Water and gas off at mains here, I used to work for a gas company and the engineers all did it, so I do. 30 second job, mains taps seize up if you don't touch them for a while.
We turn the electric off also, and the heating goes to 7 degrees “holiday mode”.
How long do you need to go away to justify emptying the freezer?
I’d be nervous of turning the gas lever in case of a causing a leak, it’d go into my Fearful Jobs category!
If there's ANY possibility that turning your gas off is going to cause a leak, then calling Transco (SGN or whatever they are called now) should probably be your immediate response NOW! That said, I don't turn the gas off when I go away but knowing that I can immediately isolate the gas supply without risk of making a leak is essential.
Can’t say i’ve ever seen a house with locks on them.
Pretty standard for Victorian, Edwardian, 1930s homes.
I get that not everyone understands the concept, and advantages, of automation 🤷♂️I do. It’s a few seconds job.
You can get AI powered automatic valves
See above.
we have cats that need drinking water & plants in the garden that need watering so water supply stays on when on holiday!
WiFi water leak sensors are cheap (vs potential damage) and can be strategically placed under pipes/taps to warn you of a leak.
On the subject of lights, also have a plugin for the smart lighting system that "replays" the lights from the previous week if we're away, so more realistic than just having select lights on a timer & doesn't need to be manually activated 😃
Six months ago we were awoken at 5am because the water pipe to the bath tap had blown off under pressure.
Just a short amount of time left a big clean up job. One week of that would have been devastating in an old house.
Water is turned off now when we go away.
I did this on a 2 week holiday and the mrs laughed at me, we then went away for 4 days and left it on and found our header had a leak which when in constant use it didn't cause issue but left a while it obviously did, so I'm very glad it wasn't leaking for 2 weeks
Closing internal doors gives you considerably better chance of escaping a fire as it limits the smoke spreading, especially doors to the hallway/stairs. It probably only slows the spread of fire by just a few minutes especially if you have the cheap panelled doors.
Pretty common I'd say. We have a couple to keep unwanted chaos between visiting dogs and our cat. Much more effective than putting a chair in front of the door to try and remind people not to open it!
I get that not everyone understands the concept, and advantages, of automation 🤷♂️
Oh I understand both.
we have cats that need drinking water & plants in the garden that need watering so water supply stays on when on holiday!
Fair enough, in your case you need to leave the water on so other safeguards are required.
WiFi water leak sensors are cheap (vs potential damage) and can be strategically placed under pipes/taps to warn you of a leak.
Stopcock was cheaper. It came free with the house. So on a cost/benefit analysis in my particular case the stopcock wins.
It does bug me that from pretty much anywhere I can monitor the house electricity consumption every five minutes, gas consumption the next day, but water consumption depends on the bill turning up every three months.
Given we're always being told to conserve water these days, and how many times we get pestered about smart meters for electricity and gas, I find it bizarre that there aren't more ways to keep track of water consumption. I could tell you from memory how much electricity and gas we use, but water I have absolutely no idea.
Even if it doesn't update particularly frequently, it would mean you could keep an eye out for slow leaks while on holiday, or have a notification sent to you or something like that...
presumably you don't turn the stopcock off [I]every[/I] time the house is empty though, like if you all go to work or out for the day? 🤔 As leaks can only happen when you're on holiday, right? 😂Stopcock was cheaper. It came free with the house. So on a cost/benefit analysis in my particular case the stopcock wins.
there is a great DIY project that's very popular for doing exactly this, in the home automation groups. Keep meaning to implement it but as usual there are so many potential projects & limited time 😂 The basic idea is you using something called an ESP-Cam which is an extremely cheap (under a tenner) Wifi-enabled microcontroller with a built-in camera. It runs off a battery but sleeps most of the time (although if you can run power to it even better!), you put it in the manhole or whatever so it can see the numbers on your water meter & it wakes up at set intervals, shines an LED and then sends an image of the readout back to your server where it recognises & logs the value. Very clever stuff & all doable for about £20 all in, tops!I find it bizarre that there aren’t more ways to keep track of water consumption.
exactly, what you (or more exactly, the software) will be looking for is some kind of continuous usage which is always the same amount above the variable usage thus indicating some kind of leak...Even if it doesn’t update particularly frequently, it would mean you could keep an eye out for slow leaks while on holiday, or have a notification sent to you or something like that…
I won't have any keyed locks inside a house (neither our own home or the ones we rent out). I don't want anybody who needs to escape because of a fire or similar having to run back into the flames to find a key to unlock the front door.
