Busted pipe

Peter Principle

Pipe broke under the house, water is coming out. Turned off the water to the house. Plan to call a plumber later. Any additional advice? Our house is in Burien, WA.

Szechuanosaurus

Remain calm.

If you can, prepare access to the pipe for the plumber (ie, lift carpets & floorboards in advance if necessary) as they won't always be prepared to do that.

Has turning off the water stopped the leak, how bad is the leak and where is it leaking in to (basement or just the deadspace under the house)?

Peter Principle

Going back under to check to see if any more water's comin' out. The leak was in a pipe under the house. We don't have a basement, just a crawl space under the house. It's a mobile home. The leak seems pretty bad, had a little little creek under our house. It was probably coming out about 1/2 gallon a minute, or more.

vonPoonBurGer

I really don't have any additional advice, I just wanted to say I was certain this was going to be an erectile dysfunction thread...

Szechuanosaurus

Yowzers. Usually it's just a pin-prick leak. Oh well, at least as there's nothing under the house there won't be any permanent damage so you probably don't need to be looking into contacting your insurance company. Hopefully the plumber will just be able to cut a section of the pipe out and replace it and then any water should just run off by itself.

Everywhereasign

What size/type pipe are you looking at.

If you've successfully ever replaced or installed a sink tap you could probably cut and re-solder the pipe if it's just a 1/2 inch copper one. That's all the plumber is going to do.

Either way, check the leak. If the water is still dripping out, turn on your taps inside to kill all the pressure and help drain the system to somewhere other then on the ground under your house.

Peter Principle

The plumber has come and gone. It appears that the immediate problem was a crack in the pipe. He replaced that particular section of pipe, but then it sprung a pinhole leak elsewhere. Fixed that, and another popped up. So then he replaced the whole section with copper, and that appeared to correct the problem...at least for now. Ended up being 1.45 hours labor (@ $38.50/15 minutes) and ~ $45 in parts. So, not exactly chump change but it's better than I was expecting it to be.

But, I paid close attention to how he did it, so now I know how to fix this myself in the future.

Everywhereasign

Learning how to solder copper pipe is pretty simple to do on your own or with a guide (Google)

If you're up for it, try it out with some scrap, you can save loads on plumbers by installing taps, showers, toilets yourself, as well as doing repairs like this.

I'm glad everything worked out for you.