Broken pipes, leaking roofs, overflowing bathtubs/sinks/pools, etc. can cause inconvenience to apartment residents and affect the normal use of building facilities. Long-term water leakage may cause corrosion and degradation of building structural materials, mold and bacteria may grow in the leaking area, and if not handled in time, it may cause life or property safety issues.

A 38-story apartment building in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, planned to deploy a smart building management system at the beginning of construction. Showjeen and its partners provided it with a comprehensive solution, which uses StarNet LoRaWAN® sensors for building leakage monitoring.

Project requirements:

1. Timely detection of water leakage: Water leakage is often difficult to detect, usually after water accumulation, wall mold, and electrical appliance damage. In order to avoid or reduce the inconvenience and loss caused by water leakage, it is necessary to promptly detect water leakage and inform property and other staff to handle it as soon as possible.

2. Improve the efficiency of handling water leakage: Once a water leakage is found, the leaking point must be found as soon as possible and the water valve must be closed to stop the loss in time. The traditional manual method of closing the water valve is time-consuming. The customer wants to use an intelligent method to improve the efficiency of handling water leakage.

Solution:

EM300-SLD is installed in the bathroom, kitchen, laundry room, public area and computer room of the apartment. When a water leak is detected, the sensor data is sent to the showjeen gateway via LoRaWAN® wireless transmission. The gateway is connected to the third-party platform through the MQTT protocol. After receiving the water leak alarm information, the platform sends instructions to the corresponding controller device to remotely close the specified hot or cold water valve.

UC502 can control the 1.5-inch ball valve and 2.5-inch butterfly valve on the water pipe riser, and UC1152 can control the 3/4-inch hot and cold water ball valve. When the controller receives the instruction sent by the platform, it will control the valve to close automatically.

This solution uses UG56, UG65, and UG67, a total of 3 showjeen gateways, and adopts the master-slave gateway communication architecture mode. UG56 and UG65 are installed as sub-gateways in the garbage chute of the floor, one UG56 or UG65 is installed every two floors, and UG67 is installed as the main gateway on the roof of the apartment building.