What to Do If a Pipe Bursts in Your House

If a pipe bursts in your house, shut off the main water valve first — everything else can wait thirty seconds. Then cut power to any area where water is spreading, open a low faucet to drain the remaining pressure out of the lines, move what you can out of the water, and call a plumber. Every minute the main is open is another few gallons into your drywall.

We take these calls at Phoenix Plumbing Co., and the biggest difference between a bad night and a catastrophe is how fast somebody found the shutoff. Go find yours today, before you need it.

The First Five Minutes, in Order

Do these in this order, and do not stop to take pictures until step four.

• Shut off the main. On most Phoenix-area homes it is on an exterior wall near the front hose bib, or at the meter box near the street. Turn the handle clockwise until it stops.
• Kill the power to any wet area at the breaker panel, especially if water is near outlets, a panel, or ceiling lights. If you would have to stand in water to reach the panel, do not — call the fire department.
• Open the lowest faucet in the house, and a couple of others. This drains the pressure and the standing water in the lines away from the break instead of into your wall.
• Now take photos and video. Your insurance company will want them and you will not remember later.
• Move furniture and anything on the floor out of the water, pull up rugs, and get air moving with fans.
• Call a plumber and tell dispatch the main is already off.

If it is a water heater that let go rather than a pipe, shut the cold inlet valve on top of the heater and turn off the gas or flip the breaker to it before anything else.

Where Pipes Actually Burst in Phoenix Homes

We do not get the frozen-pipe failures the rest of the country gets. Our bursts come from different places:

• Polybutylene. Homes built between 1978 and 1995 often have gray poly supply lines that get brittle with age and chlorine, and they split without warning.
• Corroded galvanized steel in older central Phoenix homes, rusting from the inside until the wall thins out.
• Hard water at 16 to 20 grains per gallon, building scale inside fittings and at valve seats until they fail.
• Slab leaks that have run quietly for months and finally open up.
• Outdoor lines cooked by sun exposure, plus hose bibs left pressurized against a closed nozzle in 115-degree heat.
• Water pressure that is too high. Much over 80 psi is hard on every joint in the house, and plenty of Valley neighborhoods run high on a regulator that quit years ago.

The pattern most homeowners miss is that a burst is rarely the first sign — it is usually the last. Pinhole drips, a ceiling stain, low pressure at one fixture, and a water bill that crept up all come first.

A Real Example From a Home Near 32nd Street

A call came in around 11pm from a homeowner in a 1980s house near 32nd Street. She heard what she described as rain inside the hall closet. A poly line in the wall had split, and by the time she found the main shutoff — buried behind an oleander she had let grow over it — the hallway and two bedrooms were soaked.

Our tech was there inside the hour, opened the wall, cut out the failed section and got her water back on that night. Then we ran our 40-point inspection and found what we expected: gray polybutylene throughout, with two more spots showing the same stress marks. We put the flat-rate price for a full repipe in writing and told her honestly she did not have to do it that week — but that she would be doing this again. She scheduled it about two months later. The part that stuck with her was the oleander. She cut it back the next day so the valve was visible from the driveway.

The Honest Counterpoint: What a Plumber Cannot Fix

We can stop the water and repair the pipe, often the same night. What we cannot do is dry your house out. Water inside drywall, insulation and subfloor needs commercial drying equipment and it needs it fast — mold gets going in about 24 to 48 hours, and faster in a Phoenix summer with the house closed up. So for anything beyond a small contained leak, you want a restoration company on the way at the same time you call us, and your insurance carrier notified that day.

The other honest thing: repairing one burst section on a house full of failing pipe is a legitimate choice, not a failure. If you have other things going on, patch it and plan the repipe. We will tell you what we see and what we would do, and then it is your call. We are not going to push a big project on you at midnight while you are standing in a wet hallway.

Call Phoenix Plumbing Co.

Knowing what to do if a pipe bursts comes down to two things: knowing where your main shutoff is before it happens, and having a number to call after. Go find your valve this weekend, make sure it turns, and make sure nothing is growing over it.

Phoenix Plumbing Co. has been family-owned since 2012, three generations of plumbers, and you get a live Phoenix dispatcher rather than a call center. Our trucks are stocked to finish about 90 percent of jobs on the first visit, our workmanship warranty is in writing, and you see the flat-rate price before we lift a wrench. We handle emergency plumbing and leak detection across the Valley. Call 602-834-1208.