Yikes. Hope you discovered the leakage sooner than later.
FYI, in case you don’t have one and might want to add: Many people have a pan under their washer in case of overflows or such.
In some nicer or custom homes, the builder will build a barrier around where the washer and dryer sit, like a low surround similar to a shower pan, with a drain, also to contain any leaks.
I usually do overlaps with hosts and, as part of the handoff, I ask them to show me where the emergency shutoff for gas and water and the fuse box are. That way if there’s an emergency or something is acting up, I know where to start troubleshooting.
That’s one of the advantages with sitters who’ve owned homes or otherwise have taken care of homes before. Similarly, if folks have say lived in earthquake and hurricane / typhoon zones and know how to take precautions or switch gas off quickly to prevent further damage, like fires.
Great idea! Thank you!
I found out practically as the machine started to empty the water, so got to start wiping quickly enough. Although it was quite a lot, I’m still sort of impressed of how little water a modern machine uses. It was a short express-program, but still. Less water that I would have used washing by hand, I think.
Yes, machines can save water and time. They can malfunction, of course.
Some people also use a leak detector by their water heater (the giant kind used in say the U.S., not the instant heating kind like in other parts of the world). You put the sensor on the ground and, if it senses water, it will alert you, sometimes via app, depending on the model. It could also work for say a leaking washer.
It’s especially good to have such when going away and no one is in the home for a while. Because some people return from vacation and find flooding and mold (horror).
Of course, that can be an advantage to having someone sit — to discover or prevent (further) damage.
We had a sit where the newish tv suddenly just stopped working while we were watching it.
We told the hosts at handover on their return. They said it was fairly new, still under warranty so it would be fixed. They later told us that the tv engineers were unable to find out why it stopped working and therefore unable to fix it so the company had given them a new tv.
These hosts were very apologetic that the tv had stopped working during our stay.
I just take my green tea bags on sits and leave the coffee for when I’m at home.
Our last sit was off of THS. We ran out of water twice (days without running water) and this was a known problem to the HO who had dithered with her plumber about a fix for YEARS. The plumber ended up filling the cistern by pumping water from the pool into the cistern. Honestly, the whole sit felt like we were camping.
The cats would jump on countertops and tables throughout the house and deliberately send things to the floor in order to get us to feed them. This was at 4 am and throughout the day, although the HO told us to ignore them and not feed them every time they wanted. There was zero chance of us replacing a single broken item on that sit.
Then there was the cats peeing EVERYWHERE despite having multiple litter boxes that we cleaned at least once per day. It was a struggle to protect our own things from their destruction, never mind keeping the HOs things in order. We couldn’t possibly break the HOs washing machine since there wasn’t enough water to use it.
Having said all this, we’ve been on THS both as HOs and now as sitters. We had a very relaxed attitude about things. Appliances work just fine until one day they don’t. It’s the nature of the thing. People accidentally drop a mug or a dish. It happens and I’ve done it in my own home. I don’t expect a sitter to replace things like that. Now, if they broke half my dishes, then yes, but the odd plate or cup, no. We previously owned vacation rental properties in Mexico and my attitude there was the same. Things break, stuff happens. Unless it’s deliberate on someone’s part, I do not worry about it.
Whoa big yikes!! What kind of review did you leave them?
We have reviewed everyone as excellent as long as the pets were happy and the sitters were transparent. (Only had one incident where we didn’t feel comfortable giving an excellent score but that sit had multiple problems.)
I agree, most things I don’t sweat because things happen. It’s fine.
The expensive stuff just makes me feel 
and I come here to complain about things.
Sorry my post wasn’t clear. The sit was not through THS. If it had been I would have left. We found this sit through a Facebook pet sit site local to the area of Mexico we used to live in. The HO was American and didn’t speak much Spanish and simply didn’t know how to get things done and/or was getting older to the point where life was getting difficult. My husband has the patience of a saint and he found plumbers and worked out a plan for her to improve her water delivery, even did a detailed plumbing drawing for her. Hopefully she has followed through. I will not return to her house though. Any HO that has a casual attitude toward cats peeing on kitchen countertops is not a good fit for me. Honestly, we never knew if we would wake up to the bag of coffee soaked in pee or dumped on the floor. The cats knew how to open some cupboards and most of her kitchen was open shelves, it was almost impossible to keep the cats away from our things. I spent the entire first day cleaning.
