No water at all? Meter, well pump, or utility

You turn the tap and nothing comes out. Not low pressure, not a sputter, nothing. No water at all is usually one of three things: a valve somebody closed, the utility, or on a well, the pump or the switch that controls it. The checks take ten minutes and no tools, and they tell you who to call.

Is it one faucet, or the whole house

• Try a second faucet in a different part of the house, and try both hot and cold. Only one faucet dry, or only the hot side dry, is a fixture or water heater problem, not a supply problem.
• Try an outdoor hose bib. It usually sits ahead of the house plumbing. Water there and not inside means the problem is between that point and the fixtures, often a filtration system or a softener.
• Ask a neighbor. If the house next door is dry too, it is the utility, or on well systems, a power outage. If they have water, it is on your property.
• Check the power. On a well, no power means no water, and a tripped breaker is the most common cause of a dry house in Lehigh Acres.

Somebody closed a valve

It happens more than you would think, especially in a seasonal home, a rental, or a house that had a contractor in it last week.

• The main shutoff. Find the valve where water enters the house: an outside wall near a hose bib, the garage, or a box at the front. A lever should run along the pipe, not across it. A round handle should be turned fully counterclockwise. Someone leaving for the season, a pool contractor, or a relative helping out may have closed it.
• The filtration or softener bypass. A whole-house filter, softener, or conditioner has a bypass valve on the head. A filter clogged solid, a softener stuck in a cycle, or a bypass turned the wrong way will stop the house. Set it to bypass; if water returns, the equipment needs service, not the plumbing.
• The pressure regulator. Some homes have a bell-shaped pressure reducing valve near the main. When one fails it usually leaks or lets pressure climb, but a PRV can also fail closed and leave the house dry. If the hose bib before it has water and the house after it does not, that is the suspect.

At the meter

On city water, the meter box is a rectangular lid near the street. Lift it with a tool, not your fingers; ants and the occasional snake like it under there.

• The utility side and your side. There is a valve on the street side of the meter that belongs to the utility, and often a second valve on the house side that is yours. If the utility side is closed and you did not close it, the utility did: a nonpayment shutoff, a repair on your street, or a meter change. Call them before you touch it; utilities here ask homeowners to leave their side alone.
• The flow indicator. Most meters have a small triangle, a star, or a dial that turns when water is moving through the meter. Every faucet off and it is turning: water is going somewhere, which means a leak between the meter and the house. Open a faucet and it does not move at all: no water is reaching the meter, or the valve is closed.

When it is the utility

Lee County Utilities, the City of Cape Coral, the City of Fort Myers, Bonita Springs Utilities, and Collier County each run their own system, post outages and planned work online, and have an after-hours line. A main break or work on your street is the most common reason a whole neighborhood goes dry at once. Check the outage page first, then call. When the water comes back, expect air and cloudy water for a few minutes, and watch for a boil water notice; the utility issues one when pressure was lost in the mains.

A meter locked for nonpayment is opened by the utility once the account is current. A plumber cannot open it for you.

On a well: breaker, switch, tank, pump

Private wells serve Lehigh Acres, Alva, Buckingham, eastern Estero, parts of North Fort Myers, and much of the rural county. No water on a well is almost always electrical or mechanical, in this order:

1. The breaker. Find the well pump breaker in the panel, usually a double 20 or 30 amp, and reset it once. If it trips again right away, stop. A pump drawing enough current to trip a breaker is failing or seized, and resetting it over and over can burn it out.
2. The pressure switch. The small gray box on the pipe near the pressure tank. Ants love it, and a nest inside the contacts is a real cause of a dead well here. With the breaker off, pull the cover and look. Burned or pitted contacts, or a switch that clicks but nothing happens, means a switch replacement.
3. The pressure tank. Tap it. A tank that sounds full of water top to bottom has lost its air charge, and the pump short cycles until the switch or the pump gives up. Read the gauge; zero pressure with the pump running means the pump is not moving water.
4. The pump. If the breaker holds, the switch is good, and the pump hums but never builds pressure, it may have lost prime, the foot valve may have failed, or the pump is done. That is where DIY stops.

After a storm, a well house is the first to lose water, because it loses power. Plan a generator that can run the pump before hurricane season, not during it.

Where DIY stops

Reset a breaker once, turn a valve, switch a bypass, read the meter, and call the utility. Those are yours. Opening the pressure switch with the power on, pulling a pump, replacing a PRV, or working on the utility side of the meter are not. Electricity, an old valve that can break off in your hand, and a well casing you cannot see down are three reasons to stop and have someone look.

If the neighbors have water and you do not, and the valves and breakers check out, send us what you found: what the meter indicator is doing, what the pressure gauge reads, what you hear at the pump. That is usually enough to know what to bring.