Dan Sterling of Water Hero talks about preventing water damage to your business, which is the largest preventable claim for the US insurance industry. Dan discusses the history of leak detection systems leading up to modern whole building leak detection and smart water meters with automatic water shutoff valves.
Hi, I’m Dan Sterling, founder and CEO of Water Hero. And today we’re going to talk about how to prevent water damage for your small business. We get lots of inquiries from businesses ranging from golf course facilities, to health centers, to warehouse companies, distribution companies, nursing homes, childcare centers, and they’re all concerned about preventing water damage. Hopefully you’re watching this video because you want to prevent this from happening to you. If it has happened to you, you can probably appreciate what a nightmare it can be.
Water damage is the largest preventable claim for the US insurance industry. It’s a $10 billion a year problem. It’s seven times more likely to happen to your business than fire. This is very, very serious. And what we’re going to talk about is really the state of the art now for doing this.
Initially, first generation leak detection systems were not internet connected. They had no remote control, they had no remote monitoring. Sometimes they were simply an audible alarm. If there was a leak detected, it would send an alarm, which sometimes does you no good on weekends when no one’s in the building.
The next generation was utilizing moisture sensors. It’s a spot approach. You have to hope that a pipe conveniently breaks near one of the moisture sensors that you might have scattered all over your facility. And a lot of times they get kicked, they get moved accidentally.
The state of the art now that insurance companies are very, very keen on and starting to offer premium discounts are whole building leak detection systems. These consists of a smart water meter right in line with a motorized ball valve shutoff.
The shutoffs will look something like this. This is a two inch shutoff that you’d see in a small business, a commercial enterprise. They’re very robust, rugged, reliable, and when they’re connected to the electronics for your leak detection system, you can actually control these remotely. Anywhere in the world where you have internet connectivity, you can see the status of your leak detection system. You can open or close a valve if you need to. Very, very powerful technology.
We are seeing these deployments with more and more small businesses at the behest of their insurance company. Companies are starting to look for you to establish a water risk mitigation policy. Very much like you would develop a risk mitigation for your internet security, more and more businesses are starting to develop a risk mitigation plan around water because as you know, water is very, very crucial to the operation of your business. If you have a water damage incident, not only could it ruin your building, your property, inventory, but it could also cause you to have to shut down your business so you have loss of business. It really ups the stakes that much more in a business than you might have on a residential application.
