An burst pipe at three in the morning turns an ordinary night into a full emergency in about ninety seconds. Water spreads fast, damage compounds by the minute, and by the time daylight comes you can be looking at ruined flooring, soaked plasterboard and belongings that have sat in dirty water for hours. Knowing what to do in those first few minutes, before a plumber even arrives, is the single biggest thing that separates a manageable repair from an insurance claim.

The first step is to shut off the water at the internal stopcock. In most Bournemouth and Poole homes it lives under the kitchen sink, or in a cupboard by the front door, or occasionally under the stairs in older properties. Turn it clockwise until it stops. If you cannot find it, or if it will not move because it has been left untouched for years, the fallback is the external stop tap under a small cover in the pavement outside your property. A meter key from a hardware shop is often enough to reach it, but many households never own one until they need one.

Once the water is off, kill the electrics if any of the leak is anywhere near a socket, a ceiling rose or a light fitting. Water tracks along cables in ways that are impossible to see, and the safe move is to turn everything off at the consumer unit until the ceiling has dried out. Only when the water is off and the electrics are dead should you start moving furniture, lifting rugs and collecting anything valuable that is still in the danger zone.

Not everything that goes wrong with plumbing counts as a genuine emergency, and it is worth knowing the difference before you pay emergency rates. A ceiling that has started to bulge from a leak above it is urgent, because the plaster is likely to come down and it is safer to have someone open it in a controlled way than wait for a collapse. A blocked drain that has caused sewage to back up into a bath or shower is urgent for hygiene reasons. Loss of heating in winter when there is a baby or an elderly relative in the house counts too. Any smell of gas is not a plumber's job at all - it is the emergency gas line, 0800 111 999, and you leave the property first.

For everything else, a scheduled visit is almost always cheaper and just as effective. A slow tap drip, a running toilet, a radiator that is not warming through - all of these justify a plumber, but none of them justify emergency rates at midnight. A reputable Bournemouth plumber will usually be happy to talk you through what you are seeing on the phone and tell you honestly whether it can wait until morning.

When you do call, ask a few questions before anyone gets in the van. Is the call-out fee separate from the labour? Do they bill in whole hours or in fifteen-minute increments after the first hour? Are parts marked up? A straight answer to those three questions is a good sign; a vague answer is not. Prices for genuine emergencies are always higher than daytime rates, but they should be quoted, not invented on the doorstep.

The best time to think about any of this is before the leak. Save a local plumber's number in your phone right now, note where your stopcock is, insulate any pipework running through cold lofts or against outside walls, and get the boiler serviced each autumn. None of it prevents every problem. But it turns most three-in-the-morning phone calls into much shorter, much less expensive ones.