Shut it off first, then call. In a Laconia house that usually means a gate valve on the street side of the meter in the basement — and in a two- or three-unit it may be the only one for the whole building, which is how one tenant’s split supply line becomes everybody’s problem. We handle burst and frozen pipes, failed water heaters, and no-water calls downtown, in Lakeport, and out at the Weirs. You get the number before anything gets cut.
Laconia rents more of its housing than anywhere else we work — roughly 36% of occupied units are tenant-occupied — but the shape of the stock matters more than the share. About one housing unit in six here sits in a two-, three- or four-unit building. Most of those were cut out of single-family mill housing decades ago, by whoever owned them at the time, and the plumbing got cut up right along with the floor plan.
Which is why the 2 a.m. call in this city has a particular shape. There’s one main shut-off for three apartments. It’s in a basement somebody has to unlock. And the branch feeding the unit that’s actually leaking may have no valve of its own at all. We have shut water off to an entire building to fix one toilet supply line. Nobody enjoys that.
The city side of it is in good order, for what it’s worth. Laconia Water Works runs about 100 miles of main in sizes from 2 to 20 inches, roughly 615 hydrants, and close to 1,500 gates it exercises on a maintenance program. Your curb stop is probably fine. It’s the valve inside your building we worry about, because nothing exercises that except a person turning it — and in a rental, nobody turns it until there’s water coming through a ceiling.
Turn your building’s main shut-off once this fall — all the way closed, all the way back open — in daylight, with nothing leaking. If it won’t move, that’s a small job in October and a flooded first floor in January.
Order of operations, and it’s worth taping inside the basement door: building main first, then power to any water heater that might lose its water, then open the lowest fixture in the building so whatever is left in the pipes goes somewhere harmless instead of into the apartment below. If the main won’t turn — and an old gate valve often won’t, or it turns and never seats — stop. Don’t force it. A snapped stem on a ninety-year-old valve turns one leak into a whole building with no water until somebody gets the curb stop closed.
What we find, roughly in order of how often: a supply line to a toilet or sink in an unheated back hall or an enclosed porch that somebody converted to a bathroom; galvanized branch lines that let go at a threaded joint rather than mid-run; a water heater in a basement corner that’s been weeping into the floor drain for months and finally opened up. That last one isn’t an emergency until it is.
We’d rather talk to one person. If you own the building and your tenant called us, tell us who decides and who pays before we’re standing in the basement with the water off. That sorts out faster than it sounds, and it keeps us from doing the same temporary fix twice. Sometimes that conversation costs us the job. That’s fine.
Laconia emergency work runs a call-out or diagnostic charge plus $120–$250 an hour, higher after hours. Most single burst-pipe repairs land between $400 and $1,200. A multi-family where the water ran through two floors before anyone called costs more than that, and you’ll hear it from us standing in the doorway rather than halfway through.
Shut the building main, not the fixture — you usually can’t get to the fixture in time and you may not be able to get into that apartment. Then kill power to the water heater if the tank might drain, and open the lowest faucet in the building. Call us while you’re walking to the basement.
In most older Laconia buildings it’s on the street side of the water meter, low on a basement wall, often behind storage nobody has moved in years. If there are two valves, the one closer to the wall is the one that matters. If you genuinely can’t find it, we can, and the city can close your curb stop in the meantime.
Depends which side of the city you’re on. Downtown and along the sewered corridors you’re on municipal water, so no water usually means a frozen service line, a closed valve, or a break. Out toward Parade Road or the Gilford line you’re on a well, and it’s a pump, a pressure switch, or a frozen run — shut the pump breaker off before you call.
Usually, as long as somebody can let us in — a tenant, a property manager, a lockbox code, the neighbor who plows. Guessing isn’t access. If you own a Laconia rental you don’t live near, settle that question now and keep the number somewhere you can find it from another state at midnight.
We’ll give you an honest place in line and we won’t invent an arrival time to get off the phone. On a bad cold morning in this city everybody’s pipe broke at once. What we will do while you wait is walk you or your tenant through getting the water shut down, which is the part that actually limits the damage.
Tell us what’s happening and we’ll give you a straight answer — what it likely is, what it should cost, and when we can be there.
Describe what’s happening and where the property is. We’ll come back with a straight answer on what it likely is, what it should cost, and when we can be there. If it’s an emergency, say so in the first line.
We reply to every request within 2 business hours.
