: Water transmission pipelines play an important role in cities water demand supply. Among transient phenomena in water pipelines, water hammer is the most important phenomenon due to its inherent safety problems. Analyzing the water hammer is an important part of designing water pipelines. So far, many different methods have been proposed for analyzing this phenomenon. In this study, the finite volume method (FVM) is applied to solve water hammer problems with complex boundary conditions. In Roe’s scheme, primarily governing equations are discretized and values of pressure head and velocity in each cell at new time step is computed using the values at the previous time step, flux differences at interfaces and values of source term. In the present work, the one-step Roe’s method was used. In addition, Method of Characteristics (MOC) with spatial interpolation is applied to compute the boundary values. Boundary conditions which are considered in this research include reservoirs, valves, series pipes, pumps (with constant speed and shut-off), surge tanks and air chambers. Six sample cases were selected to validate the obtained equations and to compare the results of the present method with other numerical methods. In the first case, a pipeline including a reservoir at upstream, a pipe and a valve at downstream was selected, in which sudden closure of valve causes transient flow in the pipe. Roe’s scheme results were compared with MOC results as well as with the experimental data. It is observed that Roe’s scheme results depend on the courant number (Cr), and courant number should be close to 1.0 to obtain accurate results. Furthermore, Roe’s scheme results were similar to MOC results. In the second case, another pipe was added to the previous pipeline to investigate the series pipes boundary condition. In this case, results of two methods of Roe and Characteristics are very close and are sensitive to Cr. A pipeline including a pump at upstream, a pipe and a reservoir at downstream was selected as the third case, in which pump shut down causes the water hammer. The Roe’s scheme results are then compared with Finite Element scheme (FEM). It is found that, for the same spatial and temporal discretization, both schemes are of equal accuracy. In the fifth case, a pump shut down problem was investigated, in which an air chamber was used to control the cavitation phenomenon in the pipeline. Results of Roe’s scheme and FEM are similar, and using 20 cells in the shortest pipe produced accurate results. In the sixth case, a pipeline with a surge tank analyzed and Roe’s scheme results are compared with MOC results. In this case, 10 cells in the shortest pipe are sufficient for accurate results. In a Separate case, error analyzing was done by using dissipation method, and it was clarified that dissipation of both Roe and MOC are of equal order.