No water coming out of any tap: what to check first

Check this before anything else

Do your neighbours have water? Knock, or message. It takes two minutes and it resolves a meaningful proportion of these calls at no cost to anybody.

If the street has no water, it is a supply-side problem and it belongs to the water company. Check their website or app – most publish live incident maps showing planned work and unplanned interruptions in your postcode. Report it if it is not already listed. They may also have obligations to provide alternative supply if the interruption is prolonged, and to compensate in certain circumstances.

If it is only your property

1. Check the kitchen cold tap specificallyIn most UK houses this is fed directly from the incoming main. If everything is dead including this, the problem is at or before the stopcock. If this works and nothing else does, you have a stored water problem – see below.
2. Check the internal stopcockHas it been knocked, or turned off during recent work and not turned back on? This happens more often than people admit, particularly after a kitchen fit, a washing machine installation or a visit from any trade.
3. Check the external stop tapUnder the cover in the path. It may have been turned off by the water company, or during work in the street.
4. Consider freezingIn cold weather, a frozen supply pipe or a frozen section inside an unheated space will stop the flow completely. See frozen pipes.
5. Check for a burstIf the supply pipe has burst underground, you will have no water and possibly a wet patch, a sinkhole or unusually lush growth along the pipe route. There may also be a noise.
6. Check the meter, if you have oneA stop tap at the meter may have been closed. Some meters also have a valve that can be shut.

Why some taps work and others do not

This is the diagnostic that confuses people most, and it is usually not a fault at all – it is how the system was designed.

The first row is the important one, because it is common and it is not a fault. If you have a loft tank and its ball valve has failed shut, or the tank has frozen, or its supply has been isolated, you keep a working kitchen cold tap and lose everything else. See vented cylinders.

If you have a loft tank

Worth a careful look if the pattern above matches, and worth doing safely – a loft in the dark with no water is not the place to fall through a ceiling.

• Is there water in the tank? If it is empty, the supply into it has stopped.
• Is the ball valve stuck? Lift the arm gently – if water flows, the valve was stuck shut and it needs replacing.
• Is the supply to the tank frozen? Common, because the feed runs through cold loft space.
• Is the tank’s outlet valve closed? Someone may have isolated it.
• Is the tank iced over? In a hard frost, an inadequately insulated tank can freeze at the surface and at the ball valve.

Do not fill an empty tank by any improvised means and do not leave a ball valve tied open. If the tank has been empty, everything downstream of it has drained, which means air in the system and a set of airlocks to clear afterwards.

Getting water back after the supply returns

Whether the interruption was the water company’s or yours, refilling an emptied system has a few pitfalls.

1. Open taps slowly, starting with the lowest cold tap in the house. Opening everything at once traps air.
2. Expect discoloured water and spluttering. Air and disturbed sediment in the mains are normal after an interruption. Run the cold taps until it clears before drinking it.
3. Do not run appliances until the water runs clear – sediment is not good for washing machine and dishwasher valves.
4. Refill a loft tank before drawing hot water, and never run an immersion heater or a boiler with an empty cylinder. An immersion in air will burn out immediately.
5. Clear airlocks by running taps in sequence, lowest first, and by connecting a hose between a mains cold tap and a stubborn hot tap if you know how – a technique worth being careful with, because it needs a backflow-safe arrangement.
6. Check for leaks afterwards. A system that has been drained and refilled sometimes reveals joints that were only being held by scale.

When it is not the water at all

Two situations that present as no water and are not.

• A failed pump. On a pumped system, no pump means no flow at the outlets it serves. The kitchen cold, which is unpumped, keeps working.
• A closed motorised valve, on some system configurations, cutting the hot water circuit.

And one worth knowing about for rural properties: if you are on a private borehole supply rather than mains, no water means a pump, a pressure vessel, a power supply or a well level problem, and it is a different investigation entirely – see agriculture.