About a month ago I was walking through the kitchen in my house and heard a hissing noise. It sounded out-of-place so I looked into it further and found that the connector tubing under the bathroom sink had split and was leaking rather quickly. I thought that it was a good thing that I was home or there would definitely been a flood.
The tubing under the sink was the standard gray PVC 3/8 OD inch type, nothing really special. I looked it over closely after I removed it and noticed that it had split lengthwise approximately 1/8 of an inch. There was no obvious reason for the leak I just had to assume that it was just caused by the PVC getting fatigue as it had been in there since the house was built, twenty years ago.
Having a few other faucets and sinks in the house I became concerned about the possibility of this happening again when I wasn’t home to catch it. With a seventy pound per square inch pressure line supplying water to the house it wouldn’t take long to have substantial water damage should a pipe break undetected. I checked various plumbing supply stores and found that they have a new type of tubing called “FloodSafe.” What this tubing is designed to do is cut-off water flow should there be a sudden drop in pressure. When the tubing senses a sudden drop in pressure it closes up stopping the water flow.
I bought enough of these tubes to replace each one at every faucet in the house. The only one I had trouble doing was the feed line for the dishwasher. It was a real long line, a lot longer than the maximum length tubing available so I just spliced three separate lengths together to make the run from the source to the dishwasher running the tubing in behind the cabinet base.
The next place I found to use these FloodSafe tubes was on the washing machine. With all of the motion and duress that a normal washing machine feed goes through the new tubes will take the punishment a lot longer and without the chance of a major leak.
The “FloodSafe” tubing is available at Home Depot, where I got mine and they come in all different lengths and fitting diameters. They definitely give peace-of-mind.
