Are floor sensors enough to protect your home?

A floor sensor is two metal contacts that close a circuit when water bridges them. For the job it was built for it works well. If the dishwasher overflows, you know straight away.

Its limits come from the same design. It only reacts to water that has already escaped, only if that water reaches the exact spot where the puck is lying, and only once the damage is under way.

Three of the most common leaks in a home put no water on the floor at all. A joint weeping inside a wall soaks into plaster and timber. A pipe under a floor drains into the void below it. A toilet that trickles into the pan runs straight down the drain.

That last one is not a corner case. Waterwise puts it at one in twenty toilets in the country.

Escape of water is not a rare claim to begin with, either. It was the claim UK homeowners declared most often in 2024.

By the time water shows on a floor, the damp has usually reached timber and boards, and a job that was one new fitting has become flooring and walls. The floor sensor works exactly as designed. It simply cannot report a leak it never touches.

Every leak changes one thing from the first drop: how much water flows into the house. That is what Water Grip measures.

It clamps onto the outside of the incoming water pipe and reads the flow with ultrasound around the clock, without any part of the pipework being cut or soldered. When water runs steadily for hours with no tap open, you get an alert in the app while the leak is still small.