This Old House is the show about doing major house renovations. Ask This Old House is the fix it show that teaches home owners how to do small repairs on their own. Richard, the plumber, does like to show off new products and something like this is right up his alley. Also, just because that one got bad reviews doesn’t mean all of them don’t work. The idea is good, maybe that company just made a bad one.
How about this: a small, cheap box containing two electrodes is set on the floor behind the washer. The electrodes are flush with the floor. The box connects to two external solenoids (between the faucets and hoses) via a two conductor cable. If the control circuit detects low resistance between the two conductors – which is an indication there is water on the floor – the control circuit turns off the water.
In other words, connecting an inexpensive leak detector to something like this.
They make leak detectors that connect to water shut offs for your washing machine. They even go a step further and make leak detectors that connect remotely to a water shut off, that way you put the shut off on your water main and you can put a leak detector by your washer and another under a toilet and another by the sink etc and which ever one senses a leak will send the signal to shut off the water. I want to say some of them will even send out a distress call to a preprogrammed number (via a land line). But that seems unnecessary.
ETA I know nothing about this specific product, it was just the first one I found when I looked for an example.
http://www.diycontrols.com/p-6542-wireless-floodstop-kit-for-whole-house-with-34-valve.aspx?gclid=CPLG65Xlo7oCFY9FMgodZm8A9w
The guys on TOH and ATOH go pretty far out of their way to avoid mentioning specific brand names of anything. What they do mention is that insurance company studies confirm that burst washing-machine hoses are one of the most common and expensive home disasters, and also one of the most preventable.
There are several different brands of automatic washer-hose shutoff valve thingies out there. Get whichever one will work best for you. Some insurance companies even subsidize them.
I have the stainless steel wrapped hoses. They’re about 10 years old, still, thanks for the reminder, it won’t hurt to replace them.
But if I’m out of the house for more than a day, I turn off the water to the house (and the power to the water heater). The whole house water main is easily reachable in my basement. I really encourage people to have an easy to reach/operable water main control in the house.
While I was away for two weeks once, I came back on Super Bowl Sunday and found my basement flooded due to a leaky overhead pipe that was improperly soldered.
Try and get a plumber on Super Bowl Sunday.
I recently replaced our washing machine hoses (of uknown vintage, >7 years) with braided stainless lines that include flow fuses: if there’s a major rupture that results in a very high flow rate, a valve in the line automatically snaps shut. The downside is that under normal conditions the water flow is rather slow. It has to be, because then that’s how the flow fuse “knows” there’s been a rupture, i.e. when the flow rate jumps to excessive levels.
The flow fuse offers no protection against a slow leak, and so my usual policy remains in place: whenever we go on vacation - even for a single night out of town - we shut off the water supply for the entire house.
Huh - every place I’ve lived has had independent shutoff valves right at the washing machine - older places had the old turning-wheel type on each line, but our current house has a single lever valve. As long as you turn it off when you’re not using the washer, the hoses aren’t under pressure.
Did you ever wonder why there’s a single-lever valve at the washer in your current house? It’s to prevent the hoses from bursting. Now, your valve is cheap, at twenty bucks, but it requires the homeowner to remember to turn off the water. This one, which Crafter_Man linked to, is better, because it’s automatic.
I’ve never changed one, save for a drain hose that was chewed by mice.
Darn. I guess I should cancel my patent application, then. 
There’s also this one. Which I assume is a bit cheaper then the electric one. The water is ALWAYS off. When you do a load of laundry you flip the switch to the other side and it opens the valves for one hour.
I always liked that idea, but I’d be worried that I’d forget to turn it on and end up running the washing machine dry (or it just wouldn’t run if that’s what happens when there’s no water coming in to it).
Also, keep in mind you must run copper pipes to any of these devices. If you run hoses to them you’ve defeated the purpose. If you can’t do that yourself, be sure to add on a few hundred (500-1000) dollars to have a plumber or handyman come and do it. At that point it may be worth it to just swap them out hoses every few years and hope for the best. Make sure to have a clear shot to the floor drain and nothing to ruin from the washing machine to the drain and you might be okay.
We just got a new washer and dryer and installed this same type of hose. When we turned on the water to do a load, it deemed the water pressure too great and shut the flow off. We reset the hoses and tried again slowly opening the valve this time. It still cut off. We tried a third time and only opened the valve half way and this did the trick.
The fancy new washer has a timer on it telling you how long the load will take. We noticed that when filling up the machine, it takes longer than the indicated time.
True, but few people use these valves–they leave them open all the time and depend on the washing machine to shut off the water flow. People who manually shutoff the valves don’t have a problem with a broken hoses–it would just cause a bit of a mess when a few minutes of water is lost; it causes a big problem when the water is running for several hours.
I’m another that just turns off the valves when the washer isn’t running.
The proper time to replace any hose is exactly one hour before it bursts. Gotta get your money’s worth!
I would think the numerous on (pressure) off (de-pressure) would wear out the hose sooner, but I suppose that is mitigated by it not being under pressure when not in use.
FTR, I shut off the water to the house when we go away overnight. The worst that can happen is the water heater springs a leak, and it would only be a tankful (in the garage).
When you shut the water off it is still under pressure. It’s actually under less pressure when the washer is filling.
If you’d like to see for yourself go turn off the water to your washing machine* and unscrew one of the hoses and see if some water sprays out. It won’t be much because there’s not much water to spray out, but the water that’s in there is, in fact, under 60psi (or whatever your house pressure is). The pressure doesn’t go away just because you turned the valve off unless you have a bleeder screw to relieve it.
*You can do this with a garden hose as well. Turn off the water and then unscrew then sprayer at the end before spraying it one more time. This’ll be a bit more dramatic because you have a lot more hose there to store the energy.
How does one heat a house without a boiler?
One way (not necessarily the only way) is with a forced air furnace. I believe they are quite common in the Northeastern US.