An escape of water claim might not have the same emotional impact as a loss resulting from a fire or a burglary, but from an insurance industry perspective, these types of claims are a major concern. Figures from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) show that its members pay out around £2.5m every day for the escape of water claims (in residential buildings) and this cost is rising. The latest ABI figures show that, in 2017, domestic escape of water claims cost 24% more than in 2014. Worried about your business? You can expect more costly damages to occur. Compared to the average cost of residential claims (£2,638), the average cost of each commercial claim is roughly £4,000! What’s more, on average, you will lose £1,700 for each claim due to paying for excess and/or lack of insurance coverage.

Taking into consideration the different ways we use water around our homes (underfloor heating, en-suites, wet rooms) and the reduction is using copper pipes in the plumbing industry. You can only react when you have actually noticed the leak in the first place. What if the leak starts whilst you are away on vacation? The amount of damage a property would sustain from escaping water will dramatically increase the longer it’s not addressed.
Naturally, there is a solution to every issue, Leak detection devices are available to alert property owners to an escape of water and, in many instances, shut off the supply of water. Flow-based technology is widely used. This analyses how much water is flowing through the system, with many devices triggering an alarm, sending an alert and shutting down the supply if the flow deviates from what’s expected.
Are you for Traditional or Internet-Enabled?

Products for detecting leaks can be split into 2 categories, traditional and internet-enabled. Internet connectivity is a major benefit for leak detection because customers can receive remote alerts to their mobile devices wherever they may be, and more advanced diagnostics can be used. With the development of intelligence and pattern recognition, a user’s unique water usage profile can be learnt, which means alerts are bespoke to each building/floor/room.
For internet-enabled devices, an online app gives the user flow visualisation, so they are able to see the water usage before the leak occurred in order to understand exactly what happened. Sometimes it is difficult to know where a leak might be, so splitting the building up into zones can offer a great deal of insight than single-zoned variants. Keep up the pace with real-time monitoring which will give immediate alerts and feedback on usage, especially useful in time-critical environments or simply to test the water-saving tap/shower you just installed!
What about AMR or BMS?
If you have a large commercial site, you may have a Building Management System (BMS) with the ability to read water meters. Or you may have a datalogger connected to your water meter giving you Automatic Meter Readings (AMR).
These tools are great for supplying monthly billing information, but infrequent readings and unsophisticated software mean customers often suffer from data overload before being able to spot leaks. The data is time-consuming to sift through and does not immediately give any useful insight. Because the data often comes from a revenue meter supplying the whole building (or multiple buildings), it is even more difficult to understand where exactly your water is going.

Furthermore, BMS and AMR do not shut the water off automatically, so you are still prone to significant damage from a catastrophic leak before anyone can get on site and find the stop tap. That’s assuming the stop tap still works!
Now you know what you need to survive a water leak! Where can you go from here? Well look no further, we have listed all of the known products available in the UK and compared their main benefits allowing you to see which device would be right for you and would give you the peace of mind you have everything under control.

