Home › Burst Pipes
Water loose in the house is frightening, but the drill is short and fixed. Make fast, then assess — here it is, posted in order.
Notice summary: close the stopcock before all else — under the kitchen sink in most houses, clockwise until it stops. Then open the cold taps to run the pipes down, cut the electrics if water is near them and you can reach the consumer unit dry-footed, and only then ring 020 4577 2888 to raise a local plumber. The flood stops with the stopcock, not with the phone.
Everything else can wait the thirty seconds this takes. Kitchen sink cupboard first; turn the brass valve clockwise until it will not turn further.
The stopcock is the valve where the mains enters your home, and closing it stops the supply feeding the burst. In the older terraced houses near Carrickfergus town centre and down towards the harbour it is nearly always low at the back of the sink cupboard. In the newer estates up Woodburn way, and in bungalows and extensions, it wanders — hall cupboard, utility room, garage, under the stairs, wherever the incoming pipe first shows itself.
A word of warning to all households: an old stopcock may be seized. Use firm, steady pressure with a cloth for grip; do not haul on it until the spindle shears, because then you have two problems. If it will not move, look for an outside stop valve under a small cover near the boundary — and if that fails too, ring, because a plumber can talk you to the right valve faster than you'd think.
Note also that closing the stopcock does not instantly empty the pipes — water already in the system will keep coming for a short while. That is what Notice 2 is for.
With the stopcock closed, open every cold tap in the house. This drains the stored water out through the taps instead of through your ceiling.
Once the mains is shut, the water still held in the pipework and any cold storage tank will continue to feed the leak until it has somewhere better to go. Opening the cold taps — bath tap first, since it moves the most water — pulls that stored water down and out in minutes, and the leak dies back to a dribble.
Flushing the toilets once each helps empty things further. If the burst is on the hot side, or you can't tell, switch the boiler or immersion off as well so the heating isn't trying to work on an emptying system, and open the hot taps too. None of this is complicated; it is simply pumping the ship out in the right order.
If water has reached sockets, switches or light fittings, turn off the electricity at the consumer unit — but do not attempt this in rising water. If you must wade to reach it, leave it and keep everyone clear.
Water and electricity keep no truce. If the leak is dripping through a ceiling rose, running down a wall with sockets in it, or pooling anywhere near an extension lead, the affected circuits — or the whole board — should go off at the consumer unit. Most units live in the hall, under the stairs or in the garage.
The rule is absolute: dry hands, dry feet, dry route. If reaching the consumer unit means standing in water, do not attempt it. Keep people and pets out of the affected rooms, don't touch anything electrical that's wet, and tell the plumber the situation when you ring — some jobs need an electrician alongside, and it's better known early.
Buckets, towels, and a marked route around the wet — temporary measures are for containing water, not repairing pipe. Anything wrapped around a split is a patch, not a fix.
With the water off and the system drained, the emergency is over and the tidy-up begins. Get buckets under active drips, lift what you can off wet floors, roll towels along skirting boards, and prop doors open to start air moving. Photographs of the damage taken now, before anything is moved, will thank you later if a claim is to be made — check your own policy for what it covers, as every policy differs.
Self-amalgamating tape or a proper pipe-repair clamp from a hardware shop can hold a small split temporarily once the pipe is drained and dry — worth doing if the plumber is hours away, worth skipping if not. What it is not, ever, is a repair: a wrapped pipe put back under mains pressure has a habit of announcing itself again at 3am. Leave the stopcock closed, or only partly open for essential water, until the pipe is properly mended.
Inside your boundary: yours. Out in the street: NI Water's. Water bubbling up through the road is a report to NI Water; water in your kitchen is a plumber's call.
In broad terms across Northern Ireland, the supply pipe from your property boundary into and through the house is the owner's responsibility, and the water mains out in the street belong to NI Water. So a burst under your floor, in your loft or on your outside wall is a private repair — the kind this line connects you for — while water rising through the tarmac on the road outside is one for NI Water to hear about.
Along the shorefront streets and out on Islandmagee, it's worth adding that external and outbuilding pipework takes a harder life than it would inland — salt air works on fittings and brackets, and exposed coastal runs feel every frost first. If your burst was an outside pipe, ask the plumber about lagging and replacing weathered fittings while they're there; it is the cheapest lesson the sea will ever teach you.
Check under the kitchen sink first, then wherever the supply pipe enters the house — hall cupboard, utility room, garage, under the stairs. Failing that, many properties have an outside stop valve under a small cover near the boundary. If nothing will turn, ring anyway: a plumber can often direct you to the right valve over the phone while help is arranged.
Once the water is off and the electricity to that room is isolated, a small hole made in the centre of the bulge with a screwdriver, with a bucket waiting underneath, releases the weight in a controlled way rather than letting the whole ceiling choose its own moment. Do not do this if you can't isolate the electrics, and keep everyone from standing beneath the bulge.
Yes, if the burst is on the heating side or you're unsure — a boiler or hot water system fed by a leaking circuit can run itself into trouble. Switch the boiler off at its own control and leave it off until the plumber has seen the pipework. If the burst is clearly on the cold mains only, the heating can usually stand, but when in doubt, shut it down.
In broad terms, pipework inside your boundary — the supply pipe from the boundary into the house and everything within — is the property owner's responsibility, while the mains in the street belong to NI Water. Water surfacing in the road or footpath is worth reporting to NI Water; water loose inside your house is a call to a plumber, once the stopcock is closed.
The main notice — how the line works and the waters it covers.
Go to home →Pressure, error codes, oil and gas — and the gas standing order.
Read the notice →What to attempt, and when it's NI Water's sewer instead.
Read the notice →How charging works and the questions to put before work starts.
Read the notice →Pressure, timer, tripped switch, immersion — checks in order.
Read the notice →Gentle thawing from the tap end, and never with a flame.
Read the notice →Damp patches, slipping pressure and the stopcock test.
Read the notice →Stopcock closed, taps open, feet dry? Then you've done your part. Ring any hour and be put through to a local plumber covering Carrickfergus and the Lough shore.
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