Plumbing in Wichita shows up in basements, in mineral scale, and in hose bibs the plains wind can freeze. Older houses in Riverside, College Hill, and Delano often put the heater and the main low, under the bath that will stain the ceiling if a shoe or a valve weeps. Newer houses may be on a slab, where a leak becomes a warm stripe or a meter that moves while every tap is shut. The water crusts valves and rumbles tanks.
Say leak, drain, heater, or sump before you narrate the whole house. A sump that failed puts groundwater beside the furnace, and that is a different emergency from a dripping lavatory. Gas smell means the call is made outside. If the main is already closed, lead with that. Many basement valves have sat still for years. If one will not turn, do not muscle it into a flood. Report the stuck valve.
Drains in the older neighborhoods meet tree roots and old pipe that bellies. One slow sink is not a lateral. Two fixtures on the same run that gulp and return are closer to it. A sour wet spot in the yard deserves a plain sentence. So does a window well that fills and then leaks at a basement hopper. Hail and heavy rain will do that when the cover and the grade are wrong, and replacing a pump without saying the well fills is how the floor gets wet again.
Minerals decide how heaters and shower valves age here. If the hot water is short, rusty, or loud, say so, and say whether the unit is gas or electric if you can see that without unloading storage onto it. Include the pan and whether the discharge line and the flue are intact. A roof leak and a heater leak can meet in the same basement and should not be blended into one dramatic drip. If you can tell them apart, do. If you cannot, say you cannot.
The next north wind will test the bibs and any line in a rim joist. Call with the neighborhood and the location of the water: basement, slab floor, yard, ceiling, or no hot water. One clear location is the whole brief. Call the number on this page.