Eddy on leak detection for commercial buildings

And we're ready to walk. So thanks everyone for joining.

This is gonna be a webinar by Eddy, commercial leak detection solutions.

So today's webinar called advanced strategies for effective leak detection in commercial buildings, and we'll get going. Oh, hello, everybody. Thanks for joining. Today's presentation will be about thirty minutes. We're gonna leave some time for q and a. So if you can post questions into the chat as the presentation's going on, that's always my recommendation.

I'm sure questions will pop up into your mind as you're going through this or as I'm going through this, and that way, it'll allow me to address them at the end.

I think it's always easier to ask questions as I'm presenting. So, again, just encouraging you to pop in those questions to the chat. So I'll open that at the end. We'll go through it.

So the intent of today's meeting is to go over the general landscape, take a look at building operator challenges, and their goals, also review some real life use cases, and then, of course, look at the technology and how to apply it.

Alright. So just before getting started, a little bit about me. So I've spent more than half my life in both the plumbing industry and the leak detection services industry, which is kinda crazy if you think about it.

When I was eighteen, started a plumbing company with my father.

That was after already a couple years, working with them in the summer.

And then in twenty fourteen, embarked on a journey to cofound a leak detection business that was later acquired by Eddy, and so now I'm here.

I couldn't be happier to be a part of this amazing team here at Eddy. We have incredibly passionate group of people. They're constantly pushing to be the best at at what we do. It's also been extremely reward see week over week all of the proactive leaks that we catch.

It was exactly what I hoped for when, we started down this whole path. So just really proud of that.

That being said, I wanted you guys today to really understand what Eddy actually does for its customers more than the products. It's it's a lot more to do with the level of engagement, the service we provide, and, of course, the monitoring, that we also provide on the back end. That to me is truly key for ensuring a successful deployment and that people are actually taking action when they get alerts. So let's take a quick look at that.

When an alert is triggered, we follow-up immediately.

Hello. This is Rachel from Eddy Solutions. We received an alert from a water sensor located in the mechanical room on the twenty second floor behind the air unit.

K. Yeah. I'm just running up the stairs right now. I saw the email come through.

Hi. It's calling from I'm up here on twenty three. Is there any way that you can shut the water off? Yeah. Or twenty two, I mean.

Okay. Sure. I can shut off the water for you. Do you know what caused the leak?

It's coming out of the backwash station.

The pressure is slowly decreasing now.

We've got less, pressure now.

We still have slow. It's just less now.

The water stopped? The water stopped?

Hang on one second. Yeah. The water stopped. The water stopped. Perfect.

Thank At Eddy Solutions, we go beyond technology.

With twenty four seven monitoring and real time assistance, we ensure that alerts don't turn into costly disasters.

Alright. So now you get a bit of a sense of what we really do. And, that that video means a lot to me. Again, when I started down this road nine, ten years ago in that first company, it was literally that situation that caused me to even think of trying to have the ability to remotely control something or have early insight into a situation. So again, I was running a plumbing business.

I had people call me every day of the week, panicking, on the other line of the phone, saying, oh, the radiator exploded or there's water pouring down from the ceiling. And these were buildings that we regularly serviced, and so I knew where these key shutoffs were. But it was extremely hard to try and explain that to, a superintendent, or they end up basically deer in the headlights in those catastrophic situations. So one of the first sort of lines I remember that really took me down this path was I took a inactuated valve to a really good friend of mine and asked him if he could help me control this online. So, nine years later to see that we're we're doing that, is really amazing.

So, again, now you get a sense of what we do. When there's a sudden and critical situation in a building, it's not enough to just get a text or an email.

Our service team is really the center of our value. So engaging with a predetermined call list that we get from our customers and supporting them through that situation is really critical in ensuring that our programs actually work and provide value. Now a bit about Eddy, we've been around for over a decade. We work with the leading developers across North America, constantly growing out our footprint.

We reached an amazing milestone earlier this year. Also very proud of that. Over a hundred thousand devices deployed in the field and over forty thousand units protected, well over seven million, a year in water damage savings just, in twenty twenty four.

We also work with a variety of key partners that help streamline the implementation of our equipment, everything from metering providers, insurance carriers, builders, constructors, service providers, and telecommunication companies.

There's a lot of overlap, a positive overlap among these various groups, and so working together really helps us make the whole procurement experience for our customers that much easier. we're not changing behaviors. We're not really changing how people do business.

We're just providing essentially an overlay of technology on onto these existing buildings.

Alright. So getting into the actual presentation, the meat and potatoes, as an introduction, it's first important to understand that there's always three primary mechanical systems in any building, at least the ones that have water flowing through them. So we'll have the HVAC system, the fire system, and the domestic system.

HVAC systems generally are very controlled and monitored at least at the equipment level.

