Time for some leak sensors!

[tmbrown97]

Woke up this morning (quite abruptly I might add) to my frantic wife...  we actually have a refrigerator in our laundry room, and she went in to grab something to drink at 6:00AM.
 
Turns out, our Electrolux washer didn't fully close the fill valve.  The washer sits in a pan - one I had to improve and actually plumb correctly when we bought the house, because it was all screwed up... but 6 years of dust/lint/crap-that-falls-off-the-washer, it seems it wasn't able to keep up, and the water overflowed the pan and made quite the mess of the laundry room floor and soaked the carpet next to it.  And the best part?  I have upstairs laundry!  So, downstairs, we had water leaking through one of the can lights onto the kitchen island where luckily there was nothing valuable, amazingly.
 
Quite the screwed up morning... all before 8AM... but it could've been much worse.  It doesn't look like I'll need to do any drywall repairs;  I removed the can light where the water was coming from and put a fan up inside there; we stopped all the water from upstairs and fixed all that, and we even found a parts store in town that had the offending valve so I could repair the washer.  Tomorrow we're expecting everything will be dry enough to put it all back together.
 
So - just a friendly reminder everyone - water can really screw things up!  And - it's time for me to find a leak sensor... I'm thinking since I have the Elk with the GE wireless, that's probably my best bet.  Unfortunately the shut-off valve isn't practical here since we plan to sell the house in 6 months...  I'll say, I'm very thankful - there are so many ways this could've been a lot worse!
 
 

 

[IVB]

ugh, i hate water leaks. Glad to hear it wasn't worse.

 

[mikefamig]

Woke up this morning (quite abruptly I might add) to my frantic wife...  we actually have a refrigerator in our laundry room, and she went in to grab something to drink at 6:00AM.
 
Turns out, our Electrolux washer didn't fully close the fill valve.  The washer sits in a pan - one I had to improve and actually plumb correctly when we bought the house, because it was all screwed up... but 6 years of dust/lint/crap-that-falls-off-the-washer, it seems it wasn't able to keep up, and the water overflowed the pan and made quite the mess of the laundry room floor and soaked the carpet next to it.  And the best part?  I have upstairs laundry!  So, downstairs, we had water leaking through one of the can lights onto the kitchen island where luckily there was nothing valuable, amazingly.
 
Quite the screwed up morning... all before 8AM... but it could've been much worse.  It doesn't look like I'll need to do any drywall repairs;  I removed the can light where the water was coming from and put a fan up inside there; we stopped all the water from upstairs and fixed all that, and we even found a parts store in town that had the offending valve so I could repair the washer.  Tomorrow we're expecting everything will be dry enough to put it all back together.
 
So - just a friendly reminder everyone - water can really screw things up!  And - it's time for me to find a leak sensor... I'm thinking since I have the Elk with the GE wireless, that's probably my best bet.  Unfortunately the shut-off valve isn't practical here since we plan to sell the house in 6 months...  I'll say, I'm very thankful - there are so many ways this could've been a lot worse!

 
I feel your pain, water can do a lot of damage. I just replaced a single lever water valve on my clothes washing machine about a week ago because it had started dripping. Our washroom is also on the ground floor and a leak had done a lot of damage here that I had to repair when I bought the house years ago.The house was in estate and I'm guessing that it was leaking for a long time because we had to to tear out and replace floor and sub-floor. Be glad that it wasn't worse.
 
Happy father's day?? Mike.

 

[Neurorad]

Glad it wasn't worse!

 

[pete_c]

Not a nice morning.  It is good you caught it before there was more damage. 

 

[ano]

Yup last weekend I installed 7 GE wireless leak detectors around the house. I'm deciding between one of two plumbers to install my WaterCop this week.  Anyone know if home insurance gives you any discount?
 
I decided I trust the supervised GE detectors more than the non-supervised WaterCop sensors and have the Omni control the WaterCop. And GE sensors are cheaper and battery life is much longer.

 

[ecborgoyn]

Maybe I need to move the 'add water leak detectors' higher on my to-do list....  Thanks for the motivation.

