Burst pipe, sewer backup, no heat: writing the plumbing emergency page

If the caller smells gas, the page says one thing

Put the gas line above everything else on the page, the phone number included: "If you smell gas, leave the building now and call [your gas utility's emergency line, as the utility publishes it] or [the emergency number where you work]." That is the page's only instruction about gas, and it has no steps. What to do about a gas leak is for the gas utility and the emergency services to tell the caller; a plumbing and heating company's page gives their numbers and stops.

Copy the utility's number from the utility's own site, and check it on the day you check your own. Put the same line on every page about gas equipment, the furnace, boiler and water heater pages among them, because a caller can land on any of those first. Then make the dispatcher's script open with the same sentence, so a caller who mentions gas hears on the phone exactly what the page says.

What your company treats as an emergency, call by call

The table lists the calls a plumbing and heating company gets at night and leaves the verdict on each to you. Fill the middle column with your policy and the right one with the sentence the page carries, and keep both the same as what the phone says.

The no-heat row needs a threshold, and that threshold is the line to think hardest about. No heat on a mild October evening and no heat at [temperature] with [a baby, or an elderly parent] in the house are different calls, and the page should say where your line falls between them. Each filled row is also a sentence an AI assistant with web search on can quote back to a homeowner asking about a burst pipe at 2 a.m., which makes this table the answer page for the night call.

Planned work stays off this page. Replacements, heat pumps and remodels have pages of their own, which the overview for plumbing and heating contractors and the bathroom renovation article cover.

What the dispatcher asks callers to do while they wait

The page repeats what your dispatcher already tells every caller with a given problem, in the same order and the same words, written as your company's instruction. The instructions are yours, so they stay in brackets here: a template has no business telling anyone what to do with the water, heat or gas equipment in a house its writer has never seen.

1. [The first thing your dispatcher asks every caller with this problem to do, in the dispatcher's words.]
2. [The second, if there is one.]
3. [What to have ready for the technician: access to (where), and (anything else you ask for).]
4. [Anything your dispatcher tells callers not to attempt before the technician arrives.]

Write down only what the dispatcher says to every caller with that problem, and leave the rest to the call, where the dispatcher can ask what the page cannot. Review the page and the script on the same day. A page that says one thing and a dispatcher who says another give the caller two sets of instructions on a night when one is hard enough to follow.

Where the trucks go at night, what it costs, and how soon

Put the night terms in one block the caller can read before dialing, and fill each bracket with the figure your dispatcher quotes on the phone.

• At night we go to: [towns]. [By day we also cover (towns); for those, we come from (time).]
• After hours: [amount] for [what it covers], then [rate] per [unit].
• After-hours rates run from [time] to [time], and all day on [the days you name].
• From your call to a technician at your door: [range] in [towns], [range] in [towns].
• [How you order the calls on a night with more calls than trucks, if you have a rule.]

The response time is a commitment, so give it as a range you would stand behind in the busiest week of your heating season, not the time you managed on your best night. Put a date beside it, and reread it at the start of each heating season, when the heating calls join the plumbing ones.

The paperwork you hand over once the water is off

A night call that ends in water damage raises a question the next morning: what can the homeowner show their insurer? The page answers with what your company hands over, and says nothing about the policy.

• Photos: [before, during and after the repair, taken by the technician, sent by (email or text) within (time)].
• The invoice: [itemized and dated, with the after-hours rate on a line of its own].
• A written description: [what the technician found and where, and what was repaired or replaced, dated and signed by (who)].
• Who receives them: [the account holder, or whoever the homeowner names in writing].

Close the block with the line that keeps the page on its own side: "[Whether your policy covers the damage is between you and your insurer. We provide the records above and answer your insurer's questions about the work we did.]" The page states what you provide. It does not say what an insurer pays, what a policy covers or how a claim is filed, because none of that is yours to state. Photos of the inside of someone's home go to them and to the people they name, and nowhere else without their written permission.

The same hours on the page, the Business Profile and the markup

Google's Business Profile guidelines ask for your regular customer-facing hours, with special hours for particular days such as holidays. They also describe More hours, for highlighting the times of specific services, and say that in general More hours should be a subset of the primary hours. Round-the-clock emergency hours are not a subset of an office's weekday hours, so the profile makes you choose which set is customer-facing: the hours a person answers and can send a technician, or the office's.

Keep the hours out of the name. The same guidelines give "Regal Pizzeria Open 24 hours" as a name that is not acceptable, so "24/7" goes in the hours and on the page, never in the business name. The number on the profile must be under your direct control, and the guidelines prefer a local number to a central call center's; if an answering service takes the nights, it should answer your number rather than replace it.

In the markup, the two sets of hours are stated apart: the business node's openingHoursSpecification carries the office, and the emergency service carries its own hours, which Google's local business documentation writes as opening at 00:00 and closing at 23:59 for a line that never closes. The LocalBusiness schema template with both sets, every value matched to a page, is in the article on the service data. Google's page on AI features lists up-to-date Business Profile information, and structured data that matches the visible text, among its best practices.

When the hours change, change them on the same day, in this order:

1. The emergency page's own text, where the caller reads it.
2. The contact page and the footer.
3. The markup on those pages.
4. The Business Profile: its regular hours, or special hours for a holiday.
5. Every directory that lists your hours, each noted with the date you changed it.

The numbers need the same care. In our audit of 9,483 small business websites (40 trades, 90 metros, late August to early September 2026), 36.9% put more than one phone number across their own homepage, contact page and about page; that is every trade together, with no plumbing cut. An emergency line is a second number on purpose, so each place it appears should say what it is for and when a person picks it up. Whether answers then give the right number and hours is the record set out in the article on reading your AI visibility.