Though, oftentimes, in our market segment, the ones that we're focusing on, it's not really a system that you use day to day. It's not like an easy to use system. It has more to do with making sure the equipment is operating properly, boilers to pumps, ramping up and down, thermostat set points, etcetera. But it was never really intended to be, a daily tool, for any of the operators.

I rarely even see insights coming from those systems, again, in the markets that that we're looking at, which we'll we'll speak to in a moment. On the fire systems, of course, through heavy regulation and safety, they're all monitored twenty four seven by the supporting call stations, but they lack control. Now that's by design. You can't close the water to a sprinkler system.

So, unfortunately, nor us or anyone can really do anything about it. However, there are periods, especially during construction in a new construction environment where we can do something, and we'll get into specifics later on. And then lastly, of course, there's the domestic system. So domestic or non potable, that's like your drinking water, your hand washing, showering, toilet use, etcetera.

It's, in my opinion, the most dynamic system. It's it's an open system. So, first coming in off the street, you open faucets, you're using it. And so it's it's very unpredictable as far as the usage.

You can get a sense of a building once it's normalized and occupied. But, historically, there's zero connectivity. There's no control. There's no monitoring. There's no data points.

And oftentimes, it's the most common to cause these major issues and multi unit, multi floor catastrophes.

So now that we understand, the three potential risks in a building, let's look at the general markets.

And so kind of from left to right, and I'll I'll jump on this spectrum. But the single family home market on the left, there's a variety of technology. I've been talking about this for a long time, and, obviously, every year that goes by, there's just more and more available, consumer goods for the single family market. And big part of that had to do with, the big tech companies, Google, Apple, Alexa, or Amazon, etcetera, coming out with thermostats and hubs and smart light switches and, all all kinds of different, equipment to help people better control their homes and have some energy efficiency, etcetera. There's also leak detectors and, you can go on Amazon and pick up those products.

Now in the complete opposite spectrum, you have your what I kinda think of as landmark class a. the sixty, seventy story big office buildings.

Now they have not only the budgets, but more importantly, the team. you go into those buildings, there's building engineers and property management, maintenance, service, tenant teams. There's a lot of staff there doing, quite a good job maintaining and monitoring all their equipment themselves. On top of that, of course, they're designed with extremely comprehensive control systems, like your Johnson and Honeywell, etcetera.

Apologies for any of the other major brands that we're missing here.

The key for Eddy has always been the mid market, which arguably makes up, ninety plus percent, of that that multifamily commercial, industrial segment.

And the issue really for this mid market, which comprises not only multifamily, but, hospitality.

So, hotels, institutional buildings, government buildings, and just generally mixed use buildings.

They can't use the single family, what I call, kind of widgets, you know. They're they're they're they're still big companies. They're they're big portfolios.

So they're not gonna go to, Home Depot and start equipping their buildings with with consumer goods. And a lot of the consumer goods are not designed for a high volume deployment. And on the flip side, the buildings either weren't originally intended for or couldn't retrofit these sophisticated control systems, which are generally targeted for the HVAC system.

And so you've seen this adoption not only in water management and leak detection, but across the board with occupancy sensors, cameras, indoor air quality.

There's a variety of really amazing enterprise grade products and services and solutions.

And again, you see them, gravitate to that because it's it's sort of a balance of both worlds. It's complex enough and quote unquote enterprise grade enough for them to actually implement with confidence, but it also has a relative cost that that they're able to absorb.

So that's that's the general landscape and where we're playing.

So that's a bit of the preface and intent on, why we do what we do as far as today's learning objectives. So we wanna explore how easy it is to implement a modular set of solutions into either new construction or retrofit, again, as an overlay. That's that's the key here. We're not changing designs. designs will continue to evolve. Engineers will continue to design better buildings.

This is really intended to be, an overlay of technology and data, to make it easy, to implement. And so at the end of this presentation, I wanna make sure you guys are equipped to explain the challenges that building owners and operators experience due to a lack of technology, understand how easily technology can be implemented to elevate basic systems. I think a lot of people believe that it's too complex or invasive, to equip themselves with with, these added benefits. And lastly, recommend three basic applications where this technology will enhance either the operations, or obviously protect the building and just generally adding value to the owners and operators.

Alright. So we'll keep it tight. Section one here coming up will be about ten minutes. We're gonna explore operator building operator challenges and why buildings need control, rather, what happens when they don't have it. Couple minutes on reviewing the technology itself and kind of what's required for adoption of a technology.

And then I'd like to spend the most time on section three, which is looking at common typical infrastructure in a building, and then this this overlay I keep describing. So it's it's how do we smarten up existing equipment throughout the building.

Alright. So section one, what happens to a building without technology?

