Cautionary tale - in home flood risk caused by common item

[freebo]

2 Days ago I was woken by the dog wimpering at 3AM.

I went downstairs to check on him and as I took the last step off the stairs my foot landed in 3cm of water, the whole ground floor of my house was flooded. It didn't take long to find the cause, water was gushing from under the sink in the downstairs bathroom, like a fountain, to a height of about 1m above the sink.

The reason turned out to be a hole blown in the flexi hose that connects the tap to the plumbing, these are braided hoses which are used on pretty much all modern taps, I have a total of 14 of them in my house.

This is the offending hose from my house – https://1drv.ms/i/s!AhesoQwXCo1Eg8Ixs0Wr8Ic-6EA2Jg

So, the insurers sent a clean up crew to remove the water and dry the house, this will take several days and meanwhile we're in a hotel, lots of my furniture and carpets and other items are ruined and its a big pain in the arse. Thankfully my insurers, Suncorp, are being good so far.

Thing is, the flood crew and the building assessors told me that the vast majority of the jobs they do are exactly like mine and much worse if the burst occurs upstairs, these flexi-hoses have a lifetime of "5-10" years. The flood guys recon the insurers are considering insisting owners replace these hoses regularly.

Our place is about 10 years old, I'm going to have all the hoses replaced.

Seems I'm not alone:

https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/blog/how-a-10-pipe-can-cause-thousands-of-dollars-of-water-damage-to-your-home.html

http://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/flexible-braided-pipes-responsible-for-more-than-20-per-cent-of-water-damage-claims-20170503-gvy8l0.html

https://www.theplumbette.com.au/plumbing/are-water-flexible-hoses/

Posting as a cautionary tale.

 

 

[NicF]

Worth being aware of, but do you not have drains in the floors of your wet areas?  We only have a single story house so all our bathrooms are downstairs but they, and the laundry all have drains in the floor.  There would still be damage if the pipes went but I’d hope not quite that bad.  Although the kitchen could be pretty bad if the pipe went in there as no drain in the kitchen floor.  Will have to make a note to replace all ours over th next couple of years (house is nearly 4 years old).

I do have some sense of what you are going through though.  We had a problem when the sewer got blocked and our house was the lowest point on the street and the sewage came up through the drains and ran through the house.  Fortunately my OH was home at th time and was able to open doors to allow the flow to spill outside and put towels and things down to reduce the spread but it’s an awful thing to go through.  We were out of our house for 5 weeks while they took off the gyprock, let the house dry and made all th repairs.  We lost a fair bit of furniture as well.  Given it was sewage anything that got even a bit wet was disposed of.  In some ways it was nice to get all new furniture but having to go through and value all the damaged stuff for the insurance claim was a pain.  Especially as most of it was from the UK and not available here.  I hope your clean up all goes well.

Edited November 30, 2017 by NicF

[freebo]

No real wet areas in the downstairs area affected, this was a downstairs toilet, the full downstairs bathroom is in a raised part of the ground floor but yeah, if they'd put a drain in, for instance, the laundry that would've helped. It's an individually architect designed place, probably an oversight and an off-plan home would have had one!

To be honest though I don't think a normal in-floor drain could've coped with the water flow, it was massive.

 

Your experience was awful too, at least this was clean water!

[calNgary]

Sorry to hear about that, it's good Suncorp are helping you out, we were with them for Years and great if we ever needed to claim (which happened twice). I hope you can return home soon and get back to some normality before xmas.

Cal x

[Metoo]

This very same thing happened to friends of ours. Their beautiful real wood floors were all warped and it affected the bottom of the kitchen cupboards.

Their flood was caused by the flexi hose on the dish washer which had become frayed. 

A quick trip to the good guys found a replacement hose with a special cut off feature which seals the hose in case of a leak. It takes 10 mins to fit, could have saved them loads of worry and expense. (I think it cost about $30 and had a 5 yrs warranty)

We had one fitted on our washing machine as out laundry does not have a drain in the floor.

i know of one other person who had a flood while she was away on holiday. The Flexi hose on the bathroom sink failed and the mess was found by my nephew who was feeding and walking their dog. He fixed the hose for them and mopped up.