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Burst Pipe

Close the main valve at the meter first, because a split line in a Pennsylvania row home drains through the floors long before it drains out of the house.

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When this becomes an emergency

What a pro does

Finding the split is the hard part in this housing stock. Plenty of homes around Philadelphia, Reading and Wilkes-Barre run supply lines up an interior chase between two party walls, so water that appears in a first-floor ceiling can be coming from a burst two storeys higher. The plumber kills the main, drains the system down, then works out where the pipe actually runs before opening anything. Old galvanised steel fails differently than copper does. Galvanised tends to rot from the inside and split along a seam, while copper freezes and bursts clean, and the repair for each one isn't the same. A section of pipe gets cut back to sound metal on both sides, and if it's galvanised the plumber usually has to decide whether patching a rotten run is even sensible. Third-floor bathrooms in Pittsburgh and Scranton, added long after the house went up, are a repeat offender because the line often crosses an uninsulated knee wall. After the joint is made the system gets refilled slowly and watched under pressure.

Frequently asked questions

Because the water follows the framing, not gravity in a straight line. A pipe in a party wall dumps into the floor cavity, runs along a joist to the low corner of the room and comes through the ceiling well away from the split. That's why the wet patch you see rarely marks the spot that needs opening.
It's more likely to fail in general. Decades of rust build up inside the wall of the pipe and leave less metal to work with, so a freeze that copper might survive finds the weakest inch of a galvanised run. Homes in the older boroughs still carry a lot of it.
That depends entirely on your policy and how the failure happened, and the answer varies a lot between carriers. Photograph everything before any repair starts and contact your insurance provider directly to find out what your coverage includes.
Usually on the wall closest to the street, right where the service line enters, with the meter just past it. In many older Pennsylvania basements it's behind stored things or up above head height on a joist, so it's worth finding on a dry day rather than during a leak.

Burst Pipe?

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