So what we've distilled over the past decade, there's obviously different building types, there's hotels and strip plazas and all kinds of stuff, but I think it's safe to say the majority of the time why we're doing what we're doing is to solve one or all of these problems for, building operators. And so relatively high level, of course, everybody wants to mitigate their risk, not just when it comes to water, but across the board, insurance and, just in general. Right? So, on our sake, in context here, it'd be occupant displacement, mitigating occupant displacement, monitoring and keeping at bay any of the insurance costs. We've seen a theme of increasing insurance premiums and deductibles, and then just being distracted from a building that's falling apart or causing a lot of issues and distracting them from work they could be doing elsewhere, and doing more productively.

Number two would be generally managing utilities better than, traditionally without technology. So having things like predictable costs, will allow you to maintain the building's value because, of course, everything's measured on net operating income at the end of the day in these commercial markets. And then having the ability to accurately charge for utilities. This is probably more, for a commercial industrial setting, but could play into the, multifamily segment as well.

And then the last one would be efficient workflow. So everybody wants to operate on a day to day efficiently, and so having the ability to repair things more quickly, building that's easier to manage, and generally speaking, a full control of the environment. Meanwhile, I want at our own homes, access to our our Ring cameras and to understand where our thermostat is at. It's It's no different, arguably even more important, in a large building.

So just breaking down those three categories. Again, the question here is what happens to a building that does not mitigate its risks? So does not consider technology as something that can can add value. And what we've seen, both myself being at Eddy and in the field as a plumber, and just across the board speaking with with thousands of people, over the last while, these are some of, not limited to items that will come up when it comes to risk. So, of course, asset damage due to failed equipment, something bursts, multiple floors, etcetera.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people, if not everybody, has experienced that at least once.

Two would be occupant displacement due to those leaks and floods. That's a big deal, reimbursing, tenants for rent and hotels and all that. Just a big time consuming headache.

Now more, costly service calls due to a lack of building system knowledge is a big one for me, especially those that are not using a consistent service provider. as a plumber starts to get familiar with the building, they're gonna gain a lot of knowledge of the building. And so, again, adding the technology will help better document and give you control as to where shutoff valves. But that plays into the next one. So number four, inefficient workflow and daily operations due to incorrect valve charts. I can't describe how many times we've gone to buildings where the valves are thirty feet up in the air, or inaccessible, or not working.

And again, the valve charts, very frequently are not accurate. And so, you have that that technology, you have the dashboard, it's documented there once and done.

Considering down the water waste due to failed and running fixtures, that's a big one, particularly with toilets and flush valve fixtures.

They run kinda quietly behind the scenes. A lot of people may not even see it because it's in a toilet tank, but it does impact the general building quite significantly, which, of course, will be on the next one as far as utilities.

Number six, so operating conditions outside manufacturer recommendations. I also cannot tell you how many times we've gone into buildings where the three major conditions you need to monitor, which is pressure, temperature, and flow rate in a building, in a particularly domestic system, very often are pressures too high, temperatures too high, and velocities too high or too quick, And it really degrades the useful life of the piping or, reduces the useful life of the piping pretty dramatically.

And so that'll, again, cause erosion and leaks and pinholes.

Alright. Number seven, imbalanced delivery temperatures causing scalding or in general, just imbalanced delivery temperatures.

I have a lot of calls from condominiums in particular where mixing valves have failed or because the pressure is imbalanced, you get imbalance in temperatures.

A lot of occupants complaining, they're they're either getting hot out of the cold or cold out of the hot or inability to really regulate temperature. And in the most extreme scenarios, somebody being in the shower and, the cold dropping off and them getting scalded.

Number eight, we kinda spoke about, so seized valves due to lack of valve exercising. So valve exercising is a recommended task that building operators are meant to do at least once a year. And the concept there is you have a variety of different primary valves, your main shutoff, your zones, your risers, etcetera, and you're supposed to open and close it, kinda wiggle it, free up any rust, corrosion, debris within the valve body itself just to extend the life of the valve. And it's a bit unrealistic, in a typical twenty, thirty story building you're gonna have a hundred plus valves.

And so it is certainly an item that that gets ignored, and we'll talk about later how easily it can be solved. And then the last couple kind of playing on the others is that high velocity on circulation systems, which cause erosion and therefore pinholes or a high delivery pressure causing water hammer and pipe rupture. So the general theme here is when you're blind to the conditions of the system, because you don't have anything monitoring it, these things all run amok and cause a lot of issues. And again, I'm seeing this with my own eyes.

We had worked with an engineering company and gone out to San Diego and Hawaii and, northeast US and across Canada, particularly Toronto, and you see a lot of these buildings that are now it's sort of too late. They a lot of their systems are failing, particularly the piping. And it was ultimately due to this, what we uncovered after we were doing some monitoring for them. So managing utilities, Again, question here is what happens to building with challenges managing utilities if they don't have tech?

