24 Hour Plumber London: Nights & Weekends

Does it need a plumber tonight, or can it wait until morning?

A night-time call is worth it when water is escaping and you cannot stop it, or when the problem leaves the home unsafe or unusable. It is usually not worth it for a dripping tap, a slow drain or a radiator that is cold in one room.

• Call tonight: water through a ceiling or light fitting, a burst pipe, a stopcock that will not close, a cylinder leaking, the only toilet overflowing, or no heating with a baby, an elderly or unwell person in the home in cold weather.
• Usually fine until morning: a drip you can catch in a bowl, one cold radiator, a toilet that keeps running, a boiler that works after a pressure top-up.

A smell of gas is not a plumbing call. Open windows, turn the gas off at the meter if safe, avoid switches, then leave and ring the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999, day or night.

What to do in the first ten minutes

Find the stopcock. In a London house it is often under the kitchen sink or by the front door; in flats it can be in a riser cupboard, behind a bath panel or in a communal corridor. Turn it clockwise. If it is seized, do not force it with a wrench, because old brass stopcocks can snap. Our stopcock repair page explains what to do when it will not move.

If water is near sockets or a ceiling light, switch the power off at the consumer unit, but only if the unit is dry and you are standing on a dry floor; if it is wet, leave it alone. Turn the boiler and any immersion heater off. Open the cold taps to drain the pipes, and on a system with a hot water cylinder, open the hot taps too. Our guide to the first ten minutes of a water leak has the full order.

If the leak is outside your property, such as water rising from the pavement or around the meter pit, it is usually the water company's job. For most of London that is Thames Water, though parts of the capital are supplied by other companies; the supplier and its 24-hour leak line are on your water bill.

What a night visit can and cannot fix

Most emergency work is finished on the spot: a split copper pipe cut out and joined with a push-fit or soldered coupling, a failed isolation valve replaced, a fill valve in a cistern swapped, a blockage cleared. Engineers carry the common fittings for exactly this reason.

Some jobs need a specific part that is not on the van, such as a boiler PCB, a particular cylinder valve or a brand-specific cistern mechanism. Plumbers' merchants are closed at night, so the honest answer is to make it safe tonight and come back with the part. Making safe means the water stops, the leak is capped or isolated, and you have as much of the house working as possible. Gas work is carried out by Gas Safe registered engineers.

How out-of-hours plumbing is usually priced

Across the market, many plumbers charge more after 6pm, at weekends and on bank holidays, either as a higher call-out or a higher hourly rate, and some charge a minimum of an hour or more. Always ask how the price is worked out before anyone travels.

Ours does not change with the clock: £60 to get an engineer to your door at any hour, then a repair price agreed on site before any work starts. You can see what a 24-hour plumber costs in full, and our guide to night and weekend plumber costs explains what to look out for elsewhere.