Part Six
Leaks and Freezes
Water that is in the wrong place does its damage on a clock, and this part is written with that in mind. It starts with the slow kind: the leak that shows up on a meter long before it shows on a ceiling, and the simple tests that find it. Then it turns to the fast kind, with a chapter for the moments after a pipe lets go, when knowing your main shutoff matters more than anything else you know about plumbing. A chapter on frozen pipes follows, on keeping them warm and on thawing them without a flame. The last chapter is about noises, since a house often mentions a problem before it shows one. Read these before winter. The burst pipe chapter is no good to you if you first open it standing in water.