So they'll have a lot of difficulty, and they'll spend a lot of time reconciling water billings, particularly in commercial properties where, maybe you're billing by square foot, but it's it's not necessarily equitable if you have three lawyers office and a restaurant. Of course, the restaurants can be using a lot more water. Some people implement check meters or sub meters, but if you're having to read them manually once a year, it's not very efficient.

Number two would be a decreased property value by increased costs. So again, speaking to net operating income, everybody's trying to lower their expenses, increase, be it rent roll or whatever the case. And when you have a spike in water use and you're only seeing it six, eight months later on a water bill, it's pretty detrimental to that value of the building.

Which leads into, of course, unpredictable utility costs due to malfunctioning equipment. So if you don't have visibility, much like the other slide, then you won't know that there's a problem until it's too late.

And the last one would be water damage or the potential for water damage or equipment damage because that equipment's malfunctioned.

And things like cooling towers and that. And the last we spoke, efficient workflow. So what happens to a building that has inefficient workflows? They'll have difficulty locating manual valves placed in difficult to access locations.

They're also often on multiple floors. If you need to isolate a part of a building, very often those valves are not, conveniently in one spot. You gotta take the elevator, go upstairs, open a drop ceiling tile, go downstairs. Sometimes it's in people's apartments or suites or commercial spaces, so it can make it really inefficient.

To kinda speaking to the slide earlier, is sending staff to read manual water meters. It's doable. You're probably gonna do it a couple times a year at best, at least once a year to reconcile.

But having access to that, from your screen would would really improve this.

Repairs taking longer or freezing required because valves don't work, that they're not exercised.

So we spoke about that. If they're not exercised, you're probably gonna have to shut the building down. There's more disruption.

The potential for pipe freezing. For anyone that's not familiar, it's literally hiring a company to use, it's n two, nitrogen, I believe. But they'll use n two to freeze the piping, and create a plug so that a plumber or mechanical tech can make their repair. Very costly, usually done at night and so not ideal.

Then, of course, as I described earlier, scrambling in the event of emergencies is very reactive.

A lot of the maintenance that's going on. And lastly, when you have management turnover or operator turnover or vendor turnover, they retain a lot of knowledge that's lost, when they leave. And so having these things documented, whether it's a dashboard or some more digital format, really helps these buildings out.

Now the last part of this section is about timing. And so I wanted people to appreciate when the best time to consider technology is. So, I'm not sure who's in the audience, but if you're an end user, a building operator, you would wanna understand when does it make the most sense for me to consider tech and what are my limitations depending on the timing. But also if you're, a consultant engineer, service provider, subject matter experts, somebody that might be consulted upon for the addition of technology, it's also really important to understand the timing. So we kinda separate into two buckets. So new construction or if there's new work proposed, when you would want to implement technology is as early as possible. You want it embedded in the building design drawings so that all work is then carried out by those awarded trades or the base building trades, and that just makes for the most efficient deployment.

But the reason why and what it allows for is the easy addition of inline valves and meters. And when I say inline, it's, cutting into a pipe or installing it as you're running the pipe, on the plumbing system, on the mechanical system.

In new construction, it essentially keeps the costs net neutral as far as labor. Because at the end of the day, a valve is a valve and a meter is a meter. The fact that it's connected and smart or manual and quote unquote dumb, really makes no difference on the labor side.

Really all you're therefore adding is that connected overlay on the already prescribed thousand meters, and so that's where your cost is. But of course, labor is a huge component of the cost and access and disruption and all of that when you're looking at the other site. So getting that in early, new construction really opens the doors for your options. You basically have any option, as long as it's put in at the right time in the design.

When we're looking at retrofit, in my opinion, you'd really wanna consider it anytime, but you will be limited to what you can install. So as far as when, again, can be considered anytime, particularly if the building is struggling with those three challenges that we described earlier. But why? Because retrofit applications should focus on a sensor application.

They're wireless, extremely easy to implement in a building.

Whereas, valves and meters and things you gotta cut in could be a little bit invasive. Now, alternatively, if a building is going through a major capital improvement, there's a big reno or re pipe going on, that also makes it a great time to then add at a later date any of those thousand meters as part of that design. But on the onset, on a retrofit, you'll probably be limited to any of the wireless technology that that we're gonna get into, as we go through. So just to recap section one, those three primary questions.

What happens to a building without tech? The systems will run amok. It causes a variety of issues to equipment and piping, which ultimately lead to failures. It also creates a rise in costs due to damage, business disruption, inefficient daily operations, etcetera.

How do we meet the goals of operators? So again, as subject matter experts, as, people that may be consulted upon, it's important to appreciate that building operator goals or what their goals are and provide them impactful recommendations to solve those problems that are, reasonable.

