What to Do in the First Five Minutes
Shut the water off at the main. In a Quincy or Dorchester three decker the main shut off is almost always in the basement on the street side wall, right at the water meter, usually within a few feet of where the service pipe comes up through the floor or through the foundation. There is typically one valve before the meter and one after it. Close the one after the meter first; if it will not hold, close the one before it. The valve is either a round handle you turn clockwise until it stops, or a lever you turn a quarter turn so it sits across the pipe. Leave the meter itself alone, because that belongs to the water department.
If there is a valve for your floor, use it too. Many two families and triple deckers have a separate valve for each unit’s riser, grouped together on the basement ceiling or on the wall near the meter. They are often unlabeled. Closing the main is always the safe move first.
Open the faucets. Once the main is closed, open a faucet on the lowest floor and one on the top floor. That drains the pipes down and takes the pressure off the split, so the water stops much sooner than it otherwise would.
Keep water away from electricity. If water is running near a panel, a light fixture, an outlet or any appliance, shut off the breaker for that area from a dry spot. If you have to stand in water to reach the panel, stay out and call the electric utility.
Protect what is below. Most of the damage from a burst pipe happens to the floor beneath it. Move what you can, put buckets under active drips, and poke a small hole at the low point of a bulging ceiling so it drains in one place instead of coming down all at once.
Then note what you can see. Whether the pipe is copper or gray galvanized steel, how long the split is, whether the area was frozen, and whether the water was hot or cold. That tells us what to bring.
What Not to Do
Do not aim a torch or any open flame at pipe you think is frozen upstream of the break. Fires get started this way every winter, and heating a frozen pipe with a flame can turn the trapped water to steam and burst the pipe again somewhere worse. Do not wrap the split in tape and turn the water back on to see if it holds, because a temporary patch under city pressure usually fails when nobody is home. Do not turn the water back on before the repair is made, even briefly.
What Our Crew Checks on Arrival
The first thing we chase is where the water actually came from, which is often not where you found it. Water runs along joists, follows a wire and drops through the first opening it finds, so a wet spot in a first floor ceiling routinely traces back to a pipe two rooms away. We open enough of the run to see the real failure point.
Then we check the shut off you used. Old gate valves in these basements frequently will not close fully after decades of sitting open, so we confirm the water is truly off and whether the valve itself needs to be part of the job. We look at the pipe material and its condition along the whole run, not just at the split, because a pipe that froze and burst in one place has often been stressed in several. We look at what the room is doing: an open bulkhead, a broken basement window, a missing section of insulation, a cold air return pulling outside air across a pipe chase. If the break followed a night without heat, we look at the heating system too, since the no heat repair that fixes the cause matters as much as the pipe. Before we start cutting, you hear what we found and what it will cost, and we agree on it.
What the Repair Usually Involves
For a frozen split in copper, the section that failed is cut out and replaced with new pipe and fittings, joined by soldering or with press fittings depending on how wet and tight the space is. Valves that failed to close get replaced while the water is already down. Once the new section is in, we bring the pressure back up slowly and walk the whole run, because a second split that nobody found is how a house floods twice in one week. Where the pipe runs through an exterior wall, a cold porch enclosure or an unheated basement bay, we talk through insulation or rerouting the run so the same pipe is not the one that freezes next January.
Massachusetts requires a permit before plumbing work is installed, altered, replaced or repaired, with narrow exceptions such as clearing a stoppage or repairing a faucet leak. The code also lets emergency work go ahead with the inspector notified at the earliest opportunity and no later than the next working day, which is exactly what a burst pipe is. We pull the permit under our Massachusetts license and deal with the inspection.
Why Pipes Burst in Older Quincy and Dorchester Buildings
Just under four in ten Quincy homes and close to half of Boston’s were built in 1939 or earlier, and those buildings were not piped with today’s winters or today’s insulation in mind. The classic failures around here repeat themselves. Copper runs through an exterior wall behind a kitchen sink on the cold side of the house. Supply lines cross an unheated back porch that was enclosed at some point without heat. A basement bulkhead or a broken pane lets a stream of outside air run directly across the pipes serving the upper floors. Galvanized steel supply lines, still common in Quincy and Dorchester basements, rust from the inside until the wall is thin enough that an ordinary pressure swing splits a seam. Vacant units are another pattern: a third floor that nobody rents through the winter gets its thermostat turned down, and the pipes feeding it give out.
The pipe between the street and the meter deserves its own mention. Boston’s water commission states plainly that protecting the service pipe and the water meter from freezing is the property owner’s responsibility, and both Boston and Quincy recommend insulating pipes in unheated spaces and letting a thin trickle run during a deep freeze. If the water is off at the street or the meter area is involved, the city’s water division handles that side and we handle the plumbing inside the building.
When Replacing a Run Makes More Sense Than Patching It
One clean split in otherwise sound copper is a repair, and a good one. The math changes when the same run has failed more than once, when galvanized steel is leaking at pinholes in several places, when the pipe is so thin that a wrench on a fitting opens a new leak, or when the failed section sits inside a wall or a ceiling that will have to be opened anyway. In those cases replacing the length of pipe between two solid points costs less disruption than coming back for the next hole. We show you the pipe we pulled out, which usually makes the decision obvious, and the choice stays yours.
Questions We Hear
Where Is the Main Water Shut Off in a Three Decker?
In nearly every Quincy and Dorchester triple decker it is in the basement, on the wall facing the street, next to the water meter where the service pipe enters through the floor or the foundation. There is usually a valve on each side of the meter. Close the one on the house side of the meter first. Many buildings also have separate valves for each unit’s riser nearby. Find yours now, tag it, and make sure everyone in the building knows where it is.
What Do I Do If the Shut Off Valve Will Not Close?
Old gate valves seize open, and forcing one can snap the stem and make the flood worse. Turn it gently as far as it goes, then open faucets on the top and bottom floors to bleed the pressure, and call (617) 549-5734. If the water cannot be stopped inside the building at all, the shut off out in the street is the city’s to operate, and in Quincy that request goes to the public works water division. We replace failed main valves as part of the repair so you are not in this position again.
Will Insurance Cover a Burst Pipe?
Coverage is a question for your carrier, and policies differ. What we can do is give you everything the claim needs: photographs of the failed section before and after, the pipe we removed, a written description of what failed and where, and an itemized invoice. Take your own photos of the water damage before you clean up, note the date and time you found it, and call your insurer early rather than after the repair.
Can You Repair a Burst Pipe Inside a Finished Wall or Ceiling?
Yes. We open the smallest access that lets us reach solid pipe on both sides of the failure, make the repair, pressure test it and leave the opening clean and square so it is straightforward to close up. We tell you before we cut where the opening needs to be and how big it has to be, so you can line up the plaster or drywall patching with your own schedule.
My Pipe Froze but Has Not Burst Yet. What Now?
That is a better call to make than the one after it splits. Leave the faucet open so melting water has somewhere to go, keep the area warm with the heat you have, and read our page on frozen pipe thawing and repair before you try anything with heat. Never use a torch. If you cannot reach the frozen section, or it sits in a wall, call (617) 549-5734 and tell us where the run goes.
What Else Should I Do Before the Next Cold Snap?
Know where your main valve is and confirm it actually closes. Insulate the pipes in the basement, the crawl and any enclosed porch, close the bulkhead properly and fix broken basement windows. Keep heat on in every unit, including empty ones. Our emergency plumbing and heating services page covers the other calls that come in the same week as a freeze, and they tend to arrive together.