Turn it off first, because that needs nobody's permission. Then call us. A burst water service is an urgent repair under the Act, and we will leave you with the paperwork.
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A burst pipe is different from every other plumbing problem, because the cost is still growing while you decide what to do about it. Ten minutes matters.
So the first step is not a phone call, it is a tap. Closing a stop valve requires nobody's approval, no agent, no landlord and no owners corporation. If you rent and you take one thing from this page, it is worth finding your isolation valves before you ever need them.
After that the sequence is the same as any urgent repair. Try the agent or landlord and note the time you tried, because notice is a condition of being reimbursed. Then, if nobody is reachable, ring a licensed plumber.
And in a flat there is usually a third party: the household below. Tell them early, and make sure what failed is photographed and written down before anything is replaced, because in a week it will have dried out and turned into a disagreement.
Under the sink, behind the cistern, or in the laundry cupboard. Find it on a quiet afternoon, not at midnight with water running.
Closing a stop tap needs no permission from a landlord, an agent or an owners corporation. It is the one thing you can do immediately and it decides the damage.
So the order is water off, then people told, then the call. Not the other way around.
Nobody has ever been criticised for closing a stop tap during a burst.
In a house, at the meter near the front boundary. In a flat, usually in a cupboard, a laundry or behind an access panel, and a great many tenants have never located it.
Find it on a quiet evening, check it actually turns, and tell anybody else living there.
In a building, closing your own supply quickly is the single most effective thing you can do for the people below you.
It is named in the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 alongside gas leaks, blocked toilets and a failure of an essential service.
So the same tenant path applies: give notice or make a reasonable attempt, use a licensed person, and keep the invoice and the paperwork.
The reimbursement cap is $1,000, and a make-safe on a burst pipe usually sits inside it even where the full repair does not.
Try the agent or landlord and record when you tried and on what number. Reimbursement depends on having given notice or made a reasonable attempt to.
That does not mean waiting. Make the call, send a text so there is a timestamp, and get on with arranging the repair if nobody responds.
Thirty seconds of record-keeping is what makes the difference afterwards.
Water follows the fall of a slab and appears wherever it can escape, which in a block is somebody else's ceiling, frequently before you notice anything yourself.
Telling them lets them move things, which is something only they can do and only while there is still time.
Tell building management too. They can shut common services and admit a plumber to common areas, neither of which you can arrange.
What failed, where, and what the damage looks like, photographed while it is still wet. Afterwards it is a dry patch and a description.
Include something that establishes the time, and keep the photographs somewhere other than the phone they were taken on.
Where a claim follows, that record is the difference between a straightforward one and a difficult one.
Close every tap and appliance and watch the smallest dial for two minutes. Movement means water is genuinely leaving on your side.
In a flat, check whether your apartment is separately metered before relying on the result, because in older blocks the building is frequently on one meter.
It costs nothing and it is the single most useful thing you can put in a written report.
Shut the valve on the inlet to the hot water unit and take a second meter reading. It costs nothing and it removes half the property from consideration.
A dial that keeps moving is telling you the cold side. A dial that stops is telling you the unit or the hot line it feeds.
Have a look at the relief valve discharge point too. A steady dribble there reads as a leak and is an inexpensive fix rather than a search.
Acoustic listening, thermal imaging and pressure isolation narrow a leak without touching the building, and all three work through a slab.
In a rented flat, opening a wall or a ceiling is not your decision to make, which is another reason locating properly matters here.
The finding, in writing, is what lets an owner or a strata manager authorise the actual repair.
Water runs along a slab until it finds a penetration, drops, and can do that again below. The apartment reporting it is usually not the one it started in.
So a stain is a starting point rather than a location, and nobody should be assigning blame from it.
That is worth saying early in a building, because the instinct is to assume the trouble began where it appeared.
They have a service life of about five years and they fail suddenly, at mains pressure, in cupboards nobody opens, frequently while the flat is empty.
In a block one failure can affect an entire stack of apartments below.
