What to do the moment a pipe bursts

A burst pipe can drop 60 litres of water into your home in under a minute. The first 60 seconds matter more than anything the plumber does later. Here's exactly what to do, in the order to do it.

**Step 1 — Turn off the stopcock.** In most UK homes the internal stopcock is under the kitchen sink, in a downstairs cupboard, or near the front door. One full turn clockwise stops mains water entering the property. If your stopcock is seized (a depressingly common problem), the external stop tap is usually under a small metal cover on the pavement directly outside — you'll need a stopcock key from any hardware shop.

**Step 2 — Drain the system.** Open every cold tap in the house and flush every toilet. This empties the cold supply that's still in the pipes above the burst. Then turn off the boiler at the spur (or the programmer), and open every hot tap to drain the hot side. The less water sitting in the system, the less water keeps escaping after you've isolated the supply.

**Step 3 — Limit the damage.** Move furniture, lift rugs, and roll back carpet edges. A wet-vac (£60 from any DIY shed and worth every penny in a flood) buys you more time than towels ever will. If water is dripping through a ceiling, place a bucket underneath and — counter-intuitively — pierce the bulge in the ceiling with a screwdriver to drain it through a single hole rather than letting the whole ceiling come down at once.

**Step 4 — Photograph everything.** Before you start mopping, photograph the burst pipe, the affected rooms, any visible damage to ceilings, floors and possessions. Insurers ask for this, and a phone photo costs nothing.

**Step 5 — Call a 24/7 plumber and your insurer.** Most home insurance policies cover 'escape of water' but require you to mitigate further damage — which is exactly what steps 1–3 do. A reputable emergency plumber should arrive within 60–90 minutes inside London and quote a fixed price before starting work.

**Common causes of burst pipes:** frozen pipes thawing in spring, corroded copper joints in older properties, mechanical damage during DIY (drilling into a wall is the classic), and pinhole leaks in lead pipework. If your pipes have burst once, ask the plumber to inspect the rest of the run — bursts often come in clusters.