Testing Smart Automatic Water Shutoff Valves | Ask This Old House
Ask This Old House plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey tests two different styles of smart automatic water shutoff valves
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Cost: $600 and up
Shopping List:
Point-activated smart water shutoff valve [https://amzn.to/2LpThh1]
Valve body-activated smart water shutoff valve [https://amzn.to/2ySW53z]
Steps for testing smart automatic water shutoff valves:
1. Kevin and Richard recap that any smart automatic water shutoff valve can both help prevent catastrophic bursts and minimize flood damage.
2. Right now, these devices generally fall under two schools of design:
a. Point Sensor Activated: Sensors are placed in “high risk areas,” like around a washing machine, under a water tank, etc. Sensors then connect remotely to a valve that’s installed near the main shutoff. When the sensors detect water, they communicate with the valve and tell it to shut off.
i. Pros: Fast response time once it detects a leak, and it can talk to a large number of sensors.
ii. Cons: If there are plumbing failures where there isn’t a sensor, it won’t work.
b. Valve Body Activated: The valve has components on the inside that allow it to measure the overall health and activity of the waterpipes, which varies from valve to valve. Most of these types of valves measure the flow rate of water, which helps them determine what fixtures are being used in the house. If the valve detects an excessive flow of water, it will shut the valve off.
i. Pros: All the smarts are in the shutoff valve itself, making it easier to keep track of than the system of components for point sensor valves, the information the valve collects can help it differentiate and improve water usage in the house, meaning it’s useful even when it’s not detecting plumbing failures, and the valve is not dependent on sensors “finding” the leaks. If there’s a plumbing failure anywhere in the system, it will close the valve.
ii. Cons: There’s a slightly slower response time than point sensor valves (because it’s so smart, it needs to “think” about whether this water is being used for something else or if it’s actually a plumbing failure, and it can trigger “false alarms” if a large amount of water is being used and the valve worries that it’s a flood.
Resources:
Richard explained that most modern automatic water shutoff valves fall under two categories of design: sensor-activated and valve body activated.
The sensor-activated valves are usually more economical and have a faster response time, since their primary function is to detect leaks and other plumbing failures. The sensor-activated valve Richard demonstrated was a Floodmaster App-Based Wireless Plumbing Leak Detection & Automatic Water Shut-Off System [https://amzn.to/2ySW53z], which is manufactured by Reliance Detection Technologies (https://reliancedetection.com/). The kit comes with two sensors and additional ones can be purchased and paired.
The valve body activated valves have more features to them, including usage reports and running health tests to try and catch plumbing failures ahead of time. The all-in-one smart valve Richard demonstrated was the Phyn Plus Smart Water Assistant + Shutoff [https://amzn.to/2LpThh1], which is manufactured by Phyn (https://www.phyn.com/).
Expert assistance with this segment was provided by the Walter F. Morris Company (https://www.morrismerchants.com/).
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Homeowners have a virtual truckload of questions for us on smaller projects, and we’re ready to answer. Ask This Old House solves the steady stream of home improvement problems faced by our viewers—and we make house calls! Ask This Old House features some familiar faces from This Old House, including Kevin O’Connor, general contractor Tom Silva, plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey, and landscape contractor Jenn Nawada.
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Testing Smart Automatic Water Shutoff Valves | Ask This Old House
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Nice
This should be code in all modern building.
We have a hybrid of the two, we put sensors in all the normal places, but if a pipe bursts, it shuts off anyway.
Nice
Amazing video, thanks TOH.
Should have covered Water Hero's product in this video. https://waterheroinc.com/p100leakdetectionautoshutoff/
What if I'm filling a small pool outside? What if I want to take a bath? That seamed like such a short time to shut off after just basically a wide open faucet.
But what if you use more water in the summer?
What happens when the electricity or internet is out?
Just turn your water main, or pump off when gone…
I turn off my main when I leave the house for more than a day. Sure it's not the best but better than nothing.
SKYNET : scald them people.
I thought Roger retired, sum resodding . I fertilized with Scott's ( Rogaine ) and bang it's starts raining.
It’s a old duplicate show
And all those things are made in China. No thx.
