Home › Burst Pipes
A burst pipe is a five-mark question with a fixed method. Learn the order once, and the worst night of your plumbing life becomes a tidy sequence of small jobs.
Short answer first: close the stopcock (usually under the kitchen sink), open the cold taps to drain the pipes, switch off electrics at the consumer unit if water is anywhere near them and you can reach it dry-footed — then ring 020 4577 2888 to be put through to a local plumber, any hour.
Stopcock, taps, electrics — in that exact order. The phone call comes fourth, once the water has stopped.
Here's the model answer, worked through. Step one: close the stopcock, clockwise until it stops. Every second the mains is open, more water is entering the house, so nothing else on the list outranks this. Step two: open the cold taps — start with the lowest in the house — and flush the toilet, so the water still sitting in the pipes drains out through the taps instead of through your ceiling.
Step three is conditional, which is where method matters: if water is near sockets, light fittings or the consumer unit, switch the electricity off at the consumer unit — but only if you can reach it without standing in water. If you can't do it safely, don't; keep people away from the wet area instead. Step four, and only now: ring the number on this page and describe what happened, what you turned off, and where the water went.
Examiner's note: the commonest error is reaching for the phone before the stopcock. The call can wait ninety seconds; the flooding can't.
Under the kitchen sink, low down at the back, in most Magherafelt homes. Failing that: hall cupboard, utility room, garage, under the stairs.
In the older terraces around the town centre, the stopcock has usually sat in the same sink cupboard since the house was plumbed — you may need to move a basket of cleaning bottles to see it. In newer estates and extended houses it wanders: check wherever the incoming water pipe first shows itself, which is often a hall cupboard or utility room.
In the townlands out toward Castledawson, Desertmartin or Knockloughrim, many properties also have an outside stop valve under a small metal or plastic lid near the road boundary — useful if the internal one is seized or unreachable. And on seized stopcocks, one caution: firm and steady with a cloth for grip is fine, but forcing a spindle until it snaps converts a closed question into an open one. If it won't turn, leave it and say so when you ring.
Examiner's note: this is the one question you can revise in advance. Go and put your hand on your stopcock today — the exam is always closed-book.
Inside your property and within your boundary: usually yours. The mains out in the street: NI Water's. Water bubbling up through the road or footpath is theirs to fix.
The rule of thumb runs like this: pipework inside the house, and the supply pipe from your boundary to the house, is generally the owner's responsibility — that's plumber territory. The water main in the street, and typically the stretch up to your boundary, belongs to NI Water. So a burst under your sink is your call to make; a spring appearing in the road outside is a report to NI Water, not a private repair bill.
Rural properties around Magherafelt often carry a long private supply run in from the road — sometimes shared with a neighbour — and that long stretch is exactly where winter bursts and mystery pressure drops like to happen. If your water dies and next door's has too, the fault is likely out on the main; if it's only your house, the problem is probably on your own run. Either way, describing that pattern on the call saves the plumber a chunk of detective work.
Examiner's note: candidates often pay for private repairs to public pipes. Check which side of the boundary the problem sits before anyone starts digging.
Stopcock closed, electrics off in that area if safe, containers under the drips. If the ceiling is bulging, one small drainage hole beats one large collapse.
Ceilings fail slowly and then suddenly, so the working here is about relieving load. With the water off and the taps draining, get anything electrical in that room switched off at the consumer unit if you can do so safely, then set containers under the drips and move furniture and anything precious out from underneath.
If plasterboard is visibly bellying downward, it's holding a pond. Counterintuitive but correct: put a bucket underneath and make one small hole in the lowest point of the bulge — a screwdriver through the plasterboard will do — so the water drains in a controlled stream rather than bringing the whole board down at once. It feels like vandalism; it's actually damage limitation, and the ceiling was already a repair job the moment it soaked through.
Examiner's note: the mark is for the small deliberate hole, not for watching the bulge grow while hoping. Hope is not a method.
Temporarily, yes — self-amalgamating repair tape or a pipe repair clamp can hold a small split for a while. They earn you time, not a finished repair.
With the water off and the pipe drained, a small split or pinhole can often be dressed well enough to let you turn the water back on gently for essentials: self-amalgamating tape wrapped tight and well past the damage on both sides, a purpose-made repair clamp, or even a piece of rubber and two jubilee clips in a genuine pinch. Hardware shops in town stock all of these, and keeping one in the house costs less than a takeaway.
Two honest limits to note in the margin. First, these fixes are for small, visible damage on accessible pipe — a proper split, or anything inside a wall or floor, needs the water kept off until it's repaired properly. Second, a patch that holds is still a fault: the pipe failed for a reason, and the plumber should see it. Say on the call that you've patched it, where the damage is, and what the pipe looks like around it.
Examiner's note: partial credit is real — a good temporary patch is a legitimate answer, as long as you write "temporary" beside it and book the permanent one.
If the burst is on the heating system, or you're about to drain the pipework, yes — switch the boiler off so it isn't trying to run with falling pressure or no water. Most sealed systems will lock out safely on their own, but turning the boiler off removes the doubt. Tell the plumber exactly what you switched off when you ring.
Only if water has reached, or could reach, sockets, light fittings or the consumer unit itself — then switch off at the consumer unit, provided you can get to it without standing in water. If you can't reach it safely, don't try: keep everyone out of the wet area and say so on the call. Water and electricity is the one pairing in this subject with no safe shortcut.
Open the cold taps, starting with the lowest one in the house, and let them run until they stop — that empties the pipework so the burst has nothing left to push out. Flushing the toilet helps empty the system too. If the burst is on the hot side, switch off the boiler or immersion heater first, then open the hot taps as well.
Call it urgent rather than an emergency — but it never improves on its own. Put a container under it, dry the area so you can judge how fast it's weeping, and arrange a repair promptly. A pinhole in copper often means the pipe wall is thinning, so the stretch beside it may be rehearsing the same trick.
The main page — how the line works and the areas it covers.
Go to home →Pressure, error codes, oil systems — and the gas rule to know cold.
Open the guide →What to try yourself, and when it's NI Water's sewer instead.
Open the guide →How charging works and the questions to ask before work starts.
Open the guide →Pressure, controls, immersion, oil tank — the checklist in order.
Open the guide →Gentle thawing done properly, and the lagging that prevents it all.
Open the guide →Damp patches, falling pressure and the stopcock test.
Open the guide →Water off, taps open, everyone safe — now ring and let a local plumber take it from there, any hour of the night.
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