Water reaches a house along a single path: the utility main under the street, the meter, a buried service line, the main shutoff valve, and a pressure reducing valve. When every faucet goes dry at once, the supply has stopped at one of those five points, and each one leaves different evidence.
A plumber diagnosing no water in the house checks those points in order, starting at the street and working inward. A homeowner can rule out two of them in a few minutes without tools. The others involve valves under street pressure, buried pipe, or frozen lines, and those repairs belong to a licensed plumber.
Confirm the Whole House Is Out
Open the cold side of the kitchen faucet, then a bathroom faucet at the far end of the house, then an outdoor spigot. If all three are dry on cold, the problem sits upstream of the house plumbing and the rest of this article applies.
If cold runs normally and only the hot side is dead, the supply is fine and the fault is at the water heater, most often a closed or failed valve on its cold inlet. A hot water outage with normal cold flow has its own set of causes. If a single fixture is dry, the fault is local to that fixture's valve or supply line, a smaller repair in the same category as low pressure at one faucet.
Rule Out the Water Utility
A main break or scheduled work on the street shuts off every house on that section of line. Ask a neighbor on the same side of the street, or check the outage page of the utility named on your water bill. If the neighbors are dry too, the repair belongs to the utility and no plumber can speed it up.
Two other utility causes affect a single house. Service can be shut off at the meter for a missed payment, and a meter replacement can leave the curb valve closed by mistake. The valve inside the meter box belongs to the utility, so call and ask if the account or the meter shows a shutoff before touching it.
When service returns after street work, expect sputtering and cloudy water for a few minutes. Run a cold tap at the lowest fixture in the house until it clears. Air in the water lines after an outage works itself out the same way.
Check the Main Shutoff Valve
The main shutoff sits where the service line enters the house. In homes with a basement or crawl space, look on the foundation wall facing the street. In slab homes it is usually in the garage, in a utility closet, or beside the water heater.
A lever handle means a ball valve, and it is open when the lever runs parallel to the pipe. A round wheel handle means a gate valve, which opens counterclockwise. If the valve was plainly left closed after a repair, opening it restores the water. If the handle resists, spins freely, or sits fully open while the house stays dry, stop there and call a plumber.
Gate valves also fail internally. A threaded stem lifts the brass gate, and on an old valve that stem can strip or snap the first time the valve is closed for a repair. The gate then stays down when the handle is turned back open. A wheel that spins without stopping, or one that will not move at all, means the valve needs replacement. Forcing a seized valve can break the stem or start a leak at the packing nut, with no way to stop the water behind it.
Replacing a main shutoff is not a homeowner repair, because the water has to be closed at the meter before the old valve comes out. The new valve is normally a quarter-turn ball valve. Shutoff valve replacement is one of the repairs we handle.
A Failed Pressure Reducing Valve
Many homes on municipal water have a pressure reducing valve, or PRV, a bell-shaped brass fitting on the main line just past the shutoff. It steps street pressure down to a level the house plumbing can handle, and plumbing code calls for one wherever incoming pressure exceeds 80 psi.
Inside a PRV are a spring, a diaphragm, and a small inlet screen. Sediment stirred up by street work can pack that screen, and a worn diaphragm or seat can stick closed. Either failure can cut flow to a trickle or stop it completely at every fixture, hot and cold alike.
The pattern that points to the regulator is a house that lost pressure over days or weeks before going dry, or one that lost water right after the utility worked on the main. Pressure that swung high and low beforehand is another of the signs of a failing regulator. A PRV is plumbed into the main line and has to be set with a gauge after installation, so both the diagnosis and the repair go to a licensed plumber. Water pressure troubleshooting is part of our repair work, and a gauge reading confirms a failed regulator before any part is replaced.
A Frozen Supply Line
In north Georgia, a dry house on the morning of a cold snap usually means ice in the line. Homes here often carry water lines through crawl spaces, garages, attics, and exterior walls with little insulation. Field tests by the Building Research Council at the University of Illinois put the danger point at an outdoor temperature of 20°F for bare pipes in an unheated attic. Wind through a gap in a wall can freeze a pipe at warmer readings than that.
A frozen line shows up as water that worked at bedtime and is gone at sunrise, with the neighbors unaffected. Sometimes one side of the house still runs. The blockage is the smaller risk. Freezing water expands and can split the pipe, and the ice plug seals that split until it melts, so a frozen line often floods a house hours after the weather warms.
Open a faucet to relieve pressure, locate the main shutoff, and call a plumber before applying heat, especially when the frozen section runs through a wall, a crawl space, or an attic. Never use a torch or any open flame on a pipe. If water appears anywhere once flow returns, close the main shutoff and treat it as a burst water pipe, which our emergency line answers at any hour. On nights forecast at or below 20°F, dripping faucets overnight relieves pressure in the most exposed runs.
A Break in the Buried Service Line
The service line runs underground between the meter and the house, and the homeowner owns it on the house side of the meter. A full break sends the water into the yard instead of the house. Look for a soggy strip or pooling between the meter box and the foundation, a washed-out patch of soil, or the sound of running water at the main shutoff with every fixture closed.
The meter confirms it. With all water in the house off, lift the meter box lid and watch the dial and the small leak indicator. If either is moving, water is leaving the line somewhere past the meter. The steps for reading the meter for leaks apply here, and the result is the first thing to tell the plumber when you call.
Pipe material decides what happens next. Homes built between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s may have a polybutylene service line, which turns brittle with age, and older homes may have galvanized steel that closes up with rust. On a sound line with one bad spot, we can often isolate and repair the damaged section. On a line that is failing along its length, replacing the full run between the meter and the house is the repair that lasts. Our water line repair service covers both, including the excavation and the connection at the meter.
Homes on a Private Well
Some rural properties north of Cumming draw from a private well, and none of the utility checks apply to them. Start at the electrical panel, since a tripped breaker on the pump circuit shuts down the whole house at once. Then read the gauge on the pressure tank. A reading of zero with the breaker on points to the pump, the pressure switch, or the well itself, and that work belongs to a well contractor.
When to Call Total Mechanical Care
Most cases of no water in the house trace back to one of the points above, and only two of them, a utility outage and a closed valve, clear up without a repair. Call the utility first if the neighbors are also out or the account may be shut off. Call us when the meter is live and the house is still dry, when the main shutoff spins or will not move, when the meter runs with every fixture closed, or when a thawed pipe starts leaking.
We troubleshoot water pressure problems, replace failed shutoff valves, and repair or install water lines for homes and businesses across Cumming, Alpharetta, Roswell, and the surrounding north metro area. Emergency plumbing service is available 24 hours a day for a broken line or a burst pipe.
Call 404-907-1924 or book service online, and tell us what you found at the meter and at the shutoff. Those two details tell our plumber where to start.