 

[NeverDie]

I know for a fact that our dishwasher has a leak sensor built into it, and it has two fills valves in series which (so far anyway) have always failed into the "off" position.  Not sure if our washing machine has a leak detector built in, but I did have to replace the fill valve once (fortunately, it failed into the off-position also).  I know that with irrigation valves, some valves are supposed to fail into off, so apparently there is a way to do it.  For washing machines, I doubt it's something even listed on the brochure, but as the OP illustrates, I guess it's not something one can take for granted anymore.  I do get the impression that a lot of engineering has been tossed aside these days just to get the lowest price, and consumers are put at risk without even knowing it.  It's really hard to find a good appliance, as many of the brands no longer mean quality anymore.

 

[RAL]

I know for a fact that our dishwasher has a leak sensor built into it, and it has two fills valves in series which (so far anyway) have always failed into the "off" position.  Not sure if our washing machine has a leak detector built in, but I did have to replace the fill valve once (fortunately, it failed into the off-position also).  I know that with irrigation valves, some valves are supposed to fail into off, so apparently there is a way to do it.  For washing machines, I doubt it's something even listed on the brochure, but as the OP illustrates, I guess it's not something one can take for granted anymore.  I do get the impression that a lot of engineering has been tossed aside these days just to get the lowest price, and consumers are put at risk without even knowing it.  It's really hard to find a good appliance, as many of the brands no longer mean quality anymore.

 
My dishwasher also has a leak sensor built in, and it supposedly will pump out the leaking water from the bottom pan. The advantage I see of a leak detector that is connected to the alarm system is that it can notify me if something happens when I'm not home.  Maybe that's a reason to have an internet connected dishwasher!

 

[dementeddigital]

Yup last weekend I installed 7 GE wireless leak detectors around the house. I'm deciding between one of two plumbers to install my WaterCop this week.  Anyone know if home insurance gives you any discount?
 
I decided I trust the supervised GE detectors more than the non-supervised WaterCop sensors and have the Omni control the WaterCop. And GE sensors are cheaper and battery life is much longer.

 
Do you happen to have a link to those GE sensors?
 
My house had water damage before I bought it, and I've been wanting to install some sensors so that it doesn't happen again.

 

[ano]

Do you happen to have a link to those GE sensors?
 
My house had water damage before I bought it, and I've been wanting to install some sensors so that it doesn't happen again.

I like these: http://dpcdist.com/home-disaster-sensor-REx19.aspx
 
So they are made by Resolution Products, and the part # is RE119.
 
These are "Home Disaster" sensors and can detect temp as well, but I just use the flood part.  I have a variety of Resolution Product sensors and they seem pretty high quality.  I also like the design of these because they can be mounted to a wall or the floor. As you can see about $50 at DPC Dist. which is just down the street from me. (And they are a licensed Leviton reseller.)

 

[dementeddigital]

I like these: http://dpcdist.com/home-disaster-sensor-REx19.aspx
 
So they are made by Resolution Products, and the part # is RE119.
 
These are "Home Disaster" sensors and can detect temp as well, but I just use the flood part.  I have a variety of Resolution Product sensors and they seem pretty high quality.  I also like the design of these because they can be mounted to a wall or the floor. As you can see about $50 at DPC Dist. which is just down the street from me. (And they are a licensed Leviton reseller.)

 
I like that one.  Thanks!

 

[tmbrown97]

For the price, that looks like a handy sensor!  I'll probably pick up a few.
 
Unfortunately this wasn't my first run in with water intrusion here either.  The other one was in the attic in the air handling unit... the internals had rusted out sufficiently that the main drain wasn't catching the water; it was instead filling up the pan, then the air handler had sufficient air leakage that it was blowing water out of the pan onto the 2nd floor ceiling.  It didn't help that the secondary drain was a little clogged, and not at the right angle to catch everything.
 
I know the washer has a sensor to indicate the trouble - it was listed in the error codes... however it doesn't do anything about it.  Heck - an annoying chime as loud as it can go would've at least helped! Instead it sat there quietly.  Also, apparently my first reaction to turn on the spin/drain cycle was not the best choice... turns out the motor control board was below the waterline (actually 2" into the water) so it may have actually electrified the water we were standing in momentarily; luckily nothing happened to us, but that was another $170 part that blew out.  Got it all fixed up Thursday though and all seems back to normal for now.