HavenIQ — Detection, Assessment, Action

Our story

We didn't research this problem. We paid for it.

We've spent 18 years in residential construction. We also operate short-term rentals. Which means we've stood on both sides of every property failure: the person who fixes it, and the person whose name is on the bill.

The first leak: 2.4 million litres

In September 2022, the water meter at our Port Stanley rental recorded 2,413 cubic metres in a single month — 2.4 million litres of water, roughly an Olympic swimming pool, through one house's meter. About 80,000 litres a day. Nothing was visibly wrong. No puddle, no sound, no warning. The leak was underground.

The first sign anything had happened was the bill: $14,811.25 for one month.

2,413 m³ a normal year one month
Monthly water consumption at our Port Stanley property. The spike is the leak nobody could see.

Then it happened again. In June 2023 — same property, a second undetected leak, 1.1 million litres this time, about $7,000 more. Two leaks, more than $21,000, and not one drop of either was visible from inside the house.

One leak is bad luck. Two is a lesson: this isn't a problem a plumber visit fixes. It's a problem only continuous watching fixes.

The receipts

We said we'd show you the bills.

These are the actual utility bills, with account details redacted. The consumption chart on the first one tells the whole story — eleven months of nearly nothing, then the spike.

Redacted September 2022 water bill showing 2,413 cubic metres of consumption and a balance of $14,811.25
September 2022: 2,413 m³ · $14,811.25 · click for full size
Redacted June 2023 water bill showing 1,147 cubic metres of consumption
June 2023: 1,147 m³ · about $7,000 in period charges · click for full size

And the guests standing in a cold house.

Water wasn't the only lesson. We've had guests arrive at our rental to find no heat. Another time, no air conditioning in the middle of summer. Both times we scrambled to find them somewhere else to stay — and both times, the reviews that followed dragged our nightly rates down for months. A property failure doesn't cost you once. It costs you every booking that reads the review.

So we built the thing we wished existed.

Not another app that pushes notifications into the void. A supervision service: sensors on the water main and in the places water hides, temperature and device-health monitoring, and — the part that matters — a trained human who reads every abnormal signal, judges it in context, and gets the right person on site. Detection, assessment, action.

And the closing detail we're proudest of: the Port Stanley house that taught us this lesson is HavenIQ's first monitored property. The house that cost us more than $21,000 is the house that will never surprise us again.

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