On a city-water hookup
A dock spigot puts unlimited, pressurized water one hose away from your cabin. It's the single risk DockNeighbor can put a hard physical cap on — which is why the water hardware gets its own use case instead of headlining every page.
What can go wrong
The slow, boring failures — not scare stories.
There is no tank to run dry
On board water, a failed line ends when the tank does. On city water it ends when someone notices — a burst hose or cracked fitting can run for days at full municipal pressure.
The hose itself is the weak point
The most common failure isn't inside the boat — it's the sun-baked hose and its fittings between the spigot and the inlet. Protection installed at the boat's inlet can't see it.
Pressure regulators don't stop volume
A regulator protects your plumbing from pressure spikes; it does nothing about a failed line flowing forever at normal pressure.
It fails while you're away
City water is exactly what you leave connected between visits — which means the failure window is precisely the time nobody is aboard.
How DockNeighbor covers it
Each risk maps to something that ships today, with the plan it needs called out honestly.
A hard limit on every open
The LinkTap valve goes at the source spigot, and every open command carries a volume or duration limit — a physical cap, enforced by the valve itself. A burst line ends with a bounded amount of water even if every other layer fails. The station reads the valve over the boat's network, like any partner device.
Flood sensors close it sooner
A leak sensor at the low point (bilge, under the water heater) or a float in the bilge reports to the station the moment water arrives. The alarm reaches your phone and the valve closes on its own, with the app closed. The sensors themselves are DockNeighbor sensors, Dockside and up; the valve they close is Weekender and up.
Flow metering shows the story
The valve's built-in meter shows flow and usage in the app. A slow leak shows up as water use when nobody's aboard — the early signal that something upstream of a flood sensor is wrong.
One plan covers the whole valve
Adding the valve, opening and closing it from anywhere, live flow, and the automatic shutoff all come with Weekender. The valve takes one device slot, like a sensor.
The setup
Small battery-powered sensors, bought once. If your marina runs a DockNeighbor Station, they are the whole install.
Recommended hardware
- LinkTap valve with flow meter, and its gateway on the boat's network — on the source spigot
- Water leak sensor — one per low point~$26
- Bilge float sensor — in the bilge itself~$60
- Pressure regulator — cheap insurance alongside, not instead~$10–40
This is the one use case where the valve is the star. If you're not hooked to city water, skip it entirely — every other DockNeighbor feature works without it. The valve is sold by LinkTap.
No station within range? Bring your own aboard: the M2 ($99) on the boat’s internet, or the M2-4G ($149) with your own SIM. Which one, and where to buy →
Recommended plan
Weekender ($7/mo · $60/yr) — the valve is a partner device
Everything water on this page comes with Weekender: the valve, its open-limits, the shutoff that fires with the app closed, and running it from anywhere. The flood sensors and their alarms are on Dockside too, valve or not.
Every vehicle can try one month of Dockside free, started from the plan badge in the app's Settings › Vessel.