urgent
Emergency plumbing, 24 hours
An out of hours call-out costs £90 to £180 for the first hour, with parts on top, and roughly double that on a Sunday or a bank holiday. Before anybody arrives, find the internal stopcock and turn it off: that single action decides how much of the repair is plumbing and how much is plastering.
What this covers
What it costs. An out of hours plumber charges £90 to £180 for the first hour on a weekday evening, and £120 to £250 overnight, on a Sunday or on a bank holiday. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Burst pipes and uncontrolled leaks
- No heating or no hot water in cold weather
- Overflowing or blocked soil stacks
- Leaking cylinders and header tanks
- Making a property safe until a full repair can be booked
What is involved
Most emergency calls are one of four things. A joint or a pipe has failed and water is running where it should not. The heating has stopped in cold weather, which is an emergency for a household with a baby or an older resident even though nothing is leaking. A drain or soil stack has backed up. Or a cylinder, tank or appliance has split.
What an emergency visit buys is containment, not always a finished repair. A failed section of pipe gets cut out and a compression or push-fit repair goes in, the system is refilled and checked, and anything that needs a part from a merchant is booked for the next working day. That is the correct sequence, and an engineer who tries to complete a full job at 2am with the wrong fitting usually creates a second visit.
Know two locations in your own house before you need them: the internal stopcock, which is usually under the kitchen sink or in a downstairs cloakroom, and the external stop tap under a small metal cover in the path or pavement. If the internal one is seized, and many are, the external one is the fallback and a water company can operate it. Turning off the water and opening every tap to drain the pipes down takes a minute and can save a ceiling.
Burst pipes and uncontrolled leaks, one of the jobs a emergency plumber specialist is hired for.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask for the call-out charge, the hourly rate after the first hour, and whether the rate changes at midnight, before agreeing to a visit. Ask whether the engineer is Gas Safe registered if the problem involves a boiler. Be wary of a national number with no local address: the price quoted on the phone and the price on the invoice are often different things.
Common questions
Where is my stopcock?
Usually under the kitchen sink, sometimes in a downstairs cloakroom, a utility room or under the stairs. There is also an external stop tap under a small cover in the path or pavement outside. Find both now rather than in the dark.
Is no hot water an emergency?
It is treated as one in winter, and by most water and energy suppliers' priority services register for vulnerable customers. In July it is usually a next day booking, which costs a great deal less.