Avoiding Costly Water Damage in Your Home

SmartThings alerts a customer that a leak has started forming in his laundry room, allowing him time to rush home to prevent a headache from causing a disaster.

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“My SmartThings setup just paid off!

I was about 20 minutes away at the store when I got a text message: ‘Water Detected In Laundry Room!!!’

I called my wife and asked her to run down and check to see what was going on. It was only a trickle of water, which upon further investigation she discovered was coming from the pipes attached to our wash sink. She put a bucket under it to hold it off until I got home.

rainA little while later I got another text saying that water had been detected, so once again I alerted my wife and she went down and checked on it. To her surprise, the trickle had become much worse and was already overflowing the bucket. After that, she checked the bucket every few minutes and continually dumped it until I got home.

When I got home, it had become quite the leak. As I reached down to feel around the pipes for the source of the leak, I barely touched the fitting and the pipe completely erupted, blasting water for a second or two before I was able to shut the water off. Even just those couple of seconds was enough to cause a significant portion of the laundry room to drip with water.

Turns out that the fitting where the tubes from the sink screw into the water pipes had become worn out and finally gave up the ghost when I barely brushed my fingers across it. Even if I hadn’t touched it, I have no doubt that the fitting would have only lasted a minute or two longer than it did, except that I wouldn’t have been there to shut off the water, and my wife and I probably wouldn’t have discovered it until quite some time later.

I had just purchased the SmartSense Moisture sensor last week and put it in my laundry room, and couldn’t be happier that I did. Who knows how much damage it would have caused and how much it would have cost to repair. Technology saves the day!” – Scott


According to HomeAdvisor.com the average cost to repair home water damage throughout the country is $2,489. Yea… not cheap.

Here’s how to prevent a little leak from causing costly repairs to your home and irreplaceable damage to your valuables:

Items:
SmartThings Hub
Free SmartThings app
SmartSense Moisture sensor
• Recommended: The Detect Leaks and Floods Solution lets you monitor excess moisture in multiple areas of your home and comes at a discount compared to purchasing two moisture sensors individually. Purchase it with the SmartThings Hub for only $198.

How to:

Read how other people have used SmartThings to prevent floods:
• “The Great Flood
• “How SmartThings Saved Me During the Polar Vortex–Twice
A Connected Home and a Race Against Time
•  “The Aftermath and the Future
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Join the conversation! 5 Comments

  1. I have one in my basement and my attic. Hopefully they are just a big waste of money, but I doubt it.

    Reply
  2. This would be great if the moisture alerts could do more than just send a text message and make a siren go off.

    The video is misleading. It shows you having the ability to shut a valve. This option is not available to the user. Only SmartThing Dev’s have that code. I have been asking for it to be released for over 7 months.

    After my $150k water damage loss I went out and immediately bought a whole house Fortrezz z-wave valve and 10 moisture sensors only to discover I still have to manually turn the valve off once I receive the alert message that a moisture sensor has been triggered.

    Reply
  3. The system works very well. Put in your sensors where water may appear, install the Fortrezz water valve in the main water line, and in the App, configure the valve to turn off the water when any sensor detects water.

    Reply
  4. To determine the appropriate corrective measure against water repair and removal you need to evaluate the severity of damage caused due to it. It will assist you to pick the best alternative available for treating the same. Like water damage restoration company in New York City is a great option for water damage cleaning rather than going for some costly measures. In the most crucial stages it brings a ray of hope in individual‘s life.

    Reply
  5. I also purchased this a month ago. It is indeed a very useful tool. I’m glad I found it. Hope this will prevent any more damage in the future.
    https://waterdamagerestorationdallasblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/water-damage-restoration-dallas/

    Reply

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