Hard wood floors and Reef tanks, not good....(use of a "water on floor" detector)

[DrMark]

I left the house this afternoon for under 2 hours. I came home to find my office, foyer of house, and even a little further under about 1/2 to 1 inch of water.
A compression fitting under the aquarium that is part of the RO/DI system somehow came apart and full pressure fresh water sprayed freely for quite a while. My wife came home from Hill Country later to find me cleaning up madly, likely $20,000 of hardwood floor prob toast. Wet vac, a million towels, and 3 rental carpet vacs from Home Depot later here I am.

Question, any input on the use of a monitor that detects water on floor and calls the cell phone...or other such device. A little late now, of course.

RO/DI ws installed by the LFS at time of install 6 months ago. The section that came apart was under a little tension that I had not appreciated before........easy and tempting to lay blame on them. But they wont care, believe me. Oh well, live and learn.

Next weekend will be out of town, would have been worse. Guess I will turn off in flow for a couple of days to have piece of mind will out of town. And here my worry was going to be the float valve malfunctioning at some point to cause a leak............didnt see this coming. My wife was not the biggest fan before due to money and time committment (time more than money), you can imagine how she feels now.
Mark:at_wits_end:

[Bill S]

Mark,

A couple of thoughts. First, I NEVER leave my RO/DI unit that serves my tank "ON". I have a 40 gallon storage tank, that I fill up about once a month. I turn on the RO/DI, and set an alarm. Yes, it fills & then shuts off, but I don't trust it.

I don't trust ANYTHING that I think might be able to crash my tank. The RO/DI storage, if it completely fails, can only dilute my system by 35 gallons. That's not enough to kill everything...

As for water monitors. I bought a 5 pack for about $45 on ebay. They take a 9v battery, and work GREAT!!!! They have saved my tail several times: Mamma said she wants new carpet, but ONLY after 6 months of no water spills. We've been going 5 months without a problem. The alarm has gone off about 5 times... Usually right after I do something stupid with maintenance.

[KyleV]

I've had a leak on wood and it was not fun. Not as expensive a mess as yours but I feel the pain!

Good luck!

[hobogato]

i bet you can save the floors. i had the same thing happen (only it was a cracked tank) and after shopvac, a couple days to completely dry out and a few good coats of wax, all was good.

[SoLiD]

Mark, how long has is been since TFH set up your tank? They are usually pretty good at that stuff but it really does depend who did it. Bruce, always goes out of his way to right a wrong. May be I can check out your system some time and go through it with you. BTW my tank sits on wooden floors also. -David

[SoLiD]

Also these have saved me more times then I can count.

Pro Series Water Sensing - Leak and Flood Alarm

http://www.accentshopping.com/product.asp/s/o3hr8zh2qek28otdgqjsjof7gsrg5j3qp42358349/P_ID/151071

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd285/SoLiDST33L/ProSeriesWaterAlarm.jpg

[jc]

The problem with the alarms is that you have to be home in order to hear them. My washing machine leaked all over the floor when I was away.

[Bill S]

Jacob, agreed. HOWEVER, I've found about 9 out of 10 times I have a leak, it's because of something I recently did, and either I'm here, or my assistant is here (I work out of the house).

[DrMark]

I do think any alarm at this point is better than no alarm. I will look into the one above. I have also heard of one that calls the cell phone, although I can find it.

On a seperate, and disappointing note, I called the LFS (only one) that installed everything to let them know what happened (I never asked for anything, yelled, etc., was merely a courtesy call. I immediately got a very negative reaction and that they are not responsible. After probably over $15000 with them.........sad.

[atxchris1234]

I used to work for a home security company in sales.

Wanted to let you know that ADT has a flood detector for homes. If you have a home security system you may want to call your provider and see if they offer flood detection. If not, Check around on home security systems. You wouldn't even need the monthly monitoring. Instead of setting the alarm to call the monitoring facility you can set it up to call your cell and 2 other numbers.

You can find a cheap, wireless system that would do the trick no problem and you could install yourself. I'd suggest looking into GE wireless systems.
Also, you get a discount on your homeowners insurance for having an alarm system.

Good luck

[BA]

i feel your pain man, i made a stupid mistake a few days ago. i put some medication in my tank which makes my skimmer go crazy and produce really liquidy skimmate like crazy, for some reason i forgot this, and the tube i have from the waste collection cup goes to a big bucket which sits on the floor. needless to say i came home from school and found that my 375 gallon tank and spit A LOT of water onto our hardwood floors, and after we cleaned up and mopped forever, when you walked water came squirting up from where the boards meet, ya NOT good :(

[jc]

You may consider renting a large dehumidifier to help your floor dry. They work great but are hot and noisy.

[MissT]

I know some of the controller software will call your cell if the pH, temperature, etc. get outside a certain range, but I am not sure if there's a setting/add on for water detection... I'll see if I can find some info on that

[mathias]

My tank is on wood also worse thing I could of done .... ounce Im done with this tank or move tile is the only type of floor from now on...

[caferacermike]

I had my tank on hardwood floors for 4 years before we moved. We seemed to constantly splash water, make huge messes doing water changes, etc.. Well after 4 years we were ready for the worst when we moved the tanks, to be honest they were as nice as when we put the tanks down. Not a single water mark, no black ring, nothing. There were several times that I spilled so much water that it would come back out of the seams for 2 days, the edges would even curl up a bit. But by the time we moved you could not tell a tank was ever there. I used to fill up 5g jugs from my RO, I can't remember how many times I'd get a call to meet someone and leave it running for 12 hours or so. Again nothing ever happened to the floors.

I think you'll come out fine.

[SoLiD]

I used to fill up 5g jugs from my RO, I can't remember how many times I'd get a call to meet someone and leave it running for 12 hours or so. Again nothing ever happened to the floors.

That gives me a bit of hope.:whew:

His wood floors are high quality so they might be fine, but it also saturated some of his carpet. Now that may be a different story. Only time will tell -David

[DrMark]

Nice of you to come by, David. Good to see someone else with the interest and passion I have in Corpus (dont think there are that many of us). The hard wood will never be perfect, but seems it will be ok in long run without having to be torn up. Likely, will live with it. Have nice rugs that cover up a good part of it also. Carpet will be fine, had to pull up some of it and trash a fair bit of pad. I do appreciate the comments, has been a painful couple of days..........but as in lots of things in this world, could have been much worse.
Mark

[matt]

I would agree with Ace that you might be able to save the floors. One of the main reasons I was able to buy my house was because everyone that looked before me thought the old floors were completely trashed from years of animal "activity". I even found a source for old flooring to replace major sections of the floor. But, I found the right guy to refinish, and he was able to make 'em look great with very little replacement of old wood. I never would have believed it. This is in San Antonio, but I bet there's someone in Corpus who's really good with old floors.

The one thing about this hobby, it seems that no matter what you do or how careful you are, sooner or later you get a really wet floor!