Why My Check A Flow Invention Failed (And Why the Industry Still Needs It)
One of the companies I used to work for required me to check the bath overflows in each plot before we closed them. This meant that our baths were filled up four times before we could fit the last tile under the bath. The plumber filled the bath before they gave it to me, I filled the bath before I gave it to my construction director, the construction director filled it before they gave it to customer service, and then customer service filled it before the plot was handed over to sales.
Why did we check the overflows so much? Well, I never actually asked, but I’m guessing somewhere, sometime, a bath overflowed from an improperly fitted overflow and flooded whatever was underneath it, costing the builder lots of money to rectify.
Every time I filled the bath up and wasted the water, I used to think there had to be an easier way!
It wasn't until I met my husband that I found it! I remember the conversation like it was yesterday, “Babe, I want to put something here (gesturing to the bottom quarter of the bath), so I don’t have to fill the bath up to test the overflow.” His reply: “Well, that’s stupid. Just put something underneath it.”
This conversation led me to design my Check A Flow. I got full design and storyboards created, was so excited to move forward, then found out it was going to cost £30,000 to make the mold! And the patent was going to cost around £20,000 as well. I could never afford either of those amounts.
I ended up altering the design slightly, registering the design in the UK, and ordering 3000 from China. So far, I have spent around £10,000 on this idea and made about £120 lol!
Why has it failed? Well, because I am the most naive person in the world! Just because I checked everything on site when I worked on site doesn’t mean anyone else checked the way I did!
I had a project manager once say, “I only expect you to quality check the trades 10-15%.” This was said to me and at least 6 other managers. Can you imagine how liked I was when I snagged all trades 100% of the time!
I reckon I have filled up over 500 baths in my career. Checking the overflow is a really important task! If you're getting a bathroom fitted and don’t mind wasting a bath full of water, then please make sure you test yours before your bath panel is installed and your plumber leaves the site. The way to do this is to put the plug in and fill up the bath until it reaches the overflow. Check for leaks. Alternatively, buy a check-a-flow from my eBay shop lol!
The Check A Flow allows this check to be carried out with a bottle of water instead of filling the bath up, which was a beautiful thing for plumbers working on new builds because most of the time when the baths are fitted, there isn’t any water on site to fill the bath and carry out the test. Some plumbers might say the bath would get checked when it is masticked because it is best practice to fill the bath and then mastic. But I never saw a mastic man do this when I was on site.
I have 2,900 sitting in my garage ready to sell! Maybe the world will change one day. I will never understand how the best house builder in the UK (in my opinion) carried out this check on every property, but the rest of the people out there do not see this as a valid check.
The professional snagging companies I have called have bought a few! I hope one day my invention will not be a failed one!
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