Emergency Plumbing · 5 minutes, twice a year
No water in house? The main water shut-off valve location is the first thing to find: street side, within a few feet of the meter, at or below the lowest fixture. Exercising it twice a year is the five minutes that decides whether January is a wet floor or a wet house.
No water in house plumbing has three causes: the street supply is interrupted, the main shut-off valve is closed or failed, or a well pump has stopped.
Advice online splits along those causes. This page covers all three, because you cannot know which you have until you check.
Diagnose in this order
Hot and cold, upstairs and down. One dry tap is a local fault; every tap dry means the supply is interrupted upstream.
Ask a neighbor or open your utility outage page. A whole street with no water is a main break, and no amount of valve-hunting will help.
Find it, then confirm it is fully open. Partly closed valves cause weak flow that people misread as a pressure problem.
On a private well, check the pump breaker and then the pressure switch. A pump running with no pressure should be switched off before it damages itself.
“Honestly, my opinion, if it looks like it's going to be an issue, don't touch it.”
The main water shut off valve location follows three rules: street side, within a few feet of the meter, at or below the lowest fixture.
Knowing which valve you have matters at 2am, because two of the three give no obvious feedback that they have actually closed.
Gate valves have a round wheel handle and close over several full turns. They seize when never used, and break under force.
Ball valves have a lever: a quarter turn to crosswise is fully closed. Stop-and-waste valves add a drain port so a line can be emptied for winter.
Old gate valves seize. Forcing one snaps the stem or shears the gate inside the body, and a contained leak becomes an open main.
Use steady even pressure and nothing else. No breaker bars, no pipe extensions, no hammering. If it will not move under hand pressure, it is not going to move safely.
A technician from the licensed Connecticut contractor Service Stars puts it plainly in its water main shut-off guide: if the valve looks like it will be an issue, don’t touch it. A snapped gate leaves an open main.
Go outside to the meter box. That stop belongs to the utility, who will close it if you call. The sequence in the first ten minutes of a burst applies while you wait.
Know the line
The line at the meter decides who pays. Water surfacing at the curb is almost always their side.
Restoration is where people create the leak they were avoiding. A valve opened fast sends a surge through a drained system, and it finds every marginal joint at once.
Brown water for a few minutes after restoration is normal, because the surge lifts sediment. Run a cold tap until it clears, then check walls for leaks before mold sets in (the EPA puts that window at 24 to 48 hours); hot first pulls sediment into the tank.
Check the simplest things first: the breaker for an electric unit, the gas control knob for a gas one, and the two isolation valves at the top of the tank. On a well system, listen for whether the pump runs.
Stop immediately if there is any sulfur smell near a gas water heater. That is a gas utility call from outside the building, not a plumbing diagnosis.
The best five minutes anyone spends on home plumbing is finding the main valve while nothing is wrong. Tag it and photograph it.
Two purchases make the outside stop usable: a meter key, which unlocks the lid and fits side-mounted valves, and a meter wrench.
Service Stars add two details: label the valve and keep a clear path to it. If you rent, contact the landlord.
Exercise it twice a year. Closing and reopening a gate valve stops it seizing, and one that turns freely in June is the difference in January.
Emergency Services 24H is a referral service, and the plumbing guide covers the rest, including whether tonight is urgent. We employ no plumbers.
Your request routes to local contractors nearby. If the answer is a call to your water company instead, that is what this page says.
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A failed main valve, a leak you cannot isolate, or no water with the street still supplied. Send the symptoms and local plumbers covering your area will contact you directly. No obligation.
Fire, a gas smell, or an injury? Leave the building and call 911 first, then your gas utility or power company. Use this form once you are safe.
The failure a licensed Texas master plumber sees repeatedly is people hunting for the main shut off while water comes through the ceiling.
His fix takes one dry afternoon: find the valve, close the whole house down and open it again, and make sure everyone else has watched. Run a warm water tap afterwards to clear the line. A valve that has not moved in a decade sometimes will not.
Straight answers
Short, plain answers to the questions people ask us most about this page.
Browse all guidesAn exterior box at the property line, or a valve on the street side of the garage. Slab-on-grade houses often have no interior stop, which is why the meter key matters there.
Yes, for anything longer than a weekend. Close it, open a low tap to drop the pressure, and leave the heating on if freezing is likely.
Three causes cover almost every case: a street outage, a main shut-off valve closed or failed, or on a well a tripped pump breaker. Test several fixtures, ask a neighbor, then check the valve.
Where the service line enters the building: the street-facing wall near the meter in basement homes, the garage or outside in slab-built ones. There is also a utility stop in a ground box near the curb.
Stop. Old gate valves seize, and forcing one snaps the stem or shears the gate inside the body, which turns a contained leak into an open main. If it will not move under steady pressure, ask your water company to close the curbside stop.
Every fixture dry means the supply is interrupted upstream, so check the main valve and the street. One fixture dry is local: a closed isolation valve, a blocked aerator, or a frozen run. Hot-only points at the water heater.
Usually a loss of prime, a failed foot valve, a waterlogged pressure tank, or a well drawn down faster than it recovers. A pump running without building pressure should be switched off at the breaker. That is a well contractor call.
Slowly. Open the valve a quarter turn at a time, then bleed air from the highest fixture down. Once flow is steady, walk every joint, because the surge on restoration finds the next weak point.
Independent, publicly published sources, quoted with attribution and linked in full. None is affiliated with Emergency Services 24H, reviewed this page, or works in the referral network.
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24/7 dispatch network
Tell us what has failed and how soon you need someone. We route your request to local contractors covering your area, and they contact you directly.
Fire, a gas smell, or an injury? Leave the building and call 911 first, then your gas utility or power company. Use this form once you are safe.