No one ever wants to imagine a disastrous flood scenario at their property or place of business, but unfortunately, accidents still happen. If you are able to catch the water leak early enough, the scale of the damage can be greatly reduced. However, if a leak or burst pipe happens at night or over a weekend when commercial properties are largely vacant, damage can accumulate quickly.

In commercial properties, water damage can occur in a variety of ways. In multistory buildings, plumbing is a major cause of water damage and makes up to 15% of losses. Malfunctions from sprinkler systems follow closely at 14%, with water heaters, HVAC, and boilers as additional sources of water damage. While each of these has its own maintenance schedules and necessitates replacement over extended periods of time, all could experience accidents that can cause major damage in a short amount of time.

Early detection systems, such as commercial water leak detectors, are crucial for any commercial property owner to ensure that their property is protected from these events and damage minimized. The longer a leak goes undetected, the more damage ensues, which is precisely the reason why early detection through technology is of vital necessity.

Commercial Water Waste

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the water used in office buildings accounts for approximately nine percent of the total water use in commercial and institutional facilities in the United States. Within office buildings, 37% of water use occurs within restrooms, followed by 28% cooling and heating. As we covered in a prior article, continuously running toilets can waste over 200 gallons of water per day.

While a lesser source of water loss than plumbing, sprinkler systems and damage or malfunctions that occur within are responsible for 14% of commercial water loss. These types of losses can accumulate damage at an extremely high rate, typically due to the exposure sprinkler systems have to all rooms within the building.

Through this data, you can easily see how, as a commercial property owner, simply one source of water waste in a building going undetected can lead to huge losses to both water and wallets. With the cost of water continuing to rise with the rate of inflation, any and all mitigation efforts toward avoiding water waste will keep commercial property owners from the literal flushing of money down the drain.

Water Leak Detection Benefits

When considering all the places your money as a commercial property owner is spent, it may be difficult to prioritize adding the cost of commercial water leak detectors to your budget. After all, the goal of such systems is that you rarely even have to think about them unless of course, something goes wrong. However, once you take into account the cost savings in the early detection of water leaks or the prevention of them entirely, the case for adding water leak detection systems to your property is all too convincing.

Thankfully, commercial water leak detectors may be cheaper to implement than you may think. For as little as just $19, a water leak sensor such as the Dragino LoRaWAN Water Leak Sensor provided by Choovio can be installed to check for water accumulation in just about any area where flooding is capable of occurring. Battery-operated, this sensor will send continuous data to the user, resulting in real-time feedback should a leak be detected.

Advances in technology, more of which we will cover next, have made it possible to implement robust systems at a cost that is comfortable for any budget.

Commercial Water Leak Detector Technology

The products we highlight for water waste prevention within this article all feature technology that utilizes the Internet of Things (IoT) and the LoRaWAN network. LoRaWAN, short for Long Range Wide Area Network, allows battery-operated devices, such as the water leak sensor mentioned above, to connect wirelessly to the internet. IoT provides a network that connects devices together and transmits real-time data without any human interaction or intervention. When these technologies work together, it results in devices that can consistently check the health of your most vital systems and report the status back to you anywhere you are.

A second Choovio-provided water leak detection technology we will feature here, the EM300-ZLD Zone Leak Detection Sensor, is capable of detecting large areas for the presence of water, transmitting an alarm when the water has been detected. It is also equipped with temperature and humidity sensors that may indicate a leak is occurring prior to a resulting flood event. It uses ultra-low consumption for a battery life of up to 10 years.

The SW3L LoRaWAN Water Flow Monitoring Sensor is highly effective for regularly monitoring the volume of water flow and water usage. Volumes statistics are transmitted at regular intervals, again sending an alarm when the designated volume is exceeded. This technology is perfect for avoiding water waste in plumbing fixtures but also has the versatility to be used in outdoor settings.

With these commercial water leak detector technologies and others, you can begin to imagine the peace of mind you will achieve by knowing the moment that an issue may be occurring and being able to begin remediation immediately. Even if you are unable to determine the exact nature or place of the problem, you can have the water supply shut off until you are able, saving valuable time and energy on top of water and money.