WHO DO I CALL FOR?

No Water At All In The House — Who Do I Call?

Updated 2026-08-17

Short answer

No water anywhere splits three ways, and the wrong call wastes a day. On city water, call the utility first — free, and a main break may already be logged. On a private well, you need a well or pump contractor, not a plumber. In freezing weather, suspect a frozen line. Free checks first: do neighbors have water, is the main valve open, has the well pump tripped a breaker.

Who to call — and when

Call this When Not for
Nobody yet — run the five free checks Always, first. Neighbors, main valve, breaker, outage map, shutoff notice. Two minutes each, and they decide which of the next four calls you make You smell gas, see water pouring in, or the street is flooded — that is an emergency and it outranks diagnosis
Your water utility's emergency or outage line You are on city water and there is no water at any fixture. They know about main breaks, scheduled shutoffs, and account holds, and if the fault is on their side of the meter it is their repair and their cost You are on a private well — the utility has no connection to your property and no record of you
A well or pump contractor — not a plumber You are on a private well. Pump, pressure tank, pressure switch, well wiring and drop pipe are a separate trade with its own rig, and most general plumbers do not carry the equipment to pull a pump You are on municipal water. A well contractor has nothing to work on
Plumber City water, the utility has confirmed their side is fine, and the failure is yours: a seized or closed main valve, a failed pressure regulator, a frozen interior run, or a service line break between the meter and the house The utility has not answered yet. A plumber cannot tell you whose pipe failed, and you may pay him to find out something the utility says for free
Electrician The well pump breaker trips again the moment you reset it, or there is no power at the pump control box. Repeated tripping is a fault, not an inconvenience, and resetting it repeatedly is how pump motors and panels burn The breaker held after one reset and water came back — that was a nuisance trip, though it is worth mentioning to the pump contractor
Your landlord, in writing, with a timestamp You rent. Running water is a habitability requirement almost everywhere, usually with a short defined response window, and written notice is what starts that clock —

Five checks before anyone gets called

Every one of these is free, none takes two minutes, and between them they usually decide which of four very different phone calls you make. Do them in this order.

1. Does the neighbor have water? One question, and it splits the problem in half. The whole street dry means a main break, a scheduled shutoff, or a pump station down — utility work, on the utility’s dime, and quite possibly already logged with a restoration estimate. Only your house dry means the fault is on your property.

2. Look at your main shutoff valve. Where the water enters the house: basement wall facing the street, a crawl space, a garage, or a utility closet. A gate valve is open when the wheel is turned fully counterclockwise; a ball valve is open when the lever lies parallel to the pipe. Valves get closed by plumbers who never came back, by contractors, and by a family member dealing with a drip last month. Check the meter pit valve too if you can reach it.

3. If you have a well, check the breaker. A well pump runs on a dedicated 240-volt double-pole breaker, usually labeled “well,” “pump,” or nothing at all. A tripped double-pole handle often looks almost normal, sitting slightly off-center rather than snapping fully to OFF. Push it firmly to OFF, then back to ON. If it trips again immediately, stop and read the FAQ above before you touch it a third time.

4. Check the utility’s outage map or status line. Most water utilities publish one, and the emergency number is on your bill. They know about breaks, hydrant work, and pressure zone failures before any technician you hire does.

5. Look for a shutoff notice. A hangtag on the door, a letter you filed unopened, a locked meter, or a plastic tag on the valve. An unpaid bill after a move, a lapsed autopay, or an account never transferred at closing all end the same way: the water is off on purpose, and the fix is a payment and a reconnection fee, not a repair.

One more thing worth thirty seconds: confirm it really is everything. Try hot and cold at three fixtures on different floors. Hot only means a water heater problem. One bathroom only means a branch problem. This page is about nothing anywhere.

The three-way split

Almost all of the useful diagnosis is deciding which of these three you are in, because each leads somewhere different.

You’re on city or municipal water

The chain is: street main, service line, curb stop, meter, your main valve, your house. Something in that chain has stopped.

