Should I leave the water on or off while I am away?
Off, at the main, whenever the home allows it. A closed main is the strongest single protection against water damage in an empty home: no supply line, fill valve or appliance hose can flood a home that has no pressure behind it. Our protocol opens the main on arrival, checks every zone, and closes it again before we leave.
Most interior water damage in a vacant home comes from pressurized lines: a burst supply hose, a failed fill valve, a cracked filter housing. With the main closed, a failure leaks only what is left in the pipes instead of running for days.
On each visit we photograph the main valve on arrival, open it, read the meter, check every water zone, run fixtures to keep drain traps sealed, then close the main and photograph it closed again. The report shows both photographs, so you can see the home was left as agreed.
Some homes cannot have the main closed — irrigation, a fire sprinkler, a condo building shut-off you do not control, or an association rule. In those cases we record the reason, and we turn off the water heater breaker or the supply to individual fixtures where that is possible.