Storm damage to plumbing is rarely dramatic. What actually costs people money is the small stuff that was already marginal and then met a week of heavy rain, a power cut and an empty house.
All of it is checkable in an afternoon, well before anything is forecast.
Before the season
Find and turn your main shut-off. Not just find it — turn it, fully off and back on. A valve that has not moved in years often will not move when it matters, and discovering that during a storm is the worst possible timing. If it is seized, get it replaced now while it is a scheduled job.
Do the same for the local stops under sinks and behind toilets.
Clear the drains that are already slow. Heavy rain loads the system from outside. A line that is already marginal has no capacity left, and a backup during a storm is a backup you cannot get anyone out to.
Check the water heater is properly strapped. It should be secured against movement, with a drain pan underneath running somewhere water can safely go. This is code for good reason, and older installations frequently are not compliant.
Look under every sink. The cabinet is where a slow leak hides, and a slow leak in a house you have evacuated becomes a fast problem.
Photograph the property. Not plumbing advice exactly, but the single most useful thing for any claim afterwards.
If a storm is coming
Know where the shut-off is and make sure somebody else in the household does too.
If you may lose supply: fill containers for drinking, and fill the bath for flushing and washing. Check the tub actually holds — plenty do not, and finding out at 2am is unhelpful.
Secure anything outside that connects to plumbing: hoses disconnected, exposed pipework checked.
If you are leaving the property for more than a day or two: shut the water off at the main. This is the one that prevents the expensive scenario. A connector that fails in an occupied house is noticed in minutes. In an empty house it runs for a week.
After
Turn the water back on slowly, and check under sinks and around the water heater before you leave the property alone again. Systems that have sat unpressurised sometimes reveal a weakness when pressure returns.
Run every drain before you assume they are fine. Heavy rain moves things.
Be suspicious of new damp patches. A wall that is damp after a storm might be the storm — or might be a pipe that has been disturbed.
The part people skip
The valve exercise. Every plumber in South Florida will tell you the same thing, and it is the item most consistently ignored because nothing appears to be wrong.
A shut-off valve is the only thing standing between a failed connector and a flooded property. It is worth two minutes a year to know that it still works.
Why plumbing is where storm damage hides
The wind damage is obvious and gets dealt with. The plumbing damage is quiet, and it is usually what turns a bad two weeks into a bad year.
Three mechanisms do most of it. Pressure loss while the mains are down pulls debris and silt backwards through a system that normally only flows one way, and it lands in aerators, in cartridges and in the base of a water heater. Saturated ground moves, and ground that moves puts a bending load on the rigid pipe buried in it — which is why a lateral that was fine in August starts backing up in November. Power cuts stop the pumps, and a sewer main with no lift station behind it will find the lowest opening in the neighborhood, which is sometimes a ground-floor shower.
None of those show up on the day. They show up weeks later, long after anyone connects them to the storm.
The week after, in order
- Run every cold faucet for two minutes before you drink or cook. Let the silt out at a faucet rather than through a cartridge.
- Pull and rinse the aerators. They will have caught most of what came through.
- Check the water heater for sediment noise, and flush it if the supply was interrupted.
- Watch the lowest drain in the property for a week. A main line that has taken ground movement tells you at the shower tray before it tells you anywhere else.
- Photograph anything odd, with the date. Insurance claims made three months later succeed on contemporaneous evidence and fail on recollection.
If you are leaving the property
Shut the main off at the valve and open the lowest faucet to drain the risers. A closed system with nobody in it is the cheapest insurance there is: if a supply line lets go while you are away, an empty pipe puts a quart on the floor and a live one puts a swimming pool there.