The utility gets the first call, and it is free. They will tell you whether there is a known break or shutoff affecting your block, whether your account is in good standing, and whether the fault sits before or after the meter. That last answer is the expensive one. Before the meter is their pipe, their crew, and their cost. After the meter is yours.

Common causes on your side, roughly in order: a closed or seized main valve, a failed pressure regulator, a service line break, or a frozen run. On their side: a main break, a valve closed for hydrant work upstream, or a pump station failure.

If pressure faded over days or weeks rather than stopping outright, and especially if the bill has been climbing, that is a different pattern and it belongs on the high water bill page — the meter test there is the standard way to prove a hidden loss and to establish which side of the meter it is on.

You’re on a private well

This is a different trade. Not a plumber — a well contractor or pump service company. It matters enough to say plainly, because calling a general plumber for a dead pump commonly produces a service call fee and a referral.

A well system is four parts that can each stop the water:

Two things that are not equipment failures at all: the well ran dry after a drought or heavy irrigation, which sometimes recovers on its own overnight, and the check valve or foot valve failed so the system lost prime. A pump contractor will ask about both.

EPA estimates more than 23 million U.S. households drink from private wells, and it is explicit that private well owners are responsible for their own supply — no utility is coming, there is no outage line, and nobody is monitoring it but you.

It’s frozen

In cold weather this is the first suspect, and the signature is usually partial: one branch dead while the rest of the house runs, because the freeze forms wherever a pipe crosses unheated space. Nothing anywhere in a hard freeze points further upstream — a shallow service line, an unheated meter pit, or, on a well, the head and above-ground pressure tank sitting in a barn or a crawl space.

Do not start heating anything before you read the sequence: main off first, then open the fixture that line feeds, then heat from the faucet end back toward the ice, and never with a flame. All of that, plus how to find the frozen section and when the utility beats the plumber, is on the frozen pipes page. Come back here if the freeze turns out not to be the cause.

The meter is the dividing line, and it decides who pays

On municipal systems the meter is the usual boundary: the utility owns the main and the service connection up to it, and the property owner owns everything from it into the house. Some systems draw the line at the curb stop instead, and a few own all the way to the building.

This is not a technicality. Fixr puts water main line repair at $500 to $2,000 with a national average of $1,000, and low pressure traced to the main line at $250 to $4,000. A full main water line replacement runs $1,500 to $12,000 with an average of $3,750, or $75 to $225 per linear foot — $75 to $150 trenchless against $175 to $225 where the yard has to be dug and backfilled. Whether that lands on your card or theirs is one question asked before anyone starts digging, and the answer is worth getting in writing.

The cheap outcomes live on the same page. Fixr lists a main shut-off valve repair at $150 to $300, a shut-off valve replacement at $250 to $1,000, and a pressure regulator replacement at $250 to $1,000. A seized main valve is a real and boring cause of no water at all, and it is at the bottom of that range.

For the labor itself, Fixr puts a plumber’s hourly rate at $75 to $150, national average $90, with an initial service call of $50 to $150 for a journeyman or $150 to $300 for a master plumber. After hours it changes shape: a $150 per hour emergency rate, a $50 to $200 transportation fee, and a $200 to $300 flat call-out on top. If the house is warm, nothing is leaking, and you can get by for a night, morning is cheaper. If it is freezing, or you have no water and a medical need, it is not.

On the well side we are not going to quote you a number. Fixr — the cost source used everywhere else on this page — does not publish a well pump guide, and the honest answer is that a pump job prices off well depth, pump type, and whether the fault is a $200 switch in your basement or a pump 400 feet down. Get two written quotes that separate diagnosis from repair, and if either one arrives as a single lump sum for “well system,” check the contractor before you sign.

If you rent

Total loss of water is one of the clearest habitability failures there is. Nearly every state treats running water as part of the implied warranty of habitability, and most treat losing it entirely as an emergency repair with a response window measured in hours or days rather than the ordinary notice period.

