I couldn’t have made up a better story…
I couldn’t have made up a better story to show the value of hiring an accredited home watch company when you leave town. Unfortunately, this story is about members of my own family and happened just last weekend. (They live over 800 km from Toronto, so there wasn’t much I could do to help other than guiding them through the mess from afar.)
When my relatives entered their New York State home after an extended trip down south, the chill in the air was undeniable. They had left their thermostat set at 60°F while they were away, but the temperature was registering at sub-freezing levels. They immediately called their plumber who replaced their thermostat and restarted their boiler. Slowly, over the course of the day, their home warmed and they were able to remove their coats.
That evening, as they were getting ready to go to bed, they heard a loud “POP” coming from beneath the kitchen sink. Water began gushing from the burst pipe and within minutes was pooling on the kitchen floor and leaking down into the basement below. They quickly sprung into action and shut off the water to the offending sink and dried up their home as best as they could.
The next morning the plumber arrived (I know, the plumber should’ve come over immediately, but I wasn’t there to insist) and discovered multiple additional burst pipes which, unbeknownst to my relatives, continued to leak throughout the night between the interior and exterior walls of the house. They are now facing a large clean-up and repair bill. While it is impossible to know just how long their heat may have been out, their plumber speculates that their thermostat turned off about 3 weeks ago when there was a black out in their area, and somehow failed to turn back on. Had they had a home watch professional checking on their home, the drop in temperature and faulty thermostat would have been identified and dealt with right away, before this past weekend’s record-breaking cold spell.
The first thing that my relatives said to me when we spoke on Sunday evening was, “We should have had someone checking on our home while we were away.” Unfortunately too many people wait until after a crisis happens to hire a home watch company. Don’t let this happen to your home. Call Toronto Home Watch today for a no-obligation in-home quote and have peace of mind while you’re away.