If by nothing else but the ease of pairing with STv2 hub, I’m extremely impressed. I was unsuccessful in attempting to pair 2 dome valves to my hub. Over a two week period, I pressed the buttons upwards of 11000 times in different combos. MAJOR PITA. Then during research in to other similar products, I come across the leaksmart valve. Holy crap, it has a dedicated sync button. Even better- 1 press and its in pair mode. From what I can tell, no device handlers needed and works fine in conjunction with smartthings leak sensors. At first I did not know that you had to clear leak notifications before subsequent valve actuations would take place.
Purchased for 67.00 on amazon along with two sharkbite pushfit l, 1 male thread, 1 female thread at 8 bucks each and a whole lot less headache than the dome unit. Haven’t installed yet but it seems that it’ll be less stressful on pipework because it’s self contained and not attached to the piping therefore flexing with each and every valve actuation.
This is true. I hate this “feature” and have made multiple requests to ST to remove it with no luck.
I have this valve and have been very happy with it. Here is a pic of how I installed mine. I wanted to make sure that if by chance the valve got stuck closed that I would have water available until I could replace the valve.
IMO those sharkbite are convenient but not worth the risk - I have seen a few too many stories of sharkbite failure. Then the vendor says “gee never saw one leak/fail before”. Sure you haven’t. Search “sharkbite problem”.
Those fittings prices are cheaper than I remember though - not bad like 4-5 years ago - copper is getting nuts.
Sure it’s probably “installation failure” or user error, inadequate prep, but IMO I don’t recall stories of “soldering failure” weeks or longer after installation. I do see, that if solder doesn’t leak immediately, then it’s good for decades.