And my experience of stop cocks is that by turning them on or off after a year or so is an excellent way of causing a drip drip drip or more. Not something you want to be dealing with at 4am with the taxi waiting outside to take you to the airport.
presumably you don’t turn the stopcock off every time the house is empty though, like if you all go to work or out for the day?
No I don't. Do you put wi-fi leak detectors under the taps if you all go to work or out for the day?
I always turn off water when we go out for more than a few hours. We have a setup with a simple internal valve that turns 90 degrees to close just downstream of the ‘official’ stopcock in an easily accessible spot. It’s partly because the plumber who completely re-plumbed the house when we did our conversion recommended it and partly because some friends had just had a flexible pipe split under their bath and came back to find the house flooded including a brand new kitchen ruined. I think their rebuild approached £60k and a was great deal of hassle.
yes. I mean, I don't put them there, they are there permanently. That is the whole point!! 😃 They are pretty small/discreet.No I don’t. Do you put wi-fi leak detectors under the taps if you all go to work or out for the day?
One of our local home automation suppliers does a sort of grab bag of useful household sensors on offer every now and again.
Temp/Humidity/Proximity/Leak, usually about 40 for 5.
And Zigbee, not WiFi. The battery would last about two days...
yep you're right of course, they are Aqara zigbee ones (not WiFi)!And Zigbee, not WiFi. The battery would last about two days…
Turning off All Of The Things sounds like something my grandparents would do. The first whiff of a thunderstorm in Botswana and the RF lead would be out of the telly, every electrical device in the building unplugged. My mum's house is peppered with these stupid 3-way 'brick' power extensions which are a fire risk in themselves, everything with its own little switch which gets diligently turned off after she's done with the kettle or whatever.
Turning off the water isn't something that ever even remotely occurred to me. Exercising the stop cock occasionally is probably a good idea though. I had a leak at the old house and fully shutting off the water was a bugger of a job. I had to take a spanner to it, I was scared it was going to snap and then I have a proper problem on my hands.
I'm not sure as I even know where the tap is in the new place. I should probably rectify that.
found ours (after some searching!!) right in the corner of the kitchen under the built-in cupboards which the previous owners installed (had to remove the trim board things to see it). You literally cannot reach it, unless your arms are 6' long 🙄😂 So ordered a handy tap-turner-extension thingy off Amazon which now lives under there as well!I’m not sure as I even know where the tap is in the new place. I should probably rectify that.
locking internal doors when you go away for a period of time isnt a bad idea in terms of limiting how far a burglar gets inside your house.
"Oh no, the internal door is locked, best go somewhere else" said no burglar ever. Once they're inside an empty house, perhaps behind a now-closed door, they have all the time in the world to kick doors through.
I find it bizarre that there aren’t more ways to keep track of water consumption.
If I remember my last water bill correctly, waste water disposal is more costly than fresh water delivery.
I don't even have a stopcock.
It's a borehole, a pump and a reservoir tank...
And of the three leaks i had in my last place *with* a stop cock, one was on Severn Trents side of the stop cock, one was under the front lawn (ST again) and the third was completely my fault, i forgot to tell the wife not to use the bath until i'd been to get a replacement washer for the waste, as they hadn't sent one...
Had to repaint a corner of the living room ceiling.
my external stop cock took a shit in the cold weather. -20 outside.
Flooded the dining room.
New Laminate flooring and skirtings were required.
even if the internal stopcock had been turned off id still have been stuffed.
