What to do when a pipe bursts in your Miami home
The first ten minutes matter most. Where the shut-off valves are in a typical Miami-Dade house or condo, what to turn off, what to move, and what to tell the plumber when you call.
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Water coming out of a wall, a ceiling, or the base of a toilet does two kinds of damage: the water itself, and the minutes it keeps running while you look for the valve. This is the order of operations for a Miami-Dade house or condo, written so you can follow it with your phone in one hand.
Find the water shut-off
Start at the fixture. Under every sink and behind every toilet there is a small valve on the supply line; turn it clockwise until it stops. If the leak is at a fixture, that is usually the whole job. A water heater has its own cold-water valve on the pipe entering the top of the tank.
If the water is coming from inside a wall or ceiling, or you cannot tell where, close the main. In most Miami-Dade houses it is one of two places: a valve on the outside wall where the supply line enters the house, often next to the front hose bib, or inside the meter box at the sidewalk, under a concrete or plastic lid marked WATER. The meter valve may need a wrench or a meter key; the house valve is usually a handle you can turn by hand. If you have a few dry minutes some evening, go find yours now and turn it once so you know it moves.
In a condo, the shut-off for your unit is often inside a closet, behind an access panel in the bathroom, or above the water heater. If you cannot find it or it will not close, call the building’s front desk or management; they can close the riser that feeds your stack, and they need to know anyway because the unit below you is next.
Cut the power if water is near outlets
If water is pooling near outlets, the air handler closet, or appliances, switch off those circuits at the breaker panel. Only do this if you can reach the panel without standing in water; if the panel itself is wet or you would have to walk through standing water to get there, leave it and tell the plumber and, if it is serious, the fire department.
Limit the damage while the water drains
Once the water is stopped, move what you can: rugs, boxes, anything electronic, the legs of wood furniture onto foil or plastic. Open the doors of cabinets under wet counters. Get the air conditioning running if it is safe; in Miami’s humidity it is the biggest dehumidifier you own, and drying fast is what keeps a burst pipe from becoming a mold job. Photograph everything before you clean up, including the source if you can see it. Your insurer will want the pictures, and so will the plumber.
Do not start opening walls yourself. A plumber with a moisture meter can tell where the water went; a homeowner with a hammer mostly makes more holes.
What to tell the plumber
When you call, the plumber will want: your city or neighborhood; where the water is coming from; whether it is stopped; house or condo; and whether the leak is on the supply side (clean water under pressure) or the drain side (dirty water, usually from a toilet or a floor drain). If you know the age of the house and whether the pipes are copper, galvanized steel, or PVC, say so. That decides what the plumber brings.
Why Miami-Dade pipes fail
Houses built in the 1960s and 1970s often have copper supply lines running under the slab; a pinhole in one of those is the classic “slab leak,” which shows up as a warm spot on the floor, a water bill that doubled, or the sound of running water when everything is off. Older homes in Hialeah, Little Havana, and Coral Gables may still have galvanized steel supply lines, which corrode from the inside until a fitting lets go. Drain lines from the same era are cast iron, and after sixty years in wet ground they crack and channel. Storm season adds pressure swings from the county system and, in flat neighborhoods, ground that stays saturated for weeks. None of that is your fault, and all of it is routine work for a plumber who sees Miami houses every day.