No Cold Water Coming Out of the Taps

Which taps have stopped? That decides everything

In most British homes the cold water does not all come from the same place. The kitchen cold tap should be fed straight from the mains, because that is the drinking-water tap. Everything else depends on the system. In a home with a combi boiler or an unvented cylinder, every cold tap is on the mains too. In an older home with a hot water cylinder in an airing cupboard, the bathroom cold taps, the toilet cisterns and the whole hot supply are often fed by gravity from a cold water storage tank in the loft.

So go round the house and make a note of what runs and what does not, then match it to this list.

• Nothing at any tap, kitchen included: the supply into the house has stopped. Go to the next section.
• Kitchen cold works, bathroom cold taps and toilets dry, hot taps slowing down: the loft tank has emptied and is not refilling.
• Everything works except one tap: the problem is at that tap or the valve just below it.
• Cold missing but hot still running from a combi: the hot and cold come from the same mains, so the fault is local to the cold pipe or the tap itself, usually a closed isolation valve after other work.
• Water spits and stops, or comes in bursts: air in the pipes, often just after the supply has been off. See airlock in water pipes.

No water at the kitchen tap either

Check the simple things in this order, because each takes a minute.

• The stopcock. Find it (usually under the kitchen sink, sometimes in a hall cupboard, under the stairs or by the front door) and make sure it is fully open, turned anticlockwise. Someone may have closed it for another job. Our guide to where to find your stopcock lists every place to look.
• The neighbours. If they have no water either, it is a supply problem. Check your water company's incident page for your postcode, as explained in no water in my area.
• The weather. After a hard frost the likeliest cause is a frozen pipe where it enters the house, runs through a cold garage or along an outside wall.
• The street. Recent roadworks, a hissing sound from the boundary box in the pavement, or water pooling in the footpath can mean your service pipe has been damaged.
• The meter. If you have one, look at it. A dial spinning with every tap shut means the water is escaping somewhere between the meter and your taps.

If a frozen pipe is the cause, thaw it slowly with a hairdryer on a low setting, a hot-water bottle or warm cloths, working from the tap end back towards the frozen section. Never use a blowtorch or naked flame. Turn the stopcock off and open the tap before you start, then turn the water back on slowly and check for leaks: frozen pipes often only show their split once they thaw.

Kitchen works but the bathroom cold taps are dry

This is the classic sign of an empty cold water storage tank. The tank refills through a float-operated valve (still often called a ballcock). If that valve sticks shut, the tank drains steadily as you use water until the bathroom taps and toilets run dry.

Look in the loft, taking a torch and staying on the joists or boards. If the tank is empty or low and the water is not refilling, the float valve is the likely culprit. Common reasons are a float arm jammed against the tank side or lid, a valve seized with limescale, grit in the valve from mains work in the street, or, in winter, ice in the short length of supply pipe running across the loft to the tank. Gently lifting and lowering the float arm sometimes frees a sticking valve, but do not bend the arm. Our page on a loft tank ballcock that is stuck covers the valve in more detail.

If the hot taps have slowed or stopped as well, switch off the immersion heater until the tank has refilled, and do not run a bath from the hot tap. The cylinder is refilled from that same tank, so nothing is replacing the hot water you draw off.

Only one tap has no cold water

When every other tap in the house runs, the fault is a few inches from the dry tap. Most basins, sinks and toilets have a small isolation valve on the supply pipe underneath. It opens and closes with a quarter turn of a flat screwdriver: slot in line with the pipe is open, slot across the pipe is closed. They get closed during tap or appliance work and forgotten, and older ones seize part-closed.

After that, check the aerator on the end of the spout. Unscrew it and rinse out any grit or scale, particularly after the supply has been off, because sediment disturbed by mains work collects here. On a mixer tap, a blocked or failed ceramic cartridge can also shut off one side completely. On a thermostatic shower or bath mixer, loss of the cold supply makes the valve shut off the hot as an anti-scald safety feature, so a cold-side fault can look like little or no water at all.

When no cold water cannot wait

A single dry tap can wait until morning. The whole house without water, or without a working toilet, often cannot, particularly with young children, someone unwell or a business that needs water to open. It is also urgent if the cause is a burst: water running inside a wall, from a ceiling or out of the ground by the house. Close the stopcock and keep it closed until the leak is repaired.

Where the supply to the street is off, only the water company can restore it, and a plumber visit will not help. Where the problem is inside your boundary (a closed or seized stopcock, a frozen or split pipe, a stuck float valve, a failed isolation valve), a no-water emergency call-out is the right route. With us that is the £60 call-out at any hour, and the repair price is agreed with you on site before work starts. The engineer confirms mains pressure at the kitchen tap, traces back to the point where the water stops, and then frees or replaces that valve or section of pipe.

When the water comes back after any outage, run the kitchen cold tap first until it runs clear, then the others one by one. Spluttering air and some discoloured water are normal at first. Run it at full flow for a few minutes; if it stays brown, ask the neighbours. If theirs is discoloured too, contact your water company; if only yours is, the cause is more likely your own pipework. If some taps still will not run, work through no water in the house.