or behind the washing machine. Flexi tails and trap washers are common culprits.
• Weeping radiator valves, especially where the spindle meets the body.
• The boiler pressure gauge. If it drops and won't stay up, you probably have a leak or a faulty component. If it climbs when the heating is on, the filling loop may have been left open.

When the Heating or Hot Water Stops

Before you assume the worst, check the simple things. Is the boiler pressure between 1 and 1.5 bar? Is the thermostat turned up, and is the programmer set to the right mode rather than "off" or "holiday"? Are any radiators cold at the top? That's air, and bleeding them is a job you can do yourself with a radiator key and an old towel.

In a cold snap, a frozen condensate pipe is one of the most common reasons a boiler locks out. If the white pipe running outside from the boiler is iced at the end, thaw it gently with warm — not boiling — water poured from a jug. If you can smell gas at any point, stop, don't touch electrical switches, open the windows and ring the national gas emergency service.

What Not to Do, and What to Tell Us

A few firm don'ts. Never use a naked flame on a frozen pipe — a hairdryer on its lowest setting or warm towels are safer, working from the end nearest the tap. Never ignore water near sockets or light fittings; switch off at the consumer unit first. Don't keep resetting a boiler that repeatedly locks out, and don't put a bucket under a ceiling leak and go to bed — turn the water off instead.

When you do ring for help, the more you can tell us, the faster we can help. Let us know where your stopcock is, whether it shuts off properly, what you've already checked and what you found, the make and model of your boiler if it's a heating job, whether water is still running, and whether it's clean or dirty. Add your address, parking and whether anyone will be in.

None of this replaces a good plumber — but it buys you time, limits the damage, and usually keeps the bill down. A family-run firm would far rather you spent five minutes with a torch than an hour with a wet vacuum.