Avoid Costly Water Damage Claims

Over the past week I have twice absentmindedly left the water running at our house for an extended period of time which could have caused a major water damage claim.  The first wasn’t a big deal. Tossed the hose into the pool to top it off.  Told myself to turn it off in about a half hour.  Well about three hours later I had that “Oh No!” thought and sure enough the pool was actually overflowing. Really no harm done.  The second time could have been a disaster…..

This is where Tatum Verlinde enters into the story.

Tate loves to Swim! Unfortunately from time to time he also likes to crap himself while wearing a swim diaper.  We had people over for a BBQ over the Fourth of July weekend and Tate had a little accident so i took off his swim diaper, rinsed it with the hose and took it into the laundry room.  I tossed the diaper into the laundry tub, put the plug in, dumped a little bleach and turned on the water.  Being too impatient to let it fill up I walked out of the laundry room to do who knows what thinking I’d be back in two minutes to turn the water off.

Well I got sidetracked (Look a squirrel!), and didn’t return.  Probably five minutes later Noah, our oldest comes running into the backyard telling me that the laundry tub was overflowing and he turned off the faucet.  Disaster avoided! If Noah wouldn’t have been in the house and paying attention we could have had a major problem on our hands.

Over the years we have had several major water damage claims on houses. Some were due to situations  like I explained above. Some have been from burst pipes.  Water damage caused by any of the situations mentioned above is a covered loss on your homeowners policy, which is great news.  Water damage claims like mentioned above can disrupt your household for weeks and months while the home is being dried out, the areas damaged are demolished and the reconstruction begins.  Water Damage claims are NO FUN!!  

So how can you prevent this from happening to you?

There are several products on the market (Google “Leak Detection Systems”) that can be installed on your water main and if a leak is detected can shut of the water.  Many need to be used in conjunction with an alarm system or you need to place the sensors in places where a leak is likely to occur.

A year or so ago I saw an awesome KickStarter campaign where someone designed a product to monitor the water flowing thru your water meter and automatically shut off the water main if it runs for a pre-determined amount of time.  The cool thing about this product is it doesn’t need a plumber to install!  You can check out the KickStarter campaign (which was successful) here http://kck.st/29RblxT. or the Water hero website is http://www.waterheroinc.com/  It looks like the product is in the final stages of development and should be available soon.

I’m surely not the only one?

If you have ever been absent minded like me and left the water running go ahead and a share your story!  Misery loves company.  Hopefully like me you were able to avoid a major disaster.

Jason Verlinde