You can't go too crazy with the design of these systems, and you gotta do something that's realistic. And the last one is how do we ensure that we recommend technology at the right time? And so as we just spoke, it's critical to appreciate what quantity and type of technology can be added based on the stage of the building and the budgets of the property.

Alright. So section two, quick look at the actual tech. And before we get into that, I just wanted to give, call it like an unbiased description of what is required in a technology for it to be suitable for the largest segment of the market and, how I describe that mid market, who are probably, I don't wanna use the word desperate, but the most desperate for some solution. And because they've all lived all of us have lived these these situations and it's it's not ideal to say the least. So, for me the three pillars would be a system that is modular, something that's easy to install. It would scale depending on the building's goals and their budgets, and therefore, extremely customizable.

The second would be performance. So, speaking of the one of the earlier slides, these can't be sort of unknown widgets. They they need to be proven products, strong brands, particularly when it comes to those valves and meters that are in line and under extreme pressures.

You'd want a platform that has, of course, strong connectivity in a concrete and commercial environment, and you want it to come with the service and support required, to make it a successful deployment. Again, these these mid market companies are not able to self-service a lot of the equipment they have. They need to have the service and support come with the products, either by their a reseller, service provider, or the company itself.

And third would be cost effective. We gotta be realistic here. Products need to meet any budget, whether it's small or big.

Meeting those goals reasonably.

For us in our solution, the a lot of the cost savings will come from the fact that it's wireless. There's minimal cabling. It's very easily serviceable.

And you'll see some of the other benefits as well.

Again, just generally speaking here on water management technology. So there's there's three primary basic functions for any product suite regardless of who you are. You need the ability to turn off water or interrupt water supply to a system.

You need the ability to collect data on the condition of an environment, so by use of sensors. And flow detection, the ability to collect data on water consumption or flow.

And having those functions would allow you to provide some great features. And so to me, these are the three primary features for any product suite. So automation, the ability to have a valve shut off automatically in the event of a trigger. A trigger could be irregular flow, extreme flow, or a sensor that has detected something, outside of its threshold or just generally the presence of water.

You need the ability to get alerts.

So being notified in the event of a critical alarm, either by text, email, or in our case, that call center as well, which we find easily the most important part, of the whole solution. And then lastly, reports.

So, as somebody who may be championing this solution in a portfolio or in a building even, having some data, historical data on the performance of that system, whether it's a water consumption or flow based data or even, number of alerts down to which fixtures have been, historically the most prone to issues.

These are things that really help validate the investment made at a particular building.

And so getting more specific into those three. So again, the sensors, valves, and meters.

So for Eddy, we have three primary, sensors that were or categories, rather, of sensors. Number one will be the Eddy H2O. That's our flagship wireless three in one water sensors doing temperature, humidity, and detecting the presence of water. It's got two metallic strips. They're embedded into the plastic enclosure to give a sense of form factor.

Very small, about the size of an AirPods charging case, which a lot of you may be familiar with.

So it's very much the same dimensions.

And so it's easy to keep it concealed, behind walls or if it needs to be outside of the wall, it makes it easy to keep it out of the way.

As far as other use cases, we do have the ability to provide probe, which is on the right of number two, or rope sensors, which is on the left of block two. Again, just different use cases. If you're using the rope, maybe you're going around the maintenance pad in a boiler room, along a shaft, between some trench or whatever the case. We've seen all kinds of creative situations.

The probes are ideal when you need to have the probe end inaccessible in the future, but the device accessible in the future.

And so you may bury the probe end in a wall during a new construction or renovation project and keep the device, exposed or accessible in an appliance, maybe it's an HVAC unit, so that you can service it on a go forward basis, change batteries, etcetera.

And number three, pressure and temperature sensors.

So those are used more for understanding the general condition of a system.

Again, of course, be it temperature, pressure. We've seen that temperature probes even used on, fire pipes, stand pipes, areas that that may be susceptible to the cold temperatures in Toronto through the winter and just general ambient air per temperature so they can get ahead of that if, there's some hole or, doors left open, etcetera.

As far as metering, so again, we have our flagship Eddy IQ. That's our all in one meter and shut off valve. However, it's only available in three quarter inch and one inch. So when we need the ability and features of the Eddy IQ, which is a meter and valve all in one, we can use the Eddy Link, which will tie to a meter and or valve.

A lot of times we're using it for both, but you certainly have the option to only control a valve or only read an existing meter. And the meters that we can capture is probably about ninety percent of the available meters that you'll see out there. So if you have an existing set of meters in your building, there's a very good chance that we'll be able to read them. And it's because they all speak a fairly universal protocol.

The leading companies like Badger, CenSys, Neptune, Kempstroph, GWF, etc.

Typically have the Sensus protocol.

