Emergency plumber in Tampa Bay: burst pipe, no water, sewage backup

A supply pipe in a Tampa Bay house runs at city pressure all day, and when it lets go it does not stop on its own: a half-inch line can put several gallons a minute onto a floor. The first job is not the phone; it is the valve. Close the main shutoff, then call. This page is written so you can do the first part with the phone in your other hand.

Call and get connected with an independent local plumbing contractor who serves your part of Hillsborough or Pinellas. Say what the water is doing (a pipe or fitting spraying, a ceiling dripping, a slab that is wet, no water at any tap, sewage rising in a tub or floor drain), whether you found the shutoff, and what is under the water. A call connects you to the contractor directly; the form gets you a call back. After-hours calls usually carry a higher service fee than a daytime visit; ask before they roll.

The first five minutes

In order. Skip any step that does not apply.

• Close the main shutoff. Most houses here have it where the supply enters: an outside wall near a hose bib, the garage wall by the water heater, or a valve box in the front yard. Turn a lever a quarter turn until it sits across the pipe; turn a round handle clockwise until it stops. If you cannot find it, the utility's meter box at the curb has a valve too, and the contractor can talk you to either one.
• If the water heater is standing in water, do not step into the water to reach it or its breaker. If the breaker panel is somewhere dry and you can get to it without touching water, switch off the heater's breaker (electric) or turn its gas control to Off (gas); if you cannot, leave it and say so on the call, because cutting the power may need the electric utility or an electrician first. If you smell gas, leave the house and call the gas utility from outside.
• Open a tap at the lowest point in the house, a hose bib or a tub, to drain what is left in the pipes and take the pressure off the leak.
• Sewage in a tub or a floor drain: stop using water everywhere in the house, including the washing machine and the dishwasher. Everything you send down joins the backup. If the street is flooded, the problem may be the city main and the utility's emergency line is the second call.
• Move what you can off the floor and pull rugs. Do not run fans or a wet vac on a floor with sewage on it; that is a cleanup for gloves and a contractor, not a shop vac.

What usually breaks in Tampa Bay

The same few failures account for most night calls around the bay.

• A supply line under a sink or behind a toilet: braided lines and the plastic nuts on them, and the rubber washers inside, age faster on chloraminated water. A pinhole in a copper line under a slab shows up as a warm floor or a wet baseboard rather than a spray.
• A water heater tank that has rusted through, often after years of sediment from hard water. The tank drains onto the floor until the supply is shut; the fix is a replacement, and it is a permitted job even in an emergency.
• Polybutylene fittings in 1980s and early-1990s houses, which fail at the connections without warning, and galvanized supply lines in older homes that finally close up or rust through.
• A main-line clog or a collapsed cast iron drain sending sewage back up the lowest fixture, usually a tub or shower, and worse after a heavy rain when the city main is full.
• After a storm: a service line broken by a fallen tree or a truck on the swale, and a house on the Pinellas coast where the surge took the water heater and the washer connections with it.

What the contractor does

A night visit stops the water and makes the house safe: the broken section is cut out and capped or repaired, the heater is isolated, the drain is cleared far enough to use the bathroom. The permanent repair, a water heater, a repipe, a sewer replacement, is quoted in writing afterward, and the permit for it is pulled in the contractor's own license. Ask for the license number (a certified plumbing contractor's begins with CFC, a registered one's with RF) and check it on DBPR before you authorize the permanent work.

Water damage is the other half. A leak that ran for hours into a slab house is an insurance and drying question as much as a plumbing one; photograph everything before the cleanup, keep the failed part, and call the insurer in the morning. The contractor is not the adjuster and the site is not either.