174 Million euros per year insurance compensation to household leakages

It is an unfortunate fact that 37 % of the households in Europe suffer from water damages every year. This leads to situations where insurance companies end up paying millions as insurance compensation. Thus it is highly out of interest to insurance companies and house owners to be notified as early as possible when a rise of a water leakage from the washing machine, fridge or freezer takes place.

A Finnish company Xortec has invented a stand-alone globally working solution to avoid water leakages becoming large in size by giving early alerts to house owners as soon as the leakage starts to develop. Main-IoT Leak Guard is an application consisting of a small IoT device with a moisture sensor that sends a text message to owner’s mobile phone as soon as the system detects a rise in humidity or direct water leakages e.g. under the washing machine. If the user does not notice the text messages by acknowledging them the system starts to alert the user by making phone calls. It is possible to program several telephone numbers into the calling circle with a specific priority order.

The device is easy to install into households as it is a stand-alone system with no connectivity installations. The actual IoT device runs a lisence free frequency band in Sigfox network, which is a network meant for future worldwide coverage. With this stand-alone system, there is not any hassle of placing local operators’ SIM cards – the device is ready as it is to send signals (i.e alerts) to the nearest Sigfox base stations. For instance, in a city of Tampere there are about eight Sigfox base stations to make the coverage to the whole city. Currently, 85 % of Finnish inhabitants are covered by Sigfox network. If for some reason the device has difficulties with contacting the base stations, there is a built-in function that alerts the user of connectivity issues as soon as it is possible. The battery usage is not an issue either – compared to many other IoT devices this application does not burden the battery often enabling users to manage even three years with the same batteries. The batteries can be replaced by the users themselves.

“Our product solution has received a lot of interest from potential clients and now we are already rolling out our first order into Denmark”, states Xortec’s Marketing Director Joni Kääriäinen. According to him, the Sigfox network was the best solution for them to design such an independent, easy to install internet of things connectivity device. Sigfox is the future network that evolves fast and already covers 660 million people in 36 countries.

“Radientum has been Xortec’s R & D partner in designing and integrating the IoT Sigfox antenna solutions to Main-IoT Leak Guard devices. During the wireless product development, the antenna was designed and fitted into the existing molds created by us. We trusted Radientum’s professional skills in designing a customized integrated antenna solution that reaches the IoT Sigfox class zero connectivity requirements”, says Joni.