And the last one would be a newer product is the Eddy clamp on meter, available half inch to three inch. Again, just different use case if it's perhaps temporary or too extreme to cut into whichever particular line or unnecessary and you're just looking for some generalized flow data, that would be a good option. Now I would not use this for any kind of submetering application. It's just not accurate enough. You do want an inline meter when you're doing any kind of revenue based, water consumption billing, but another great, product for different use cases.

And the last category would be your shutoff valves.

So as I mentioned, the link is kind of a dual device. It could read a meter and a valve giving you the features of the Eddy IQ.

But on this slide here, let's just focus on the valves. So anything half inch to two inch, we're traditionally using a link plus the valve itself shown there in green. This is a pretty standard, easy to find twelve volt actuator coming in half to two inch stainless steel. You just wanna make sure that the valves are approved, that they're lead free, meeting all the local regulations. Number two would be the ball or butterfly valves, but in two and a half inch and greater.

We've been using the proration valves. Extremely good product, very high quality.

And so the link would have the ability to open and close, but also understand the status, whether it was open or closed with internal relays. And number three would be any kind of Bellimo actuator. There is a compatibility list, but it would capture half inch to six inch ball and butterfly valves.

And I know, you see Bellimo quite often in commercial and multifamily, buildings, one of the leaders in actuators.

But, essentially, we can control any valve that we need. So what you see here is the valves the valve. instead of a manual handle on these things, you're seeing a motor which is now connected and provides a ton more value.

And so as a summary, if you think about, the equipment that provides alerts, some of the actions.

So just running through this, a sensor can detect the presence of water or a threshold of defined pressure and temperature limits, if it's a pressure temperature sensor, and send an alarm. A meter can detect irregular use of water to a system or fixture.

It's in a sea water usage all the time, but it should be able to understand when there's a continuous flow, low flow, or an extreme flow situation that is abnormal based on the historical data. And the last would be a shutoff valve that can be remotely or automatically controlled by that monitoring software and service.

And all the products provide status alarms for alert, connectivity, and for the valves, their position. And so if you think of it left to right, when these events come up, either a sensor has detected the presence of water or some sort of, regularity on threshold, a meter has detected irregular extreme flow. That would generate an alert that can come to someone's phone, tablet, computer, whatever, as far as text and email. But then the action and the automation is really what's key. resolving the issue that came up and not ignoring you get a lot of app notifications and all this kind of emails.

Having the Eddy call center as I showed earlier, and some of the automation as far as things closing automatically, if the situation calls for it, if it makes sense, is extremely important to the success of the system.

And so I'll recap what is important for a technology to be well adapted.

It must be modular in its design, to be flexible in solving challenges while being of the highest quality for commercial settings, and designs must maintain a cost effective approach. And what is the ideal features and functions of a platform? A system should be able to shut water, detect environmental conditions, and track the flow of water. And all these data points will allow a user to shut down water, receive alerts, and review data reports to make better decisions.

So just to look at a couple, real life use cases, I think it'll kinda bring it all together. So I'll run through it, because I wanna make sure we got enough time for the last piece.

So details here. SickKids, had built an office tower, sort of an extension to the actual hospitals, mainly for, office space as far as we understood at the time.

Sensors were placed in the wall cavities behind toilet flush valves, so they were the concealed type flush valves. A little different than the photo here. And this was in the core of the building. And so the sensors are in the wall to detect the presence of water in the event of a riser, a drain, or a fixture leak. And what the outcome here was is really interesting. They had over a dozen, again, this is during construction, so there's a lot going on. But they had a dozen water detected alerts, which really helped the construction team understand, that these flush valves, some of them were defective washers, tailpieces, whatever the case.

Possibly a little bit of workmanship issues, but I don't have the data on that. What I do have though is they were able to not only catch that leak that's really concealed inside of a wall instantly as opposed to it going on for months, creating mold and not being able to turn over the project.

It also identified, a failure on this particular flush valve, and so they went through that whole warranty, to get replacements.

A bit of a different situation. So on a lot of construction sites, they'll have temporary bathrooms and offices, and they're running off of a smaller water supply from a meter room.

So in this case here, new construction project still ongoing.

We had picked up, the EDDI IQ, so the metering side of things had picked up some continuous leakage, protecting them from excessive water usage. They had some toilets running on. these are construction sites that get a little bit abused as far as the temporary construction washrooms.

But they are still on the hook for any water usage. And so it was nice to see that we could let them know there was, some failures on equipment that was quickly dealt with as opposed to getting a giant bill.

And the last one here would be, Thornhill's Daniels, condo complex project.

And the long and the short of it here, we had quite a comprehensive system of valves and sensors throughout the entire building, all four towers.

