Emergency Plumber in Chicago When Water Won't Stop

When you need an emergency plumber in Chicago, Chicago Plumbworks is the number for houses, two-flats and condos with plumbing problems that can’t wait until a weekday. In winter it’s often a supply line split by the cold, or a building where every tap has gone dry. In a storm it’s sewage rising at the basement floor drain. Any time of year it can be a water heater emptying onto the floor or a toilet that keeps overflowing. Each one starts the same way. Stop the water, keep everyone clear of wiring, then get a licensed plumber onto the part that failed.

What counts as a plumbing emergency

• Water you can’t stop. A split supply line keeps running at full street pressure until a valve closes it. Plaster gets heavy as it soaks, so if a ceiling starts to bow, clear the room under it.
• Sewage at a floor drain. The drain line leaving the building, or the sewer past it, is full. Every flush and every load of laundry upstairs adds to what comes up, so stop using water anywhere in the building.
• No taps working. In a cold snap that can mean a frozen line, and a frozen line keeps building pressure as long as the cold holds, leak or no leak.
• Water near wiring. If reaching the breaker panel means standing in water, stay out of the basement. ComEd can cut power to the building, and on its newer smart meters it can do that remotely. Leave anything electrical that got wet alone until it’s been checked.
• Water through a ceiling. In a two-flat or a condo the source is often the unit above, and water runs along the joists, so the drip below can be a few feet from the fixture that’s actually leaking.

Shut the water off before anything else

If the building has one water service, the main in the basement shuts off every unit, so warn the other flat before you close it. And if the handle won’t move by hand, don’t lean on it with a long wrench. A valve stem that snaps off leaves the water running with nothing left to close it. Turn it as far as it will go, get buckets under the leak and call.

Night, weekend and holiday calls

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Before you look for an after-hours plumber at 2 a.m., ask whether the problem gets worse by morning. These usually hold overnight once you’ve done one small thing:

• A dripping fixture. Close the valve under it and set a pan down.
• A toilet that won’t stop running. Close the valve on the wall behind it, near the floor.
• One slow drain. Stop using it and use another sink or tub until the visit.
• A water heater that’s cold but sitting on a dry floor. Cold showers are miserable, but nothing is getting damaged.

These get worse by the hour, whatever the clock says:

• Water you can slow but not stop, even with the main closed. That points to water the main doesn’t control: a tank emptying, a separate service to the unit above, or sewage.
• Sewage or storm water rising in a garden unit where someone sleeps.
• No water at all in a deep freeze.
• A relief valve on the water heater that keeps discharging hot water down its pipe.
• A ceiling that’s wet and spreading.

Holidays don’t change the list. A full house does put more showers, dishes and flushes on a tank or a drain that was already struggling.

No water in the house? Start here

The whole block is dry

Chicago’s water mains run under the streets, and a broken main is the City’s Department of Water Management to repair. Service comes back when that repair is done. If one floor or one fixture stays dry after the rest of the block has water again, the problem is inside your building, and that part is a call to us.

Only some faucets are dry

Upstairs dry but the basement sink runs? Kitchen tap dead while the bathroom is fine? Water is reaching the building and stopping somewhere inside it. In winter the dead fixture often sits on an outside wall, and the pipe feeding it has frozen. Leave that faucet open. A frozen line builds pressure behind a closed tap, and the open one gives it somewhere to go.

Every tap in the building is dry during a deep freeze

With every tap dry, the ice is probably low and near the front of the building, in the service line where it comes through the foundation or close to the meter. That’s one of the first places the cold gets in. Keep the basement heated, keep any open flame away from the pipe, and call. If the frozen section is inside the foundation wall or below it, nobody is reaching it with a hair dryer.

Mild weather, and still nothing

Check the main valve first, especially if anyone worked on the plumbing recently and may have left it partly closed. If it’s fully open and the neighbors have water, something between the street and your first fixture has failed, and that needs a plumber to find it.

The plumbing emergencies Chicago buildings run into

A split line after deep cold

On January 30, 2019, O’Hare recorded 23 below zero, Chicago’s coldest reading in 34 years. Cold like that reaches pipes on outside walls, in back additions and on enclosed porches long before it gets to the rest of the house. When a line splits in a freeze, the main valve comes first, as above, and the repair visit should look at the whole run, because a second spot on the same pipe may have taken the same pressure.

Sewage at the floor drain in a storm

Heavy rain is when Chicago basements take in water through the floor drain, and some of what comes up is sewage. If it’s rising now, stop running water anywhere in the building, keep kids and pets away from it, and don’t stand in it near anything plugged in. The reasons basements here back up, and what stops it next time, are on the page about sewage coming up a drain.

A garden unit with the pit alarm sounding

A bathroom or laundry in a garden unit often sits too low to drain to the sewer on its own, so it empties into an ejector pit with a pump. When that pump stops, the alarm goes off and every flush raises the level in the pit. Stop using water on that floor. What fails in these pumps is covered on the page for a pit alarm going off.

A water heater emptying onto the basement floor

One manufacturer’s installation manual states that all water heaters eventually leak. If yours is leaking now, close the valve on the cold pipe at the top of the tank so it stops refilling, then turn the gas control to off or switch off its breaker. Plenty of puddles under a heater turn out to be a fitting or a valve rather than the tank, so a tank leaking on the floor gets looked at closely before anyone talks about a new one.

What happens when you call

Every emergency plumbing call starts with questions. Where is the building, and which unit? What’s leaking or backing up, and is the main valve off? Is anyone at risk from water near the panel, or from a gas smell? Who can open the door?

From there we set up the visit with a licensed plumber and let you know what to expect on timing. If things change while you wait, say the water gets past the valve or the sewage keeps climbing, call back and tell us. It can change the order.

Your plumber’s first job is tracing the water back to what failed, whether that’s a split line, a clogged main, a dead pump or a tank that rusted through. You’ll hear what the repair involves before it starts, and you only pay for work you agreed to. Once the repair is made and the main is open again, the water goes where it belongs.

Backing up instead of leaking?

When the trouble is drains rather than supply lines, two other pages fit better. If every drain in the house backs up at once, the main sewer line is where to look. If the yard pools and the basement backs up with every storm, the catch basin outside and the way the basement ties into the sewer are the place to start.