Just Moved In? New Home Plumbing Checklist
The first week in a new home is when you find the plumbing's secrets on your terms — before winter, before the first emergency, and while surveyor's-report leverage is still warm. An hour's structured audit covers it: locate the controls, test everything that moves water, read what the meter says about hidden leaks, and list what needs a plumber's visit. Here's the walkthrough.
Hour one: find and test the controls
Locate the internal stopcock (kitchen sink, under stairs, hall — our stopcock guide has the full hunt) and test it actually stops water at the kitchen cold tap; find the outside stop valve chamber at the boundary and buy the key that turns it. Map the isolation valves at toilets, taps and appliances — and note every fixture that lacks one for the plumber list.
Find the hot water system's identity: combi (no tanks), vented cylinder (loft tank + cylinder) or unvented (cylinder, expansion kit, tundish, no loft tank) — it decides which of our guides apply to you and, for unvented, whether a G3 service history exists. No paperwork? Book a service and start the file.
Test everything that moves water
Run every tap fully (flow, temperature, drips at the spout and underneath), flush every toilet (fill time, running-on, base seepage), run showers to temperature, and fill-and-drain each basin, bath and sink watching the trap below. Listen after everything's off: hissing or trickling in silence is water moving where it shouldn't.
Outside: run the outside tap, check its internal isolation valve exists, and eyeball gutters, overflow pipe stains on walls (a stained wall under a small pipe = a long-ignored float valve), and the drain gullies while you're there.
The meter test and the paper trail
If metered: with every outlet off and appliances idle, photograph the meter, wait an hour (or overnight), and re-read. Movement means a hidden leak inherited with the keys — the one finding that justifies immediate professional attention and possibly a conversation with your conveyancer. Our hidden-leak guide covers the isolation sequence.
Assemble the file: boiler/cylinder service history, any G3 or Gas Safe certificates, bathroom installation warranties, water bills (consumption history reveals leaks and the meter/unmetered question). Registering the water account in your name week one avoids the classic estimated-bill tangle.
The plumber-visit list
Almost every new home audit produces the same worthwhile first visit: fit missing isolation valves, replace any seized stopcock with a quarter-turn lever, service the cylinder/boiler if history is absent, fix the drip-list, and — in hard water areas — assess scale protection while equipment condition is fresh knowledge. One planned visit, priced calmly, beats meeting your plumbing via its first emergency.
Timing tip: do the audit and the visit before your first winter regardless of season purchased — the outside tap ritual, lagging gaps and frost strategy (see the winter checklist) all want doing while the weather's kind.
| Check | Time | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Stopcock found & tested | 10 min | Emergency readiness |
| Every outlet run & watched | 20 min | Drip/fault list |
| Hot water system identified | 5 min | Service needs |
| Meter still-test | 1 hr elapsed | Hidden leak verdict |
| Paperwork assembled | 15 min | The house file |
| Plumber list drafted | 5 min | One planned visit |
Renters, landlords and shared responsibility
Prevention splits sensibly across a tenancy: tenants own the behavioural layer (reporting drips promptly, not flushing the unflushable, basic frost sense) while landlords own the structural one (valves that work, hoses replaced on schedule, systems serviced). Both sides benefit from the same checklist — and landlords who fund the preventive visit reliably spend less than those who fund the emergencies it would have prevented.
Frequently asked questions
The survey said 'plumbing appears serviceable' — is this audit still needed?
Yes — surveys sample and caveat; they rarely run every outlet or still-test the meter. Your audit is the detail layer, and anything material found soon after completion is worth reporting back through your conveyancer while remedies may exist.
What's the most common nasty surprise in new homes?
Seized stopcocks and missing isolation valves lead by a distance — invisible until the first emergency doubles in cost. Hidden slow leaks under baths and long-ignored overflow drips complete the podium. All cheap to fix found early.
Should I get the water tested?
UK mains water is tightly monitored — testing is rarely needed. The exceptions: homes with lead supply pipes (pre-1970 builds — check where the pipe enters and see our lead pipe guide) and private supplies (wells/boreholes), which have their own testing regime.
New-build home — same checklist?
Same checklist plus the snagging lens: run everything early and log faults to the builder within the warranty windows. New-builds' classic issues are debris in aerators and valves, over-tightened or weeping compression joints, and unfinished isolation provision.
The honest next step
Where you go from here depends on what you've diagnosed. A contained, understood fault with the water safely off can wait for a standard appointment — cheaper and calmer for everyone. Active water damage, no water at all, or anything you can't isolate deserves the emergency line, any hour. Either way, describing what you've observed using what you've learned here gets the right engineer with the right parts to your door first time — which is most of what 'fixed quickly' actually means in plumbing.