No Water in My Area: How to Check Fast

Is it my street or just my house?

Everything else follows from this one question, and you can answer it in about two minutes without any tools. The water company fixes the network in the street for free. Anything from your boundary stop tap into the house is yours to sort out, so it pays to know which side the problem sits before you ring anyone.

Work through these checks in order. Each one rules something out.

• Run the cold tap at the kitchen sink. It is fed straight off the mains in almost every home, whatever the rest of the system, so it tells you whether mains water is reaching the house at all.
• Try a bathroom tap. If the kitchen runs but the bathroom does not, your house probably has a cold water tank in the loft and the problem is the tank, not the supply.
• Knock next door or check a local group chat. If neighbours on the same side of the road have no water too, it is almost certainly a network problem.
• Look out of the window. Road works, a water company van or water running along the gutter point to a burst or a planned repair nearby, and water in the street that nobody seems to be dealing with is worth reporting as a leak in the road.
• Check your postcode on the water company’s incident map (step two below).

If you live in a flat, a neighbour on another floor may be on a different riser or a shared booster pump. Ask someone on your own floor or directly above or below you.

How to use a no water postcode checker

Every water company in and around London publishes live supply problems by postcode. Your supplier is named on your water bill, which also carries its 24-hour number. Most of London is supplied by Thames Water, but parts of outer London are supplied by Affinity Water, SES Water or Essex & Suffolk Water, and their maps are separate. Checking the wrong company’s map is an easy way to see “no known issues” when the whole street is dry.

On the Thames Water site, search your postcode on the problems-in-your-area map. It lists planned work and live incidents with an estimated restoration time. Two things to know about these maps. First, a live incident can take a while to appear after a burst, because someone has to report it and a crew has to assess it. Second, the listed area is often wider than the streets actually affected, so a nearby incident with a different street name can still be yours.

If the map shows nothing and your neighbours are also without water, report it. You will not be wasting anyone’s time, and the first few reports are what put an incident on the map. Our guide to what to do when Thames Water cuts your supply covers reporting and what you are entitled to.

What to do while the water is off

A network outage is out of your hands, but a few steps now stop problems when the water returns.

If your hot water comes from a cylinder with an immersion heater, switch the immersion off at its switch as a precaution until the water is back and the taps run normally. A combi boiler looks after itself: with no mains flow it will not fire for hot water, though radiators on a sealed heating circuit usually keep working. It may show a flow or ignition fault until the water comes back, so leave it alone rather than resetting it again and again. If your home has a loft tank, the stored water will keep toilets and some taps going for a while, so use it for flushing and washing and keep bottled or boiled water for drinking.

Turn off any tap you opened while testing. When supply returns under pressure, an open tap in an empty house is how kitchens flood. If an interruption runs into hours and someone in the house is elderly, disabled, unwell or has a young baby, tell your water company. Customers on its Priority Services Register are prioritised for bottled water deliveries.

Do not drink from the tap in the first few minutes after the water comes back. Run the cold kitchen tap until it is clear. White cloudiness that clears from the bottom of the glass upwards is air and harmless. Brown or discoloured water usually clears after a few minutes of running; if it does not, tell your water company.

When the neighbours have water and you do not

If the street is fine, the water company will tell you the fault is on your side, and they are usually right. The common causes, roughly in the order a plumber checks them, are a stopcock that has been turned off or has failed internally, frozen pipework in winter, a burst or leaking supply pipe under the front garden, an airlock after recent work, and in older houses a partly blocked lead or iron supply pipe that has finally closed up.

Start with the stopcock. It is usually under the kitchen sink, where the pipe comes up through the floor. Turn it gently anti-clockwise to open. If it spins without stopping, or will not move at all, do not force it with pliers, because old brass stopcocks snap. Our guide to finding your stopcock shows every place it hides.

The full diagnosis, including how to use your water meter to spot a burst supply pipe, is in no water in the house when the neighbours have water.

What a plumber does on a no water call-out

On a no water emergency visit the engineer first confirms the mains is live at your boundary stop tap, using a pressure gauge on the nearest outlet or a quick check at the external chamber. That single test separates a street problem from a house problem and stops you paying for work the water company should do.

If mains water reaches the boundary but not the kitchen tap, the engineer traces the route between them: the internal stopcock, any pressure reducing valve or water softener near where the pipe enters, and the supply pipe itself. A seized or broken stopcock is a straightforward replacement. A frozen section is thawed slowly with warm cloths or a hairdryer, never a blowtorch, and checked for splits before the water goes back on. A burst supply pipe underground is found with the meter and ground listening, then either repaired with a buried coupling or scheduled for replacement.

You pay the £60 call-out, and the repair price is agreed with you on site before any work starts. As a guide to the market, replacing a stopcock is usually a job of an hour or two, while digging out and repairing a supply pipe varies from a few hundred pounds for a short joint repair to four figures for a full new pipe. Full rates are on our pricing page.

Will I get compensation if the whole area has no water?

Often, yes. Under the Guaranteed Standards Scheme, set out in the Water Supply and Sewerage Services (Customer Service Standards) Regulations 2008 as since amended, a water company in England that does not restore an unplanned interruption within 12 hours owes a household £50, plus another £50 for each further full 12 hours without water. Since July 2025 that 12-hour deadline applies to every unplanned burst in England, including large strategic mains. For planned work lasting more than four hours it must give at least 48 hours’ written notice, or pay £50 if it does not, and the same payments apply if the water is not back by the time it told you.

Companies are expected to pay these without being asked, but supply records are not perfect. If you were affected and nothing appears, contact the company within three months and ask for the Guaranteed Standards payment by name.