If you could revisit a home that was built 100 years ago, it would have been heated by coal fires, lit by gas lights, and the mains water supply in the property would have been controlled with a brass valve called a stopcock.
In the last 100 years we have seen fantastic innovation in the way modern homes are built.
Our homes are kept warm with central heating and thermostatic controls which can now be wirelessly operated. We can also control our lighting at the flick of a switch, but we still control our water supply with a difficult to turn brass stopcock!
Why is this a problem?
Every other service that we use in our home has evolved so that a homeowner can easily access it and use it. However in today’s new homes the brass stopcock is normally hidden behind our fitted kitchens. Out of sight is out of mind, and as a result 30% of the population do not know where their stopcock is located and are therefore powerless to do anything in the event of a water leak.
For the elderly or the 10 million people in the UK who suffer with arthritis the brass stopcock is almost impossible to use.
This inability to control mains water in our homes has meant that insurance claims for escape of water have doubled since 1993, and escape of water is now a bigger risk to homes than fire or burglary. In 2019 the insurance sector paid out on average £2.32m each day in escape of water damages alone.1
However there is now a solution
The range of Surestop stopcocks and water switches now allow you to easily control your mains water supply at the flick of a switch. Our remote water switches can easily be located in an accessible position such as just above the worktop or inside a kitchen cupboard door, and our Surestop iWatercontrol system empowers homeowners to control their water supply from anywhere in the world!
The Surestop was invented in the UK and is manufactured using components from UK suppliers. Since its launch in 1999 hundreds of thousands have been sold. The Surestop is specified by over 250 different local authorities and housing associations as well a large installation groups such as British Gas and Homeserve; and the number of satisfied customers keeps growing.