Aging infrastructure, zero visibility

A facility management company operating a three-storey, 100,000 sq ft government building in Eastern Ontario had a problem common across institutional portfolios: aging plumbing, recurring leaks, and no way to see what was happening between water bills. The site team handled issues as they appeared, but without continuous monitoring, leaks could run for weeks or months before anyone noticed.

With municipal water and sewer rates at around $14 per 100 cubic feet, undetected waste wasn't just an operational issue. It was a liability the facility management team was responsible for but couldn't measure on their own.

Flow monitoring from day one

The facility management company deployed Alert Labs sensors across the building. Two Flowie O water flow sensors were strapped onto the compound water meter, covering both the low-flow and high-flow sides. Floodie flood sensors & water leak detectors were placed in mechanical rooms, near pipes and in other high-risk areas across all three floors. Sensor Relay communication hubs provided the cellular network backbone, connecting everything to the AlertAQ™ platform without touching the building's existing IT infrastructure.

Within days of going live, the Flowie O sensors flagged continuous water flow that didn't match normal building patterns. The leak had been running before the sensors were even installed. The AlertAQ™ pattern-detection algorithms identified it as an anomaly and sent alerts to the facility management team by email and app notification.

317,000 gallons a year, hidden in plain sight

The team traced the alert to an exterior hose bib that had been left open. Water was flowing at 39 gallons per hour, around the clock. That works out to 936 gallons per day, over 28,000 gallons per month and more than 317,000 gallons per year.

Before Alert Labs, a leak at this flow rate would have been invisible until a water bill arrived weeks or months later. The Flowie O caught it within days because it was able to compare water flow data against expected patterns and flag the anomaly immediately. For a facility management company responsible for maintaining building performance across a portfolio of government properties, that kind of visibility from day one changes how they demonstrate value to building owners.

We tracked down the culprit. It was an exterior hose bib. Our managers were able to resolve multiple leak issues at this building over the following weeks.

– Property Management Team

The experience also reinforced what many facility management teams learn early in their deployment: the technology identifies the problems, but the speed of the fix depends on site teams acting on the alerts.