Trident™ System Foils Leak at Watts Corporate Headquarters

On 9/11/22, a typically quiet Sunday morning at Watts Corporate Headquarters, a water hose in the building’s Irrigation Room disconnected. As soon as the break happened, water started flowing out—first into the Irrigation Room and then into a nearby Shipping & Receiving hallway. With no one around, it was on its way towards the carpeted space of the ground-floor offices, cubicles, and meeting rooms at the Watts North Andover, MA site.

At 7 a.m., the Watts Facilities team received a call from The Detection Group® system alerting them to the emergency. The Trident™ system from The Detection Group, a Watts brand, had been installed at Watts Corporate Headquarters more than a year earlier to stand guard against just such an emergency.

A wireless sensor adhered to a baseboard in the Shipping & Receiving hallway had detected the water seeping into the hallway and called in the alert. (Fifteen such sensors are positioned around the building and communicate back to three Hubs, one on each floor.) A Smart Base Station receives input from the Hubs, and can send out text, phone, and email alerts.

“Our system is set up to call me, and if I can’t answer, then call three other people,” said Brian Hiltz, Watts facilities supervisor, “and it would keep calling until someone acknowledged the call.” He said there could have been at least $50,000 in damages and clean-up costs had the hose been running all day Sunday and into Monday morning. “The alerts are the most helpful part of the system—enabling our team to stay in touch to avoid major problems.”

The Watts Facilities team responded quickly to stop the leak and then got to work cleaning up the pooled water. “In the end, we had almost zero damage from the headquarters leak; we just had to replace a carpet in an office,” Brian said. “The entire ground floor could have been flooded if we hadn’t gotten the call from the TDG system, and in preventing this, the TDG system has already paid for itself!”