Burst Pipes Adelaide: Stop the Water, Then Fix the Cause

Shut it off: exactly where the tap is

Every minute of running water is more plaster, more flooring and more cabinetry. Finding the tap is the whole job for the first minute, so it is worth knowing where it is before you need it.

1. Go to the water meter. In Adelaide it sits in a box near the front boundary, generally within a metre of the footpath, under a green, black or concrete lid.
2. Find the tap on the house side of the meter. That one is yours. The fitting on the street side belongs to SA Water and should be left alone.
3. Turn it clockwise until it stops. A lever-style ball valve is a quarter turn. An older gate valve with a round handle takes several full turns.
4. Check it worked: open a tap inside and confirm the flow dies away to nothing.
5. Switch off power at the switchboard to any circuit near the water, including one feeding a room with a ceiling holding water.
6. Open the lowest tap in the house, usually the laundry or a garden tap, so the pressure and the water still in the pipes drains there rather than through the leak.
7. If the burst is on the hot side, switch the hot water unit off as well: its power at the switchboard, or its gas at the appliance isolation valve.
8. Photograph everything before you start mopping. Insurers ask for it.

Some properties have more isolation than people realise. Toilet cisterns and most vanities have a small isolating valve at the fixture, hot water units have one on the cold inlet, and apartments often isolate in a riser cupboard rather than at a street meter. If the leak is clearly at one fixture, closing that isolator keeps the rest of the house in water while you wait.

Why pipes burst in Adelaide

Bursts are not bad luck. They are a material reaching the end of its service life, or a pressure the pipework was never designed to take, and both are predictable from the age of the house.

• Galvanised steel supply pipe in pre-1940s homes. It corrodes from the inside out, so the bore narrows for years while pressure quietly fades, then a thinned wall lets go without warning. Goodwood, Unley, Malvern and Norwood are full of it.
• Pinhole corrosion in first-generation copper. The copper in 1950s and 1960s homes around Mitcham, Panorama and Park Holme is now 60 to 70 years old, and it fails as a cluster of tiny perforations rather than a single split, often inside a wall or under a slab.
• Braided flexible hoses under vanities and sinks, among the most common causes of internal water damage claims in Australia. The braid rusts and frays, then the hose lets go at full mains pressure with nobody home.
• A failed pressure limiting valve. Outlets are meant to be held at or below 500 kPa, and when a limiting valve fails open the house takes full main pressure, which finds every weak joint in the building.
• Water hammer. Washing machines and dishwashers close their inlet valves in milliseconds, and the shock wave hammers joints until one fails. The bang you have been ignoring is the warning.
• Reactive clay soil, which shears buried supply lines and cracks pipework where it penetrates a slab. This is why bursts cluster in a hot dry February.
• Frost in the Hills. Exposed runs, outdoor taps and tank and pump pipework around Stirling, Crafers and Upper Sturt split on the coldest mornings, and the damage shows itself when it thaws rather than when it freezes.
• Poly pipe left in sunlight. Above-ground poly run to a tank or a shed goes brittle under UV and fails at a fitting.

When you cannot see the burst

Plenty of bursts never surface. A pipe under a slab, in a wall cavity or beneath the front lawn can lose thousands of litres before anything appears inside the house, and the first sign is often the bill.

The meter test settles it in 15 minutes. Turn off every tap, appliance and irrigation controller, make sure nobody flushes anything, and read the meter. Wait 15 to 30 minutes without using water and read it again. Most meters have a small leak indicator dial or a star wheel that turns on very low flows. If it has moved, water is going somewhere.

• A bill that has jumped with no change in how the household uses water.
• A warm patch on a tiled or timber floor, which is a hot water line leaking under the slab.
• Damp skirting, blistered paint, or mould appearing in 1 corner of a room and nowhere else.
• A hissing or running sound in a wall when every tap is closed.
• A patch of lawn or garden that is greener and softer than everything around it, particularly along the line from the meter to the house.
• Pressure that has dropped at every outlet at once, rather than at 1 tap.
• Water surfacing on the verge or footpath, which points at the service line or at SA Water's side of the meter.

Narrowing it down further is straightforward. Close the isolating valve on the cold inlet at the hot water unit and repeat the meter test. If the meter stops, the leak is on the hot side, which usually means an in-slab or under-floor line. If it keeps running, it is on the cold side or in the service line from the meter. From there, acoustic listening equipment and thermal imaging locate the point without breaking concrete on a guess.

Repair the section, or replace the run

This is where money is either saved or wasted, and the honest answer depends entirely on what the pipe is made of and how old it is.

Where replacement is warranted, it is usually run in copper or PEX depending on layout and access. The work is driven far less by the pipe than by getting to it: an accessible subfloor is straightforward, a solid-floor house where every run comes through the roof space and down inside a wall is not.

Marc is a licensed plumber and gas fitter with 20 years of experience, he attends the job himself, and you get a text with an arrival time before he sets off rather than a 4 hour window. The price is agreed before work starts, and where the honest answer is that a repair will hold rather than that the house needs repiping, that is what you are told.

Who pays: SA Water, your insurer, or you

SA Water owns the water main and the meter. From the outlet side of that meter, the supply pipe is the property owner's, including the length running under your own front lawn. So a leak on the street side of the meter is SA Water's to fix, and a leak between the meter and your house is yours, even though it may be nowhere near the building.

• Water surfacing on the verge, the footpath or the road: ring SA Water on 1300 729 283.
• Leaking meter, or a leak on the street side of it: SA Water.
• The service pipe from the meter to the house, and everything inside the property: the owner.
• A burst inside a strata or apartment building: often the body corporate for common property and shared risers, and the lot owner for pipework inside the lot. Check the strata plan before anyone starts work.

Insurance turns on the wording, and the distinction that catches people out is between the pipe and the damage. Most home building policies cover the damage a sudden burst does to the building and contents, while excluding the cost of repairing the failed pipe itself. Almost all exclude gradual leaking, wear and tear and corrosion, which is exactly how galvanised steel and old copper fail. Photograph everything before you clean up, and keep the plumber's written report and the invoice.

Questions we get asked