Two Mistakes People Make Whilst Waiting for Emergency Plumbers to Arrive

Posted on: 12 May 2021

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Below are a couple of common errors people make whilst they're waiting for emergency plumbers to arrive and fix their urgent plumbing problems.

They wait for the plumber outside their home

Whilst there are circumstances in which the safe thing to do when a plumbing emergency occurs is to wait outside, away from the source of the issue (for example, if a pipe has burst near a fuse box), it is often a mistake for a person to do this. Whilst an emergency plumber will aim to get to a customer's home as fast as possible, they could take 20 minutes to reach the property if there is traffic or if the property is somewhere rural.

In a situation like this, if the property owner were to wait outside whilst, for example, water was pouring from a burst pipe, their home would end up with far more damage than if they were to remain indoors and do a few easy things to minimise the destruction this incident causes. For example, if they switched the water mains off, only the water that was already in the pipe would come out of it; this would mean that there would be less water damage than if there was a steady stream of water entering the pipe during this time.

Similarly, if they quickly gathered up a few dozen towels, blankets and sheets and used these to absorb the pipe water, they could prevent some of that water from going into the floorboards and making them rot or seeping into the wall plaster and making it crumble.

They don't switch their dehumidifiers on until after the plumber has finished

As mentioned above, if the plumbing emergency has affected a property's electrics, then the emergency plumber will advise their customer not to use any electrical items in their home until after they have arrived and fixed the plumbing problem. However, many people in this situation wait until long after their emergency plumber has finished the repairs to start using their dehumidifiers, even when the plumber has confirmed that it's safe to operate them.

This is a mistake, as the quicker they reduce the moisture content in the air, the less damage it will do to their home. Rapidly reducing the spike in humidity caused by, for example, a burst pipe, could help a homeowner to avoid having to hire mould removal specialists to get rid of the fungus that could grow on the furnishings and allow them to avoid having to replace rotting floorboards and ruined wall plaster.

Contact an emergency plumber to learn more.