And the main thing that we helped with among all kinds of little things, but the notable one for me was there was a sensor installed at the HVAC appliance of a condo suite, and one of the windows had been left open, which caused the temperature to drop. And the sensor, because the three in one picked it up, as it was occurring, and so that helped them get ahead of any temperature drops.

Alright. So just kinda putting all of it together, and how to achieve goals and enhance building. So as I mentioned a bit earlier, the main objective in the design is not to change what everybody's doing. We wanna replace dumb valves with smart valves, dumb meters with smart meters, and add data points however much the client wants or needs to solve their goal.

So usually when we're looking at, any building, multifamily, commercial hotel, industrial, whatever the case, we kinda segment it into these buckets. So building protection has to do with a focus on primary elements of the building. Main shutoff valves, main system valves, water sensors along main risers is a general theme.

Unit protection, they give it like a bolt on to the building protection. If you want additional protection at a unit level, whether it's a commercial unit of an office building or a residential suite in a condo building, or a commercial unit in a in an industrial plaza.

The idea with unit protection is, alright, we've covered the building side, now let's look at the unit side. So maybe we'll add some sensors, valves, meters.

And the last one would be kind of its own category just because it's it's smart metering that has to do with more of the utility side. So we're able to do consumption readings and provide consumption readings to any of the read, bill, collect type partners out there. But at the same time, kind of a two in one, we're able to also do very granular leak detection.

Okay. So we're looking at a menu and I'm designing a building when when our team is looking at, any opportunity that that comes our way, we're going to try our best to give our customers some options. we wanna understand, do you want a really fast car or the slower car that takes a to b? So top down, main water shutoff, kinda straightforward. It controls the main incoming water supply, giving you the ability to shut down the entire building.

And you'll see that theme recurring now. So the zone shutoff, a little bit more granular. It'll allow you to control parts of the building. Common area sensors, so putting water sensors in common rooms, amenities, mechanical areas, etcetera, elevator shafts, so on and so forth.

Closed loop systems, or just generally non potable systems.

If it's a heating, cooling, irrigation, a water fountain, or feature rather, having metering on that closed loop, or specific system.

The Eddy LoRa network is the backbone of everything. It's a communication network, a set of gateways absorbing all of the messages and pushing it out to the software.

Then we have in wall riser sensors for the domestic piping. You have in wall sensors for any HVAC appliances or equipment.

That makes up the building approach and the last two. So your out of wall sensors, meters, or valves would be kind of that unit protection, and then your submetering IQs, would be the smart metering.

So looking at it a little more granularly, and I'll I'll kinda run through this just for sake of time. So the Eddy network, we have two options. There are cellular gateways that you just need to plug in as you see here on the top floor of this simple example.

And because they have a SIM card, they're able to push that data to the outside world, and they're absorbing messages from all of the endpoints, things like sensors, links, IQs, etcetera.

In a taller building, we may want to wire those gateways together, because as you go up in a building, your cell reception gets worse.

So we've designed systems where they're all cabled together.

We can use network switches, that powers the device, so it also provides the tunnel for communication.

You need one source of Internet.

And so again, in very tall buildings, this makes, a great solution.

So, I'll skip this one. We'll get into the better stuff. So main shutoff, it'd be kind of, the first thing that we're looking at in any building. So you see the photo of the actuated valve here. You shut this off and the entire building is off. This is just a pretty standard engineering detail, but what's most important would be a feature, a summary controls the main incoming water supply, gives you the ability to shut down the entire building. And so as a user, you can remotely turn off the water to the entire property and or automatically turn off the water if there is a trigger, if there's a meter adopted to it or, sensors added to it.

Next focus for us would be around the zones. So in a domestic system, keeping it high level, typically every eight to ten stories are served by a location, like a closet or a specific spot where you if you shut three valves, hot, cold, and return, you would isolate eight to ten stories of an entire building on the domestic side. So again, the summary here as far as features would be giving a user and when I say users, like building operator, customer.

It gives you the ability to remotely turn off water to sections of the building instead of the whole thing and or automatically turn off water to sections of the building.

Next category we focus on are just common area sensors. So mechanical rooms, elevator shaft, sump pumps, etcetera. It's the detail there that we usually pass along. But, again, as a user, now with sensors, you will have the ability to remotely receive alerts as either email, text, or from the call center.

And then because you have the sensor now granted you have a valve, you can automatically trigger a certain valve or a group of valves to close.

The next category would be non potable systems. As I mentioned before, whether it's heating, cooling, irrigation, etcetera. So on the photo here, you can see an IQ meter installed on the heating water makeup. In a normally operating system, there would be no flow.

It's just the same water cycling all the time. If the meter sees flow, something that's irregular, it's not seen that historically, it could provide the alert and it can shut down water. So again, as a user, you can remotely receive alerts, email, text, and call center if there's unusual flow, excessive flow, or continuous flow in that closed system. And of course, you can automatically have that valve shut off.

