Flooding – An Unwelcome Surprise
It’s a great feeling walking through your front door at the end of a long day. Dropping your bags, kicking off your shoes and getting ready to settle in for a cozy, relaxing night. Nothing derails that perfect evening, and creates panic quite like finding water in your home where it shouldn’t be. Whether the water is coming through a burst pipe, a backed up sump, or a haywire appliance, it can lead to thousands of dollars in damage and even more frustration.
Water damage is the single biggest cause for insurance claims in Canada.
Ensuring good drainage, Inspecting your property regularly, and testing your sump pump year round can all help to ensure that your home remains dry, but despite best efforts, things will still go wrong from time to time.
What happens when you do everything right, and things still go wrong?
Installing monitored flood sensors, sump water level sensors, and low temperature detectors can help you find out about a flooding risk as soon as possible. With monitored devices, an alarm is sounded and sent to a central monitoring station when the risk is detected. With the monitoring station aware of the risk, yourself and alternate contacts will be called to check on the potential flood and help limit the damage.
What causes an alarm?
Flood Sensor
A flood sensor will go into alarm when it comes into contact with water. These devices are commonly installed near hot water tanks, toilets, and appliances. Some models require a minimum amount of time being submerged before alarming, so be sure to ask how much water is required when considering this type of device.
Sump Water Level Sensors
Sump Sensors generate an alarm when the water level in your sump rises to a level that will trigger the float sensor. The alarm could indicate that your sump pump is not working at all, or is unable to pump out water as quickly as it is coming in. With this device being triggered before the water has left the sump, you have a head start to stop the flooding before it starts.
Low Temperature Detector
A low temperature detector will alarm when the ambient temperature reaches a dangerously low level. Models can be purchased with fixed alarm set points (4 – 10 degrees celcius) and more advanced sensors are available that allow you to program any temperature between 0-99 degrees celcius. Depending on the sensor, this may be programmed to alert you of high temperature s as well.
Flood, Sump and Low Temperature detectors can be a valuable addition to any monitored alarm system.