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.