What each sensor catches
Every sensor is read continuously by the watch agent. Nothing is paged on a single sensor's say-so — the agent waits for a second, independent source before treating a reading as an incident.
Leak sensors
Drips, pooling, and the slow build-up of a burst pipe at 2 a.m.
- Install location
- Under every kitchen and bathroom sink, behind the bathroom wall, beside the water heater, near the laundry tub and the fridge's ice line.
- Power source
- Coin-cell battery — lasts several years, low-battery ping surfaces as a maintenance reminder before it dies.
- Gateway pairing
- Each leak sensor pairs to the on-site cellular gateway at install; the gateway relays every reading to the watch agent in seconds.
- What it catches
- A wet floorboard near the fridge's ice line, a flexi-hose split under the vanity, a sump pump that gave up after a storm — captured the moment water touches the probe, confirmed on a second sensor (or a humidity spike) before a plumber is paged.
Door contacts
A door opened when nobody should be on site, or a side door propped open past the guest's stay.
- Install location
- Every exterior door — front, back, garage-to-house, side, and any basement walk-out.
- Power source
- Coin-cell battery, multi-year life.
- Gateway pairing
- Paired to the same on-site cellular gateway; state is polled every few seconds and pushed to the watch agent as soon as it changes.
- What it catches
- A back door forced at an unusual hour, a cleaning crew who arrived early and propped the mud-room open — the watch agent cross-checks against the property's expected occupancy and pages only when the opening is unexpected.
Window contacts
A window opened during the storm front, or a cracked pane left cracked in winter.
- Install location
- Every ground-floor window and any upper-storey window above a deck or roof line a person could reach.
- Power source
- Coin-cell battery, multi-year life.
- Gateway pairing
- Paired to the cellular gateway, same loop as door contacts.
- What it catches
- A bedroom window cracked open during the southerly change (correlates with the weather feed), a window left unlatched after the cleaners went — surfaced as a maintenance nudge rather than a wake-up page.
HVAC telemetry
Heating that failed overnight, a cooling system that never came back on, an error code the homeowner never sees.
- Install location
- Reads the existing HVAC system where it lives — no extra unit installed.
- Power source
- Powered by the HVAC system itself (24V from the furnace board).
- Gateway pairing
- Tied into the system controller by a SecureVacant technician at install; setpoint, return-air temperature, and error codes are relayed through the gateway.
- What it catches
- A reverse-cycle system that hit a fault code at midnight, a gas furnace that never re-lit after a power blip — the agent confirms against the property's outdoor temperature (a 4°C night + a 12°C indoor = confirmed heating failure) before paging an HVAC technician.
Smart thermostat
Hard-freeze risk, a setpoint that drifted away from the safe minimum, a weekend away with the heat turned down too far.
- Install location
- Replaces or sits beside the existing thermostat in the main living area.
- Power source
- Common (C) wire from the HVAC system; battery-backed against short outages.
- Gateway pairing
- Joined to the same gateway mesh — setpoint changes are visible to the watch agent in seconds.
- What it catches
- Indoor temperature dropped below 7°C overnight while the setpoint is set to 18°C — the agent treats this as a confirmed freeze-risk reading (and pairs it with the HVAC reading) before paging.
Humidity sensors
Mold-risk moisture creep, humidity climbing after a slow leak the leak sensor didn't catch.
- Install location
- Bathrooms, near the kitchen range hood, basement rooms, the crawl space under the laundry.
- Power source
- Coin-cell battery, multi-year life.
- Gateway pairing
- Paired to the cellular gateway, same loop as the leak sensors.
- What it catches
- A bathroom fan that failed on a humidification cycle, a basement creeping past 65% RH after a storm — paired with the closest leak sensor's readings, the agent can tell the difference between 'someone had a long shower' and 'something is wrong.'
How every sensor reaches the watch agent
One gateway, one shared loop.
Every sensor above pairs to one on-site cellular gateway — the same compact gateway described on /how-it-works. The gateway runs over the cellular network so a router reboot, an ISP outage, or a summer power cut can't take it offline; a solar-backed battery keeps it broadcasting through extended blackouts. The watch agent reads every stream continuously and only pages a crew when two independent sources agree.
Ready to put the stack in your property?