Emergency - mains water

AHarvey

AHarvey

AHarvey

Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
10,085
Location
Stoke area
Hi all

This morning I heard running water from the empty bungalow next door, thought it was just water from the melt we had over night.

Came back tonight and I can still hear it, checked and the overflow pipe outside is peeing water. went to the back door and could hear water pouring inside, obviously from the attic space on to the floor.

Trying to contact the sons of the woman that lived there, one lives just around the corner but no one is home.

Outside on the pavement is a small metal square, say 3-4 inches square that says water on it. I've opened it up hoping that i could turn the mains off but its seems to be full of sand and material. Can I turn the mains off to the bungalow through there if I dig it all out? How far down is it normally as my arm is going to struggle in there!

Other option is putting the double glazed window through next to the back door and hoping I can find the stop inside but then I don't fancy the owners getting snotty.
 
Don't break in whatever you do.
Let it run if you can't shut it off externally.
That should be the mains stopcock outside and will eventually shut of the water, as often its the header tank in the roofspace that goes. Its not until things start to defrost that such things tend to be noticed.

I'd try the son again and leave a note on his door.
 
just been round and left a note, need to check who local water supplier is and see if we can get someone out to shut it off.

Thanks :)
 
Wait - first off, are you happy that the occupant is okay? Is she elderly or does she live alone? That should be first thoughts.

As for breaking in - you could do this, it boils down to whether the owner of the property would give you permission to break in in order to prevent the ongoing damage. If she would - which I suggest is very likely - then you wouldn't be guilty of any crimes.

If it were me, if there were any concerns for her safety whatsoever I'd be through the door/window anyway. If I was not worried about her and it was just the property thing - I'd call the water supplier, and if no joy within a very short time I'd ring the police just to inform them of the situation and to inform them that I'm going to break in to try and sort it quick.
 
Could also be burst pipes, considering how the weather has been. Will totally wreck the house if it is and not addressed quickly.
 
(ST)Pohaku said:
Wait - first off, are you happy that the occupant is okay? Is she elderly or does she live alone? That should be first thoughts.

As for breaking in - you could do this, it boils down to whether the owner of the property would give you permission to break in in order to prevent the ongoing damage. If she would - which I suggest is very likely - then you wouldn't be guilty of any crimes.

If it were me, if there were any concerns for her safety whatsoever I'd be through the door/window anyway. If I was not worried about her and it was just the property thing - I'd call the water supplier, and if no joy within a very short time I'd ring the police just to inform them of the situation and to inform them that I'm going to break in to try and sort it quick.
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The place is empty.
Give the local police a call on their non emergency number and they should send someone round when they have a chance obviously they will be covered if they need to break in. Although I'm not sure how bothered they would be considering its not causing damage to someone elses property but its worth a shot
 
Nexus said:
Could also be burst pipes, considering how the weather has been. Will totally wreck the house if it is and not addressed quickly.
Click to expand...

If its been running loud enough to hear all day its already trashed.

BTW not all external stopcocks have taps. Some need a socket set and usually it is down too far for one set's extension bar to reach. You usually have to use two extensions. I learnt this the hard way when my internal stopcock sheered off mains-side leaving full pressure coming into the house. I smashed a decent bottle of wine to grab a cork and sat there holding it on as best as I could while the wife got two neighbours to turn off the outside stopcock. Worst thing was that I'd only been turning the water off because we were going abroad for a four week holiday and this delay resulted in us missing our flight. So we got hit three ways. Plumbers bill, new downstairs carpets and the cost of the extra flight.
 
Hi there,

if this is still happening have you considered a long straw or perhaps connecting a few straws together and then sucking it up through an Air brick or slightly ajar door/window ?

Thanks

Keep warm.
 
thanks for all the feedback :)

The nephew round the corder is still out, so left a note. My wife works for the local insurance brokers and I remembered her son that lives 200+ miles away has policies with them for the property so I got her to go to work and get his details. She phoned him and let him know.

I start digging the sand out of the outside water hole, but I can't turn the tap as its completely seized and I don't have the tool to turn it off. As I am doing this the next door neighbours come out as the son has phoned them. They have a key.

In we go. The stopcock under the sink in the kitchen also won't turn, must have been years since it was last used. Old man next door gets his spanner out and jumps in with both feet sheering the tap off so no real hope of doing it now. I turn all the cold taps on full in the house and the flood water pretty much stops, just the odd drip here and there.

We have a look around, I've never seen a house that drenched in water, its a raised floor as well so no idea how much of a pool is underneath. Every room is drenched, its pouring down the light sockets etc, (damn, forgot to turn power off) Her piano is one of the few things that hasn't been touched by the water, she is completely deaf so thought it was an odd item to find. I had a quick scan through the cupboards in front of the neighbours and grabbed all the paperwork and photos I could.

House is locked up, flood seems to of stopped temporarily. Good deed done for the day, now I just need to dry off and warm up.

I've also decided that perhaps I should look at a plumbers course as we don't seem to have any emergency plumbers around here, could be a nice earner along with my photography :) Anyone done a course that they could recommend?
 
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Nexus said:
Could also be burst pipes, considering how the weather has been. Will totally wreck the house if it is and not addressed quickly.
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Sounds to me more like a well planned Gold Fish escape attempt than a burst pipe, obviously using the cold weather as cover.
 
When I was a kid I actually went to help check up on a neighbors house who lived abroad most of the time.

It had been absolutely freezing that winter and when we arrived with the keyholders, they could barely even get the door open it was so frozen. Inside the house was just crazy, the burst pipes had caused water to leak everywhere which had then frozen, so there were icicles all over the inside of the house. It was like something out of a film or story. Never seen anything like that since.
 
Last year I helped fix a house that had burst a pipe up in the loft and run for about 3 days. Everything was wrecked, it was a total loss basically. All the floorboards, ceilings, plaster, furnishings, everything was ruined. Don't worry too much about it. Just hope they had insurance :(
 
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