Found with equipment rather than by opening walls, and answered at any hour. Including the one failure that does the most damage and takes ten minutes to prevent.
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Open the cupboard under your kitchen sink. The braided silver hose running from the wall up to the tap is a flexible connector, and there are usually several more of them behind vanities and toilets.
They are a wearing part rather than permanent plumbing. Manufacturers commonly nominate around five years, and most households have never given them a thought since the day the bathroom was done.
When one fails it is not a drip. It is mains pressure with nothing in the way, filling a room at a rate that empties a hot water tank in minutes and does not stop until somebody reaches the meter. Discovered quickly it is a mop. Discovered after a weekend away it is floors, cabinetry and a claim.
Which is the point. Of everything we get called out to at three in the morning, this is the one that a ten minute job on an ordinary Tuesday would have prevented entirely. Look at yours. Frayed braid, rust spots or broken strands means replace it now.
Turn the water off at the meter before you go. It costs nothing and it is the cheapest insurance in the house.
Around five years is the figure manufacturers commonly nominate, and they do not degrade gracefully. A braided hose does not weep first and fail later. It lets go.
They sit under vanities and behind cisterns, in cupboards nobody opens, at full mains pressure, twenty four hours a day.
That combination makes them the most preventable emergency we attend, by a considerable margin.
Fraying, rust spots or broken strands mean replace it now rather than soon. The stainless braid is what contains the rubber inside it, and once strands go the containment has started to fail.
You do not need to know when it was installed. Two minutes with a torch under each vanity tells you more than any records would.
If you cannot see it properly, take a photograph with the flash on and look at that.
The failure is the same either way. How long the water ran decides everything afterwards, and that is the only variable anybody controls.
A hose that lets go while somebody is home is a wet floor. The same hose at the start of a weekend away is a ceiling, a kitchen and an insurance claim.
Which is why turning the isolating valves off under a vanity before you go away costs nothing and removes the risk entirely for that period.
They were installed at the same time, they are the same age, and they will reach the end at roughly the same point. Doing one and leaving the others is doing a third of a job.
It is a short visit for an average property and it is inexpensive relative to almost anything else on this site.
It is the one item here worth booking before anything is wrong.
What a burst costs is decided in the minutes between the failure and somebody closing the water. Find the meter and check its tap actually turns on a dry afternoon.
On properties of this age they seize, and eleven at night in the rain is the worst possible moment to discover that.
Make sure somebody else in the household knows too, because the person who reads pages like this is not always the one who is home.
Water is leaving somewhere on your side, and it may never surface. Close every tap, the machine and the dishwasher, and watch the smallest dial for two minutes.
A dial that sits perfectly still points at usage rather than a fault. A moving one is definitive.
Do it twice if the result surprises you. A cistern refilling or an ice maker cycling will move the dial and neither is a leak.
With the meter already showing a loss, shut off the supply into the hot water unit and watch again. Whatever the dial does next is the most useful information you can hand us.
Still creeping: cold side. Stopped: the unit or the hot pipework beyond it.
One caveat. A relief valve that is weeping rather than releasing occasionally produces exactly the hot-side reading, and it is a small repair rather than a serious one.
Acoustic, pressure and thermal narrow it to a point. Acoustic listens for the noise a pressurised leak makes, thermal finds the heat signature of a hot water leak, and pressure testing isolates sections.
The sequence matters. Meter first to confirm loss, isolate to narrow the side, then locate to a point.
Cutting into the wet spot first is quick, satisfying and quite often reveals nothing but wet.
Water follows the fall of a joist, the back of a stud or the top of a slab and appears wherever it finally escapes. A ceiling stain can be metres from the fitting that failed.
In sandy ground an external leak may never surface at all, because the water disperses downward rather than pooling.
So the absence of a wet patch is not evidence of anything, and the presence of one is a clue rather than an address.
A lot of this housing is flats and semis, and water released on one level travels through the structure to everything below it.
Which makes the make-safe more urgent and makes telling the neighbours and the building part of the first few minutes rather than an afterthought.
Photograph before anybody cleans up, because whoever assesses it later was not there.
The domestic ceiling is 500 kPa static at any outlet, and the valve that holds it there wears out at around eight to twelve years. It fails open, so nothing warns you.
Read the symptoms together. Taps that keep dripping after repair, water hammer that was not there before, and appliance inlet valves failing early all point the same way.
Higher pressure also shortens the life of every flexible hose in the property, which is where the two halves of this page meet.
Start with the meter test, because it splits the problem in two at no cost. A moving dial is a leak to find. A still dial with a high bill is usually usage.
If it is a leak, the order of work is meter, then hot water isolation, then the service line from the meter to the building.
In sandy ground that last one is a real possibility rather than a remote one, because it can lose water indefinitely without showing.
Fixed price agreed before anything starts. These are indicative 2026 ranges.
Water stopped and the situation stabilised, whatever the hour.
Depending on how many. The cheapest preventive job in the house.
Acoustic, pressure and thermal, with nothing opened to find it.
Depending on the pipe, the material and how it has to be reached.
What failed, where, and what we did about it.
If it is running we get the supply shut before anything else, and we stay on the phone while you find the meter.
Acoustic listening, pressure testing and thermal imaging until it is a point rather than a general area.
A single access point at the fault, instead of a series of hopeful ones on the way to it.
While we are there we look at every flexible connector in the place, because the next one is the one nobody is watching.
Shut it off at the meter and ring. A licensed plumber can be heading toward you while you are still on the call.
Call 1300 381 569It is the braided flexible connector between the wall and the tap under your sink, basin or toilet. Almost every home has several. They are behind an enormous share of internal water damage in Australian homes, because when one lets go it is not a drip, it is mains pressure with nothing in the way.
They are a wearing part, not permanent plumbing. Manufacturers commonly nominate around five years, and plenty of the ones we find are well past that with nobody having thought about them since the vanity went in.
Open the cupboard and look. Fraying, rust spots or broken strands in the braid mean replace it now. No visible date and no memory of it being done means it is probably older than you would like.
They do not choose the moment, but the moment decides the cost. A failure noticed in five minutes is a mop. The same failure discovered after a weekend away is floors, cabinetry and an insurance claim.
Shut the water off at the meter before anything else, then ring. What a burst costs is very largely decided by how long the supply stayed on.
Acoustic listening, pressure testing and thermal imaging, chosen to suit what is leaking and where it runs. None of them require opening a wall to have a look first.
Locating a concealed leak is $250 to $600. A burst repair is $300 to $900. Replacing flexi hoses is $120 to $280 depending on how many. Emergency isolation and make-safe is $200 to $450.
Tell us what is showing, and if you can, take thirty seconds to look at the hoses under the sink. That one answer often changes the visit.
Located with equipment, opened once, and the preventable ones dealt with while we are there.
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