I was dismayed to discover that the utility room in our new house does not have a drain in it, one of its very few shortcomings. If the water heater ever leaks (as happened in our previous house once already), it will be a major problem — there’s nowhere for the water to go. There is a bathroom right next door to it, with a drain in the floor, but that floor is higher than the one in the utility room. And unfortunately we rarely have any reason to visit the utility room, so we might not notice a leak until it has done some damage.

It might be a good idea to have one or two of these handy items sitting around the water heater for when that happens. They would contain the leak until we noticed it and could deal with it.

I still have to work out some way to alert us to the problem though. For now I’ve scheduled a weekly reminder to check the room, but I’d really prefer a better solution.