Smart water management startup Watergate is launching a crowdfunding campaign for its novel water-saving tech.
As pressure mounts on water infrastructure globally, with England and Wales alone losing over 3 billion litres of water daily to leaks, Watergate aims to combat water waste, reduce bills, and protect property from water damage.
I spoke to team member Gareth Thomas to learn more.
According to Thomas:
“Water is becming the next big frontier for sustainability, especially as companies have already tackled energy use.
With rising costs and climate pressures, we believe Watergate can play a core part in that shift. We’re building tools that make it easy, smart, and automatic.”
Watergate’s hardware-agnostic platform combines AI-powered leak detection, automated water shut-off, and user-friendly tools for both households and businesses.
It's the brainchild of Krystian Zajac, CEO and founder of Watergate. During a career in IoT and smart home tech, high-end clients began asking for solutions to detect and stop water leaks, especially since they'd invested a lot in their homes and didn’t want them ruined by a burst pipe. At the time, there wasn’t much on the market.
So he built a device, Sonic, to detect leaks and shut off water automatically.
From there, he started talking to utilities and realised there was a much bigger opportunity.
The UK government wants to cut water usage from 140 litres to 115 litres per person per day. But according to Thomas, most of us don’t think about our water use until there’s a problem.
"Utilities told us the biggest hidden issue is internal leaks. 3 billion litres of water are lost each day in the UK due to leaks, and 1bn of that happens inside homes and buildings."
So we expanded from a hardware-only solution to a full platform: a combination of smart devices and software that help people monitor and reduce water use, plus detect and act on leaks in real-time.”
The Sonic device stands out from existing IoT offerings. It doesn’t just monitor, it acts. If it detects a serious leak, it automatically shuts off the water.
Sonic uses ultrasonic sensors, unlike traditional turbine-based smart meters. It provides freeze alerts, Legionella risk assessment, and pressure loss detection, identifying pinhole leaks as small as one drip every two minutes for early intervention and minimal damage.
Every night, the system briefly shuts off the water and compares pressure data to detect any hidden leaks. Thomas detailed:
“You can override it, of course, like I sometimes have to when my kids take long showers. But having that control makes a huge difference, especially in properties that aren’t constantly occupied.”
According to Watergate, toilets are the number one water leak culprit — small, silent leaks in the cistern that go unnoticed but waste huge amounts of water.
Thomas shared:
“We’ve also had funny cases: one customer’s cat turned on the tap, and Sonic shut off the supply for the customer while they were at work.
Another parent said their kids left the bath running "for fun" before school. Ultimately, it’s a mix of human error, wear and tear, and neglect.”
Sonic started as a consumer-focused product, but quickly saw the biggest demand was in commercial property.
One of the company’s major clients is Greystar, one of the world’s largest landlords. In one of their buildings with over 600 student apartments, Watergate found 22 per cent had leak issues the moment Sonic was installed.
“That’s real savings on water, damage prevention, and even insurance premiums.”
Watergate is also seeing more demand from Airbnb hosts, second-home owners, and regular consumers. Insurers are increasingly encouraging or requiring these kinds of systems.
I wondered why building developers and utilities haven’t built this tech in from the start? Thomas explained that Watergate has written to the government about this.
“If we’re mandating smoke detectors in new builds, why not leak detection systems?”
There's a voluntary building code now — the "JCoP Escape of Water Directive" — but it’s not enforced.
According to Thomas, property developers often say: ‘If it were a requirement, we’d include it.’
“And the cost is marginal, just a few hundred pounds on a million-pound home. Plus, you save on insurance and future repairs."
Since launching in 2024, the company has secured high-profile partnerships with property developers and insurers and demonstrated up to 68 per cent water savings for its customers.
The company is also in live discussions with water utilities on both sides of the Atlantic about helping them reduce water consumption. Watergate raised £1.7 million from angel investors earlier this year. The current campaign aims to raise £600,000 — but for Watergate, it's as much about building a community of people who care about water sustainability as it is about capital. Many backers are already customers.
Right now, Watergate is focused on the UK—both commercial property and utilities (it's in talks with six major water companies). Its next big step is North America, starting with California. It’s a single state but has the economy of a whole country, and faces major water stress.
Beyond that, the startup is rolling out three more hardware products, including a clip-on sensor that doesn’t require plumbing and a large-pipe solution for industrial use.
This announcement follows Watergate’s acceptance into The Water Council’s US-based BREW Accelerator, ahead of its expansion into international markets. Watergate is also one of only eight companies selected for REACH UK, the leading property technology scale-up programme run by Second Century Ventures (part of the National Association of Realtors®).
Pre-registration is now open via Republic (formerly Seedrs) to access your own Watergate tech, giving early supporters priority access to the crowdfund before it opens to the wider public.
Lead image: Watergate.
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