They are cheap and quick to replace, and they are worth raising with an owner as preventative work rather than waiting for one to go.
Dates, photographs, who you told and when, and any written findings. The person with a clear contemporaneous record is the person whose account holds up.
It matters more in a rental because more parties are involved: you, an owner, an agent, possibly a strata scheme and two insurers.
None of that is about blame. It is that memory across five parties is not a reliable way to establish what happened.
Agreed as a fixed figure before work starts. These are indicative 2026 ranges. Written findings are included, because in a flat they usually matter as much as the repair.
Isolated and stopped, any hour, before anything else is discussed.
Acoustic and pressure testing to the component that actually failed.
Once located. Access moves this more than the pipe itself does.
The cheapest prevention available for the most destructive kind of failure.
What failed, where, and what the damage is. Written the same day.
On the phone, before we leave. Every minute the water runs is money somebody has to spend later.
Isolated properly, and the damage contained before anyone discusses whose pipework it was.
The failed component photographed and noted before it is replaced, then fixed at the price already agreed.
An invoice with our licence number and a written description of the fault, ready to send to an agent or an insurer.
Shut the stop tap if you can reach it, then ring. We will talk you through it on the phone and a licensed plumber can be on the way immediately.
Call 1300 381 569Turn it off. You do not need anyone's permission to close a stop tap, and every minute it runs adds to damage that somebody will have to pay to repair. Find the isolation valve under the sink or behind the toilet, or the main tap for your flat if there is one. Then ring the agent or landlord and note the time you tried. Then, if nobody is reachable and it is genuinely urgent, call a licensed plumber. A burst water service is expressly listed as an urgent repair in the Residential Tenancies Act 2010.
Usually one of three places, and it is worth finding yours on a calm afternoon rather than at midnight. There is often an isolation valve directly under the sink and another behind or beside the toilet cistern. Many flats also have a main valve for the unit, commonly in the laundry, in a hallway cupboard, or in the meter cupboard on the landing. If none of those exist, the building's main is usually in a common area, and turning that off affects everybody, so it is a last resort.
For an urgent repair, potentially, up to $1,000 and within 14 days of written notice. The conditions matter: the damage must not be the result of you breaching the agreement, you must have given notice or genuinely attempted to, you must have allowed a reasonable opportunity to fix it, you must have tried any tradesperson your agreement names, and the work must be done by a licensed or properly qualified person. We cannot promise an outcome because that is between you and your landlord. The Tenants' Union of NSW and NSW Fair Trading can advise on your circumstances.
Tell them straight away, which is unpleasant but far better than them discovering it. Then make sure what happened is recorded properly while it is still visible, because within days everything dries out and it becomes an argument. We photograph and note the failed component before replacing it, and write down what failed and where, in a form a landlord, an agent or an owners corporation can act on. That document is frequently worth more than the plumbing.
Generally not in the legal sense, and it is worth being honest about that. Urgent repairs are things like a burst service, a gas leak, a blocked or broken toilet, serious water damage or loss of an essential service. A dripping tap is a normal repair, so the right path is a written request to the agent rather than arranging it yourself and hoping to be repaid. That said, a drip that has started staining a ceiling has stopped being a drip.
They are one of the most common causes of serious water damage in Australian homes, with a service life of about five to ten years. In a block of flats it is worse than in a house, because a hose letting go on an upper floor at mains pressure while nobody is home sends water through every dwelling beneath it. Replacing them is cheap and it is one of the few genuinely preventable versions of this.
An emergency make-safe is $250 to $500. Leak detection is $300 to $600. Repair once located is $400 to $1,200 for most jobs. A flexible hose replacement is $150 to $350. We agree a fixed figure before starting, which matters when a capped reimbursement is in play, and the written findings are included.
Tell us whether you rent, whether you have managed to shut the water off, and whether it has reached another flat. Those three answers shape everything we do next.
Made safe first, recorded before anything is replaced, and documented for whoever has to pay for it.
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