Emergency plumbing

Water does not wait. A supply line letting go on a second floor, a waste stack backing up into a ground-floor shower, a water heater that has split at the seam — the difference between a bad afternoon and a five-figure insurance claim is usually measured in minutes, not hours.

We are British plumbers, nineteen years in the trade in London and in Miami since 2020. Emergency work is where procedure matters most, because the pressure to do something immediately is exactly when people do the wrong thing.

The first thing to do is not call anybody

Close the main shut-off valve.

In a single-family home it is usually at the meter near the street, sometimes in a box at the property line. In a condo it is normally inside the unit — behind an access panel near the water heater, in the laundry closet, or in the ceiling of a hallway closet. Under a sink or behind a toilet there is almost always a local stop valve that will isolate that one fixture.

Turn it clockwise until it stops. If it is stiff, use steady pressure rather than force; a valve that snaps off in your hand turns a leak into a flood. Then open the lowest faucet in the property so the pipes drain downwards instead of into your ceiling.

Knowing where that valve is, before you need it, is worth more than any emergency number. It is the first thing we show people once the job is done.

What counts as an emergency

• A supply pipe that has burst or is weeping under pressure
• Water coming through a ceiling or running down a wall
• A waste stack backing up into a bath, shower or floor drain
• A water heater leaking from the tank body rather than a fitting
• A toilet that will not stop filling and has nowhere to overflow to
• Any leak you cannot isolate with a local valve

What is usually not an emergency, and costs less if it waits until morning: a dripping faucet, a running toilet that drains away safely, a slow drain that still clears, or a water heater that has gone cold without leaking.

Signs a leak is worse than it looks

A stain on a ceiling is the end of the story, not the beginning. By the time water shows on the finished surface it has usually been tracking along a joist or a top plate for a while, and the wet area is larger than the mark.

Watch for a musty smell in a cabinet that has no obvious damp, paint that has gone slightly spongy rather than stained, a floor tile that sounds hollow when it did not before, or a water meter that creeps when every fixture in the property is closed. In older Miami Beach and Coral Gables buildings, a recurring blockage on the same stack is frequently a cast-iron drain that has scaled down internally rather than a one-off obstruction.

How we work an emergency

We ask for a photo first. One of the leak, one of the pipework around it. That single step decides what goes on the van, and it is usually the difference between one visit and two.

We stop the water before we diagnose. Isolating at the nearest valve rather than the main one keeps the rest of the property in service while we work.

We find the fault rather than the symptom. A pinhole in a horizontal run is a different job from a failed fitting, and a stack that backs up under load is a different job again. Guessing costs more than looking.

We tell you what we find, immediately. If opening up reveals something behind the wall that changes the job, we stop and re-quote before continuing. You will never find work on an invoice that nobody mentioned.

What it involves

Most emergency calls resolve into one of a handful of repairs: replacing a failed section of copper, CPVC or PEX; renewing a stop valve, angle stop or flexible connector; resetting or replacing a toilet that has failed at the pan; clearing and then inspecting a blocked line; isolating and replacing a water heater that has reached the end of its life.

Where the fault is genuinely inside a wall or under a slab, we locate it first and open the smallest access that lets us do the repair properly. Making good is part of the quote, not somebody else’s problem.

All plumbing work is completed to the Florida Building Code, and carried out by a licensed Florida contractor, Lic. #CFC1433820.

What affects the cost

We do not publish prices, because a price without a look at the job is a guess that gets revised upwards later. What moves the number:

• Access. A leak in an open ceiling void is a different job from the same leak above a tiled bathroom with no access panel.
• Pipe material and age. Copper, CPVC and PEX each repair differently. Galvanized supply and cast-iron waste in older properties often reveal more once opened.
• How far the water travelled. A contained leak is a repair; one that has reached a neighboring unit brings coordination and making good with it.
• Building requirements. Insurance certificates, service elevator bookings and restricted working hours all take time, and time is most of the cost.
• Whether it is a repair or a replacement. We will tell you honestly when a part is worth fitting and when it is the third patch on a run that needs replacing.

You get the figure in writing before anything starts.