Warning: Is Your Office At Risk Of Flooding?

Take a look around your regular office. We take it for granted because it’s there all day every day, but if you pay attention you’ll soon notice just how much expensive electrical equipment is around the place. With computers, laptops, projectors and drinking fountains to name but a few, the value of the office is normally in the tens of thousands.

Now, can you imagine losing all of it in the event of a pipe bursting and causing a flood? With toilets, a kitchen area and a plumbed water dispenser usually on-site, the risk is very real. Insurance may replace the monetary value of the equipment, but what about the data stored on the computers? Or the soaked stacks of folders in your filing cabinets? The real cost of a leak can be monumental for your business, and in an ever-growing digital age, fried electronics from stray water can bring your complete business to a standstill in just hours.

Luckily there are inexpensive, easy to install safeguards against this most dangerous of risks to your business. An anti-flood device, or water block, costs just over £20, but could save you tens of thousands of pounds should the worst happen. The water block is easy to install with simple push-in functionality, and because it is entirely mechanical, it won’t fail if your leak or flood trips your offices electricity supply.

A water block or water cooler anti-flood device is attached to the main ½” copper pipe, before any ¼” flexi piping running to plumbed water dispensers. This ensures no excess water pressure or flow damages your drinking fountains, cutting off the supply before it reaches any connected equipment. The water block achieves this with a barrel-shaped vessel, and a small disc inside. You can set the device so that once either 5 or 50 litres of water have passed through, the small disc will have been forced from one end of the barrel to the other – shutting off the water supply in the process. This works with water up to 70 degrees Celsius and 10 bar of pressure, as long as the stream of water is constant. This means that you needn’t worry if you simply use your plumbed water dispenser a lot, as the disc will reset itself in between drinks.

Despite this useful limiting feature, an anti-flood device like that sold on the MIW.co.uk online store will actually allow for regular water flow speed, meaning no unnecessary queuing or timewasting employees! Furthermore, the water block offered by MIW Office Solutions is WRAS approved, certified by the Water Regulations Advisory Scheme as a product of the highest quality and safest levels of hygiene. With a life expectancy of 300,000 litres, water blocks are as reliable as they are effective. You could fill up the equivalent of 600,000 regular 500ml drinking bottles, and your water block will continue to provide protection against floods for the foreseeable future, regardless of the size of your office or the use of your plumbed water dispenser.