Day 3 of IBS 2019: More Product Previews
**Our honesty policy: This post may contain affiliate links and I may be compensated if you make a purchase at no extra cost to you. Some are, some aren't--I do some comparison shopping. The important thing is you will know exactly what we are talking about. Drop a note/comment if you have any questions on the products as these are materials and tools we use on our own projects.
The the last day of the conference was just as jam packed as the first two–with the first snow in Las Vegas in a decade!
We discussed our Uponor whole house monitoring find, Phyn, with fellow remodelers over at the Remodelers Central breakfast. They mentioned Moen had a similar product, Flo. While we are, admittedly, in love with Uponor, we most definitely had to check out the competition.
We had a nice discussion with one of the engineers of Flo. I’ll certainly be checking out both monitoring systems in more detail. Considering water loss is more common than any other kind of home repair emergency (having experienced this twice in my own home and once in my rental), this kind of system makes so much sense! (Update: two months later, we installed a Flo: Prevent Water Damage 24/7: A Flo by Moen Review)
PVE has an incredible set of pneumatic vacuum elevators. In oversimplified terms: cut a round hole in the second story floor, plug it into a 30 amp outlet and go! Notice how this setup is live on the show floor–just set up over the carpet! Of other note for our builds, it has a weep system in the bottom allowing flood water to pass through, rather than wreaking havoc by creating a negative pressure zone. They also offer larger elevators which are wheelchair accessible.
We took our turn feeling like a wad of cash going through a bank system.
The new Franke kitchen sink setup makes sense in a small kitchen–effectively making the sink double as both the sink and more counter space. We immediately thought of this as a very real possibility in a potential upcoming vacation rental garage conversion.
Endura has some really quick and easy to install door thresholds and rot proof door frames. What really caught our attention is this door sill solution.
This threshold and the accompanying door sweep look more than enough to keep out driving rain. In the event of a flood, this door sill will slow down the deluge.
One of the best parts, if not the best part, is visiting with a vendor (cough…Aquor Water Systems) beer in hand, approaching them with a problem on a current build, and brainstorming a solution on the spot. We are certainly using Aquor’s V2 Hydrant, providing freeze protection on current and future builds. Our concern is how to keep the odd shaped penetration of the hydrant water tight after pulling it out, if it needs servicing at a later time. The guys and gals at Aquor are a great bunch. We are confident we’ll be hearing from them soon!
During our great conversation, they mentioned improvements upon the design of their Aquor Hydrant V2, I mentioned in passing in this post. The V2 originally had a water release with a removable cap along with a spring, that…well…springs OUT when released…as we observed (and rather thankfully found). Their improvement keeps this all within the system so that it no longer needs removing.
We look forward to attending IBS in 2020!
