Apparently the most common cause of damage to peoples homes is not fire but rather water leaks i.e. burst pipes leading to flood damage.
There have been available in the UK various water leak sensors for quite sometime including of course Samsung Smartthings own version.
The problem has been that in almost all cases - at least here in the UK/Europe these have not come with a matching smart stop cock valve to automatically turn off the water supply if a leak is detected. If you are away from your house therefore and unable to immediately return to manually turn off the water a leak sensor is pretty useless.
In the US there have been a number of smart valve solutions foremost of which has been LeakSmart.
In more recent times one or two products have emerged on the UK market but I have been disappointed with all of them. There are some Z-Wave ones but they look like US ones in terms of plumbing fittings although they supposedly have EU Z-Wave compatibility. These types are designed to fit over a specific type of existing manual valve a type which in my experience is almost unheard of in the UK.
There is the Grohe which is at least a proper UK solution but seems designed to work with horizontal piping whereas all the houses I have lived in have had vertical piping.
But I get the impression it is merely a stop cock with a wall switch in a more convenient position and no ‘smarts’.
The above becomes more interesting when you look at the following which is a full blown smart water leak sensor and stop cock valve kit.
Whilst the valve as you will see looks extremely similar to the Surestop the rest is totally different. With Waterlock you get an app, a hub and multiple leak sensors and it will automatically shut the valve when it detects a leak. I have also spoken to them and apparently it already works with Amazon Alexa and other integrations are likely to be added.
The Geotogether company also makes other smart home products such as a smart thermostat and SMETS compatible IHD and CAD devices.
Whilst Waterlock is currently lacking in integration I would still regard it as likely the best UK solution with a lot of potential for the future and I am considering getting one regardless of the likely current impossibility to link to Smartthings etc.
For those in the UK and interested in this type of solution, i.e. water leak detection and smart stop cock I had previously come across the Phyn Plus. This uses an ultrasonic sensor to measure water flow and from the usage pattern determines whether it feels there is a leak. The Phyn Plus includes an automatic valve to shut off the water flow.
I had discounted this for a number of reasons.
It appeared to be US only
It used water flow measurements to detect leaks rather than actual water leak sensors which I felt would give a more rapid response
It is a huge hulking great monstrosity!
However more recently I have discovered new information.
They were originally US only but now already sell in some European countries but not yet I believe the UK it is logical however to expect it to eventually be offered in the UK as well
They have announced a new model the Phyn XL 1.5" which is a far more practical size
There are even vague indications that HomeKit support might be added
It is owned or at least a significant stake is owned by Belkin who are a global company and who do offer (most of) their products in the UK further increasing the chances of it becoming available
It would be possible to combine it with standard water leak sensors and to create a rule to trigger the valve even if its own ultrasonic flow measurement had net yet been triggered
A bonus is that this product since it measures water flow would also provide a means of monitoring water usage to compare against my water bills.
On a different topic - in general UK insurers do nothing to incentivise customers to implement smart technology like this to detect leaks, have smoke detectors, etc. Also the same applies to the water utilities, they not only do not incentivise leak detection but also do not incentivise smart water consumption measures like smart irrigation systems - except in that they will charge you more if you use more water. This is despite the fact that there have been warnings of eventual water supply shortages due to climate change. In fact since they make more money if you use more water one could argue they have a vested interest in you using as much as possible. This is also pretty much true of the Government they also do not incentivise reduced water consumption. Yes there have been advertising campaigns to encourage reduced consumption but no incentives. It is all stick and no carrot.
It maybe that if there had been incentives more UK made products in this category might have been developed to meet that need. Instead we have to wait and wait and wait for typically US products to arrived - if we are lucky.
Hi, I need to have a new stop cock installed for the switch over to my new MDPE mains pipe (replacing lead). So I am thinking, are there any good smart home stop cock and leak/flow detectors out there now, 5 years on from the last post on this thread ?
Anyone have experience with SureStop for example ?
@Spinny
I could not see for certain but it looked like SureStop was was only a (dumb) water valve but with a push button for on/off rather than a traditional manual turn valve.
Sadly if anything I feel the options are getting worse not better. This is despite the fact water leaks cause more incidents than fire or theft.
Some brands have gone bust, some never got round to selling in the UK. Phyn was supposed to be patnering with Belkin but that died out and frankly Belkin have been massively going backwards in the UK.
Some appear to be dependent on proprietary cloud servers and therefore at risk of dying when the company goes bust. This happened with the US only LeakSmart which I felt had the best hardware although they did not sell it outside the US, went bust and it turned out was locked to their proprietary hub and server. They might have been revived by Wink but still use their own hub.
There is the Sonic from Watergate but I feel it also is locked to their servers.
Most security alarms in the UK lack water leak valves but might have sensors. Interestingly the Ajax Alarm system has a valve and leak sensor. Whilst Ajax is available in the UK and hopefully including these two options, it will not integrate with smart home platforms like Smartthings.
There are some Zigbee and Z-Wave valves and these could be combined with separate Zigbee or Z-Wave sensors. However these valves seem in general rather flimsy. Tuya do one as an example.
Thanks for responses so far.
Have been looking at the Aqara and similar robot valve turning arms. Not sure I really want battery powered as the torque will be lower and one review I saw found it wouldn’t actually close the valve fully. Also a pain to change batteries.
My stop cock is tucked away in an understairs cupboard and I am not getting any younger to crawl in there.
Lots of water detecting smart leak sensors around but of course they don’t measure water flow to potentially detect leaks under the floor, and you can’t put them everywhere.
Somebody elsewhere suggested using a solenoid ball valve and a smart switch module ?
There are so many things like this that you would have thought were widely available by now - we will still be fighting brass stop cocks in 100 years at this rate.
@Spinny
The Moen Flo and the Watergate Sonic both measure flow to determine if this indicates a leak so would do what you want from that point of view.
I don’t think the Moen Flo is officially sold in the UK, the Sonic however is mains powered but does not have an official Smartthings integration. It does have an integration with Home Assistant.
