How much damage do you think it would do if someone came in and dumped a 14-gallon bucket of water in the middle of your home? While that isn’t very likely to happen, it would be the effect of one of your water pipes bursting and leaking for a single minute. While pipes don’t break on their own very often, it is a common occurrence when a homeowner doesn’t pay attention to where pipes are located before cutting into walls. There are tools that will let you detect pipes in a wall before cutting in, and it is especially important to check this before working around bathrooms or in your kitchen. While it might seem like the pipes should be located in a certain place, you can’t always predict how the pipes were installed. If you do happen to have a pipe burst, you need to turn off the water supply as quickly as possible, since it is very little you can do against a pressurized pipe dumping out 14 gallons every minute.