Next one would be riser shut off. That could be domestic risers or HVAC risers.

You'd need multiple valves typically on two different floors just the way that risers are designed by engineers.

You'll have a hot and cold main at the top or bottom and a return on the other floor for domestic. And on a heating cooling riser, you'll have a supply return. Sometimes four because you'll have a heating supply return next to a cooling supply return. So this was installed on a heating cooling system. You could see here the indication of, r eight and r ten, r nine. These are referring to risers as the engineer would, annotate on the drawing, and those are tied to links that you can see here in the background.

And so as a user, you can remotely turn off water to the HVAC or domestic riser if you're equipped, by the dashboard. You can have those valves trigger automatically based on a sensor that detects water.

So in an example, if a sensor in riser o one sees the presence of water, it'll shut down automatically the valves associated to the o one heating and cooling in this example.

So you could you could certainly, by way of the zone rules and automation, have certain sensors close certain valves.

Then we get into our in wall sensors. So in a residential setting, as an example here, our primary focus would be where the access door is, where the risers are located, where the drain stacks are located, and a lot of connections buried in the wall.

Just a high risk area. So we'll place a water sensor inside of the wall.

In the out of wall sensor scenario, we're placing those below vanities, below kitchen kick plates, kinda out of sight, out of mind. Typically, these will be installed behind the toilet or beneath the vanity, but, of course, this little eddy sensor wanted a photo opportunity, so we kept it front and center. But, typically, they're they're installed out of sight out of mind.

And so for sensors, pretty straightforward. You're you're seeing the theme here. You can receive the alerts and use those as triggers to shut a valve or groups of valves.

Then getting into unit metering. So this is becoming, more and more popular for us. For those doing any kind of water metering, you're able to eliminate the, quote, unquote, dumb meters and have smart meters, same business models, nothing's changing.

The benefit here is you now have unit level flow data control by the shutoff and that whole leak detection piece as well as, of course, the recording of water consumption, and reporting back to any vendors doing your utility billing. These are revenue grade meters, all brass body, and have done exceptionally well in this application.

So when you have those equipped, and you can see here on a unit level, so every unit will have two, granted there's a hot and cold supply.

You'll have the ability to remotely control the valve. You can receive alerts.

And that, irregular flow or any sensors on the unit level could all be tied together to shut down, using that integrated shutoff. So a lot of information.

I really appreciate everybody's time.

Just leave this up here for a minute as far as, how to get in touch if, anyone's interested in discussing more, has any questions.

I will try to open up the chat, which may not have worked like I anticipated as far as the, the questions. Oh, okay. So we have here sorry. Give me a moment.

We've got two questions.

Number one, could you provide a specific use case of how Eddy's tech is applied during the course of construction and explain where the value comes from? Right. So course of construction in a new construction environment is that period of when they're building the building. We only really come into play once water is turned on and finishes start going in, but there's a really susceptible period there where the building is empty.

There's a lot of stuff that has recently been installed. There's obviously workmanship issues. There's there's bad products, and so there's an extremely high risk of having a water leak event.

Someone once said to me, in a in an occupied building, I have, five hundred sensors. And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, I have five hundred residents that live in my building. And I get what he means.

There's there's people living there. So maybe the water travels through a couple units. Eventually, someone's gonna be seeing it, particularly in that construction period. Again, people work in seven to three, seven to four, but the building's completely empty.

And so having control, water shut off, sensors, flow, there's of course a variety of different recommendations that we'll make in that environment.

Extremely helpful.

I'm surprised, and of course I'm biased, but I'm surprised that not every building has it. Especially as a plumber who did a lot of new work. when we would leave the job at night, we'd keep the water off. And these are homes. These are small projects. When you have a gigantic building, you can't just leave the water off all the time. And then partially occupied buildings, if you're building fifty, sixty floors, you might be partially occupied, partially empty.

So really important to have, at the very least, what I would refer to as, like, our base building setup.

Main shutoff, a couple meters into certain systems, and some in wall sensors.

We've got one more question. Does Eddy have a dashboard app as well? Yeah. Of course.

Kinda make the joke on our end and to our customers that you don't want another dashboard to stare at. And fortunately, you won't need to. The way that we provide our service, the way we engage, call, check-in, account reps, the project team, if it's a new install.

They're basically taking care of everything until something goes wrong, which they'll still step in for.

But, the dashboard, sure. You could see stuff, turn things on and off.

But that's kind of the running joke is nobody wants another dashboard.

There are better ways to get data reporting, and that's through the support team, the service team that that comes with every one of our installs.

So I think that was the two, and we're just over time if I'm not mistaken. But, yeah. Thanks everyone for joining.

It's a great session. Hope you learned a lot, and, we'll run we'll run more of these, over the coming months. So looking forward to coming back.