The move is the same everywhere: written notice, with a timestamp, before you hire anyone. Text or email, stating plainly that there is no water at any fixture, when it stopped, and asking when it will be restored. Add what you checked — neighbors have water, the main valve is open, the breaker is on — because it saves a visit and it makes you the tenant whose reports get believed.

Do not call your own plumber first. Almost every lease and most state statutes require notice and a chance to repair before any cost can be charged back, and a plumber you booked yourself is a bill you own. If nothing happens after notice, the escalation ladder — deadlines, code enforcement, and the repair-and-deduct rules that vary sharply by state — is laid out on the landlord won’t fix it page.

If the water was shut off for non-payment on a landlord-held account, that is more serious, and several states treat it as an illegal constructive eviction rather than a maintenance issue.

When the water comes back

Whether it was the utility, the pump, or a thawed line, restoration is not the end of it.

Turn the main on slowly — a quarter turn, wait, listen — rather than snapping it open. A sudden pressure surge into an empty system is a real way to finish off a joint that was already weak.

Then walk the house. A pipe that split while frozen can be held shut by ice and only announce itself when flow returns; a service line break can be quiet until pressure is back. If something has let go, the burst pipe sequence is the page you want, starting with photographs before anyone mops.

Expect air and discoloration. Open the lowest, closest fixture first, cold side, and let it run until it stops spitting, then work outward and upward. Rusty or cloudy water after a main break is stirred-up sediment and clears in a few minutes. Run the cold taps, not the hot, so you are not pulling debris into the water heater.

Check the water heater before using hot water if the supply was off a long stretch and anyone drained anything — an electric element fired in an empty tank is destroyed in seconds. And a boil water notice after a main break stands until the utility lifts it, covering drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, and ice.

The order that keeps you from paying twice

  1. Neighbors, main valve, breaker, outage map, shutoff notice. Free, ten minutes total, and they resolve a real share of these outright.
  2. Confirm which system you are on. Water bill and a meter means city. A pressure tank and a well head means a pump contractor, and calling a plumber instead costs you a service fee and a day.
  3. Call the utility, if you are on city water. Free, and only they can tell you which side of the meter the fault is on.
  4. In freezing weather, work the freeze branch before the failure branch. It is more likely, and it is cheaper.
  5. Then the trade — pump contractor for a well, plumber for house-side city plumbing, electrician if the breaker will not hold.
  6. Get the responsibility boundary in writing before anyone excavates anything.

The prevention list is short and nearly free. Find your main shutoff valve now and turn it, because a valve nobody has touched in fifteen years is often seized and the moment you need it is the wrong moment to learn that. Label the well breaker. Insulate the runs crossing unheated space before the first freeze. And if you are on a well, know your pump’s age — the ones that fail on a holiday weekend are almost always the ones nobody could put a date to.

What it typically costs

Service Typical range Source
Plumber hourly rate $75–$150, national average $90 Fixr
Initial service call fee $50–$150 journeyman, $150–$300 master plumber Fixr
Emergency call-out flat fee (on top of a $150/hour emergency rate and a $50–$200 transportation fee) $200–$300 Fixr
Main shut-off valve repair $150–$300 Fixr
Main shut-off valve replacement $250–$1,000 Fixr
Water pressure regulator replacement $250–$1,000 Fixr
Water main line repair $500–$2,000, national average $1,000 Fixr
Low water pressure traced to the main line $250–$4,000 Fixr
Main water line replacement, full job $1,500–$12,000, average $3,750 Fixr
Main water line replacement, per linear foot $75–$225 ($75–$150 trenchless, $175–$225 dug and backfilled) Fixr

