Emergency plumbing · Harrogate & surrounding villages only
The first sixty seconds matter more than the phone call.
In Stuart’s own words: if you have a plumbing related emergency, he will do his best to help you as quickly and efficiently as possible. That offer covers Harrogate and the surrounding villages — a deliberate limit from a one-van business, because emergency cover across two counties is a promise somebody has to break. Read the six steps below before you need them.
Mon–Fri, 8am–6pm
01
Turn the water off
Find the internal stopcock — usually under the kitchen sink, sometimes in a downstairs cloakroom or a utility. Turn it clockwise until it stops. If it will not move or it is seized, the outside stop tap under the small metal cover at the boundary is the backup, and you may need the long key most people do not own. Worth finding both today rather than at eleven at night.
02
Drain the pressure out of the pipes
Open all the cold taps, starting downstairs, and flush the loos. That empties the pipework and the cold tank and slows the leak to a trickle while you wait. Leave the hot taps for a moment if the boiler or immersion is still on.
03
Switch off what should not be running dry
Turn the heating and hot water off at the programmer, and switch off the immersion heater if there is one. A cylinder or boiler running with no water in it turns a plumbing problem into an appliance problem.
04
Electrics near the water
If water is coming through a ceiling or anywhere near sockets, lights or the consumer unit, do not touch anything and turn the electricity off at the consumer unit if you can reach it safely and dry. If you cannot, leave it and stay out of the room.
05
Ring, and describe it in one sentence
Call 07901 972717. What is leaking, where it is, whether the water is off, and whether the ceiling is involved. If you can safely take a photo, send it on WhatsApp — it is far quicker than describing a pipe.
06
Catch it and photograph it
Buckets and towels, and move whatever you can from under the leak. Take photos before you mop up. If an insurance claim follows, the pictures taken in the first ten minutes are the ones that are actually useful.
If you can smell gas, this page is the wrong page.
Do not ring a heating engineer first. Ring the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 immediately. Turn the gas off at the meter if you can reach it safely, open the windows, do not touch any electrical switches or doorbells, and get everyone out of the building. Ring Stuart afterwards to put right whatever caused it.
What counts as an emergency, and what is better booked in.
Water that is actively escaping, a ceiling that is wet, no water at all, or a failure that means you have had to turn the whole supply off — that is an emergency, and inside Harrogate it is worth ringing straight away. A dripping tap, a slow-filling cistern, a radiator you would like moved or a boiler that is working but annoying you are all real jobs worth doing, and they get done better as a booked visit than squeezed into a bad afternoon.
Outside Harrogate and the villages around it, heating work across North and West Yorkshire is booked in rather than same-day. Ring and ask rather than assuming — Stuart would rather tell you honestly than have you waiting on a van that was never coming.
Worth doing this weekend: find your internal stopcock, turn it a quarter turn to make sure it still moves, and put a photo of where it is on your phone. It is the single most useful five minutes any householder can spend.