Man, they're like $700, that's freaking expensive
2:06 that’s how he became a plumber
The water main shutoff at my mom's house is located in one of the closets in one of the bedrooms. The reason why it's not located in the garage, is because we originally planned on placing the garage on the same side of the house, until we cleaned floorplans
What if you have a lawn that needs watering while away?
My company offers the same type of leak detection and shuts off within seconds. Look up Kinetico Leak detector
Plot Twist: by 4:05, Richard signals the product rep to turn off the water line…
Wow, Uponor Phyn mentioned! Make Finland Great again and torilla tavataan! 😀
Ok but what happens when you turn on your garden hose?
Isn't it easier to just install a on/off solenoid to a switch inside the house and just shut the water off when you leave on vacation? You can get the solenoid on ebay for 30 bucks or so.
Even if you have one, you will still get minor water damage that has to be fixed. That plus the price of the valve makes it as much or more than a deductible. How do we know these will always shut off when required? Do they have some sort of coverage or warranty if they don't work as intended? Even if they say they cover damage, I'm sure the manufacturer will only cover damage if installed by a plumber and within a certain time period. Plus what is the likelihood that the manufacturer will cover the damage? Usually negligible. Until these are much, much cheaper, I doubt they will catch on. The price plus the uncertainty of them always working made me not buy one. That is unfortunate, since I was extremely interested, but for the price of my deductible I will take my chances. Remember it's not extremely likely to have this happen. Everybody knows somebody that it had happened to, but it's a fairly low percentage.
could you just turn off your main water supply when leaving for a trip? would that do any harm?
The hacker Community doesn’t need this… This is a terrible idea.. I think these are really easy to control / hack into because it’s on your internet as well the Company that could/ track you from the sensors. It’s on your internet… Just think about that.
my hot water tank sprung a leak. my son heard the air rushing in , and woke me at 2am. lost about 20 gals on to the floor. sucked . but, could have been worse.
As a former water dept worker the cheapest insurance against a water leak is to have your water shut off at the curb… especially if you're going to be gone for any length of time. Even if it costs a hundred bucks that's considerably cheaper than any water damage.
Insurance companies should offer discounts if homeowners have these.
I think a combination of that is the best
Would be cool if home insurance companies would either offer these at a huge discount or give us a discount on our premiums if we buy one. It would save them a lot of money if I pipe did burst.
So what if I have guests after 3 years of no guests and we take 3 showers at once…. boom nO water
I think a "best of both worlds" set up would be, the whole-home shut-off, obviously, but also making the individual appliance shut-off "smart" as well, and enabling tying them into the water sensors/shut-off. That is, basically in most every water appliance, you have the local shut-off, on the water line, and taking that and making it smart and able to "talk" with the home water sensor system.
Second one sees an anomoly: you are trying to put a fire out with your garden hose. Shuts the water off?
Tommy is hiding behind that screen turning the water supply on and off
This old house pulls through again. Water line busted on my fridge today…….
Intelligent flow sensor, may shut off water when you refill the hot tub, start watering the lawn start of the season
Big leak=insurance claim=nice payout for remodel.
Problem with the second one is that most leaks happens without the full pipe rupturing and instead start off low and slowly increase, sometimes never to full flow but with time (2-3 days) the water damage is just as bad
My biggest concern is when I go on vacation/away from home for significant time. Before I leave, I manually turn off incoming water with ball-valve. I don’t trust reliability of electronics. If wifi goes down or there’s an extended power outage, one of these devices won’t do any good.
Great video demonstrating the need for leak detection and an automated water valve. But an ideal system will require no internet access and work even when power is out. I have a Hubitat home automation hub (on backup power) with 15 battery-powered leak sensors and an automated main water valve (leaksmart) that also has battery backup. From leak detection to my valve turning off takes about 6 seconds. https://community.hubitat.com/t/this-old-house-automated-water-valves/73888
Why on earth would you rely on anything cloud based? Anything like this should be kept 100% local in function. Using something like a Dome unit from DOMEHA or Bulldog is what should be used. First off they're instantaneous. You don't have 30 seconds to a minute worth of water dropping on your floor. Secondly and more important if something happens, you don't have an internet failure to worry about. This includes if the company goes out of business and takes their servers with them you're out of luck. Do not rely on wifi either. Your water sensors should be connecting to the shutoff via zigbee or z-wave. You should also test once a month.
So what where the names of the manufacturers of the two they tested? I'm interested in the 2nd one