Common questions

How do I know whether I'm on city water or a private well?
Three tells settle it. You get a water bill from a municipality or water district, or you do not. There is a meter in a pit near the street or in the basement, or there is not. And somewhere in the basement, crawl space, garage, or a utility shed there is either nothing but incoming pipe, or a blue or gray captive-air tank about the size of a beer keg or larger, with a small gray switch box on the pipe beside it. That tank is a pressure tank and it means a well. Outside, a well head is a capped pipe six to twelve inches across, standing a foot or so above grade, often near the corner of the house or out in the yard. EPA estimates more than 23 million U.S. households drink from private wells, so this is not a rare case — but it is the case most no-water advice quietly ignores.
Neighbors have water and I don't. What does that tell me?
That the problem is on your property, past the point where the street main serves the block. It rules out the most common utility-side cause in one question, and it is the first thing a dispatcher will ask you. If the whole street is dry, it is almost certainly a main break, a scheduled shutoff, or a pump station failure — utility work, on the utility's dime, often already logged and with an estimated restoration time you can get from their outage line rather than a technician. If only your house is dry, the split is between the service line, the meter, your main valve, and your own plumbing.
Can the water company really shut me off without me noticing?
Yes, and it happens more than people expect. A missed bill on autopay that lapsed, a bill going to an old address after a move or a refinance, an account never transferred at closing, or a landlord-held account that fell behind. Most utilities are required to mail notice first and many are barred from disconnecting in extreme heat or cold, but notice mailed is not notice read. Before you pay a plumber to investigate, look at the meter pit: a locked or turned utility valve, a plastic tag, or a hangtag on the door is the whole answer, and the fix is a phone call plus a reconnection fee rather than a repair.
The break is between the meter and my house. Who pays?
You do, on most systems. The meter is the usual dividing line: the utility owns and maintains the main and the service connection up to the meter, and everything from the meter to the house is the property owner's. But the exact boundary varies by utility, by state, and sometimes by the age of the connection — a few systems own to the curb stop, a few own to the building. Get the boundary confirmed by the utility, in writing if you can, before anyone digs, because it decides who pays a bill that Fixr puts at $500 to $2,000 for a repair and $1,500 to $12,000 for a full replacement.
My well pump breaker keeps tripping. Can I just keep resetting it?
Reset it once. If it trips again immediately, stop. A breaker that trips repeatedly is doing its job — it is reporting a fault, usually a failing pump motor drawing locked-rotor current, damaged wiring in the well casing, water in the control box, or a pressure switch welded closed. Each reset sends full current back into that fault. This is the one branch where the cheap outcome and the expensive outcome are separated by how many times you push the switch, and the right call is an electrician or the pump contractor rather than a fourth reset.
Why won't a plumber work on my well pump?
Because it is a different trade with different equipment and, in many states, different licensing. A submersible pump sits at the bottom of a well that may be 100 to 500 feet deep, hanging on drop pipe and wire, and getting it out means a hoist or a pump-pulling rig, not a van full of wrenches. Plenty of plumbers will happily replace a pressure switch or a pressure tank in your basement, because that part is ordinary plumbing above ground. Almost none will pull a pump. Say the words 'private well' when you call so nobody bills you for a trip that ends at your basement door.
It's below freezing and there's no water. Is it definitely frozen?
Not definitely, but it is the first suspect, and the tell is usually partial rather than total. A freeze normally kills the runs passing through unheated space — a crawl space, a garage ceiling, an exterior wall — so one bathroom or the hot side goes dead while the rest still runs. Nothing anywhere in a hard freeze points further upstream: the service line at shallow depth, an unheated meter pit, or a well head and above-ground pressure tank in an unheated space. That last one is why well systems fail in cold snaps more often than city connections do.
I rent and there's no water at all. Is that an emergency?
Legally, in most of the United States, yes. Running water is part of the implied warranty of habitability in nearly every state, and total loss of water is generally treated as an emergency repair with a response window measured in hours or a couple of days rather than the standard notice period. The practical rule is that written notice with a timestamp is what converts your phone call into a legal clock — text or email, stating that there is no water at any fixture and asking when it will be restored. Call your own plumber before giving that notice and the bill is very likely yours, even if the repair was clearly the landlord's responsibility.

Sources

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