Plumbing in New York fails in the language of the building. City water moves through shared risers and cast stacks, and a leak in the ceiling is often someone else's supply line or a roof drain tied into the house system. Upstate water moves through a detached house that can freeze on an outside wall, with a basement shutoff you can usually reach. Buffalo adds long cold and meltwater at the foundation. Say which system you are standing in.
Say leak, drain, or water heater before the backstory. A supply leak does not wait. Know whether you can shut the fixture, and whether the main shutoff is in your basement or in a room you do not control. A drain that is slow in one sink is not a building sewer that backs up at the lowest floor. A water heater that is leaking at the tank is not a faucet drip. Those are different calls, and the first sentence should pick one.
Freeze is the upstate specialty. An outside wall, a hose bib, an unheated crawl, or a house that lost heat can split a line that was fine in October. The city specialty is age: galvanized risers, tired valves that fail when touched, and stacks that have been patched for decades. Both places have basements that take water, but a city stairwell leak and a lake-town sump failure are not the same path. Describe the path.
Have the fuel and the type if the water heater is the problem, tank or tankless, gas or electric, and whether it still makes hot water or is actively leaking. Say if a drain was snaked before and came back. Say if the ceiling below is open or finished. Ask about the shutoff, the vent, and the pan where those apply. Do not start demolition to go looking. The call can sort the order.
Bring the building and the symptom. A riser in a walk-up is not a frozen bath line in a detached house. A sump running all spring is not a roof drain on a flat city roof. Plumbing in New York is that distinction, plus whatever water is in the wrong place tonight. Call the number on this page.