As a spokesperson for the insurance industry, Loretta Worters often gives tips to homeowners on preventing water damage. Some of her knowledge comes from personal experience.

Worters says she had owned a home in Bellmore, New York, for only a month when she noticed the clothes washer in the basement was taking an awfully long time to fill.

“I went downstairs and I was up to my ankles in water,” says Worters, vice president of communications for the Insurance Information Institute.

Appliance and plumbing failures are a leading cause of household water damage, which is far more common than you may think. Homeowners are six times more likely to suffer property losses from water than from theft and seven times more likely than from fire, says Kelly Greene, a risk consulting manager from Chubb Personal Insurance who led a session on property damage at the Financial Planning Association NorCal conference in May. (“Water damage” is different from flooding, which is rising water that affects two or more properties.)

In my latest for the Associated Press, steps you can take to ensure your wealth doesn’t evaporate drip by drip.