The Best Smart Home Water Management?
December 13, 2022
There have been so many innovative and interesting smart home devices developed just since Debbie and I started on our new home project. At some point I’m sure we’ll have to make some hard decisions regarding solutions that have a lot of similar capabilities and benefits.
Not all of the smart home tech out there is as sexy though as lighting automations, home heating/cooling based on sensors or cameras triggering tech due to specific events. But they all need attention and planning in order to run an efficient smart home.
Plumbing is one of those areas people generally don’t associate with smart home. But operating efficiently and preventing costly problems more than justifies the investment in time and solutioning. We’ve all heard the stories from family and friends about burst water pipes or longtime leaks that led to very disruptive and costly repairs.
A smart valve can save you thousands by preventing catastrophic water damage as well as giving you valuable analytics regarding your water use in real time to help you conserve. Enter the Phyn Plus 2nd Generation — a smart home water monitor, leak detector and automatic shutoff.
The Phyn Plus is the most accurate whole home leak detection and water monitor. It measures tiny changes in water pressure 240 times a second to alert you the moment a leak is detected — to mitigate costly damage by automatically shutting off your water — and to give you detailed insights on how, and where, your family uses water. Daily Plumbing Checks diagnose tiny drips and pinhole leaks so you can proactively maintain your plumbing system. This single device, installed on your home’s main water line, lets you manage your water throughout the entire home, even when you’re away.
- From drip leaks to catastrophic pipe bursts and everything in between, Phyn Plus gives you the tools to ensure that your home is watertight.
- Phyn Plus can turn off the water to your home automatically in the event of a catastrophic leak to mitigate damage.
- Real time mobile notifications alert you to potential leaks and give you the power to turn off your water remotely using the Phyn app.
- Daily diagnostic “Plumbing Check” tests let you know of unsafe pressure levels and small drip and pinhole leaks before they become larger issues.
- Ultrasonic flow sensor and high-definition pressure sensor mean no moving parts and no maintenance.
- One Phyn Plus monitors the entire home’s water from a single location on the main water line. No need for additional sensors.
- View how much water you use monthly, daily and hourly. Track the use of your showers, toilets, washing machine and more to help save money and conserve.
- Compatible with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and IFTTT; no hub required; requires Wifi connection and standard AC power
- The PHYN app and all its features are free and available to download for iOS and android
The 2nd Generation Phyn Plus is incrementally better than the first I covered in my post last year ‘Smart Water Leak Protection and Homeowners Insurance Benefits’ along with a variety of other leak detectors and water sensors. Although the 2ndGeneration is also more expensive, there is no better way to protect your home from catastrophic water damage caused by a plumbing failure. And chances are good you may qualify for a discount on your homeowners’ insurance policy if you install one. The Phyn Plus can prevent catastrophic water damage that will cost you many times as much. And even if you never experience a leak, this smart device will inform you of your household’s daily and monthly water consumption, so you can consider ways to reduce your usage.
The Phyn Plus gets installed inline of your main water supply from your utility — or your well, as will be the case for Debbie and I. So understandably, this is an installation best left to a professional plumber. As ours is a new build scenario, this should be fairly easy with just a conversation with our builder and plumber ahead of the project. The valve has 1-inch male NPSM fittings at each end, so the plumber might need adapters depending on the project specs.
The Phyn Plus is fully weatherized and can be installed indoors or out, but you will need to have an AC outlet within 15 feet of the installation location (no battery-power option). In fact, you might want to plug the unit into an uninterruptible power supply to eliminate the risk of a power outage preventing it from doing its job.
The plumbing fixture manufacturer Kohler offers a professionally installed private-label version of the Phyn Plus — the Kohler H2Wise+ Powered by Phyn — and the two companies recently announced a collaboration with the smart home service provider Alarm.com that integrates both Phyn’s and Kohler’s smart water valves into its professionally monitored smart home platform. Alarm.com provides back-end services for many independent smart home and home security service providers. I covered this last month in my post ‘Kohler and Phyn team up with Alarm.com.’
Once installed, the Phyn Plus will evaluate your water supply system for a few days before it turns on its auto-shutoff feature. You also have the option to enable it to automatically shut off your water supply if it suspects there’s a significant water leak, but it can’t connect to your Wifi network (2.4GHz only) to warn you first. Following set up of the Phyn app on your mobile device and adding the valve to your Wifi network, it will begin analyzing your water consumption.
You can open and close the Phyn Plus smart valve from the app. That’s a great feature as most homeowners may not even know where the main meter is to shut off the water supply in their home.
Next, the ultrasonic sensors inside the Phyn Plus begin testing your water pipes for leaks. It’ll shut off your main water supply and then wait to see if it detects a drop in water pressure that would indicate a leak (the device measures water pressure in the pipe several hundred times each second). This test repeats every day at a time when you’re not typically using water, so it doesn’t report a false positive.
Another interesting aspect of the testing is that it also checks the water pressure coming into your house to see if it’s too high. Normal is around 62 psi and high is considered over 96 psi. Most of the time, people complain about their water pressure being too low, which can lead to a poor shower experience. But excessively high water pressure will strain not only your water pipes but also all the valves and fixtures (your faucets and toilets) in your home as well as the hoses connected to appliances such as your washing machine and dishwasher.
High water pressure can be remedied by installing a pressure reducer on the incoming water supply, ahead of the Phyn valve. This is not an inexpensive job, but it would have been just a matter of time before the high water pressure caused a water pipe to burst or resulted in a damaged fixture or appliance.
In addition to real-time water pressure readings, the Phyn Plus’s sensors also measure water temperature and — if water is being used anywhere in the house how — fast that water is flowing (in gallons per minute). This information is uploaded to the cloud for real-time analysis, where an algorithm can also determine the most likely sources of the flow: a toilet flushing, a dishwasher operating, someone filling a bathtub or taking a shower, an outdoor spigot being used to water the garden, etc. You can help the algorithm (and yourself) by identify your water-consuming fixtures by filling out an inventory in the Phyn app.
If the water temperature gets too low, indicating the possibility that a pipe might freeze, the Phyn Plus can shut off your water supply, so you don’t need to worry about catastrophic water leak from a burst pipe. The Phyn algorithm can also identify unusual flow patterns, such as a leaky faucet or a worn-out flapper that causes a toilet to refill its tank more often than it should, and it will warn you about these events with a push notification to the Phyn app as well as a text message.
As I’ve already mentioned, the Phyn Plus will identify where water is flowing in your home in real time, and it can report precisely how much water each device has consumed over time — with at least some degree of accuracy. The more feedback you provide via the app, the more accurate the identification becomes. Phyn’s sensors analyze the flow of water passing through the valve and Phyn’s algorithm does its best to identify a unique signature from each source. If it gets it wrong — identifying a flow as coming from your shower when in fact it was the outdoor spigot — you can correct it and it will learn from that information and do better the next time. Phyn’s app will also compare your home’s water use against that of an average same-sized household. In case you’re keeping score or just interested in how you compare to similar-sized homes.
If you can’t tell already, we’ll be installing a Phyn Plus as part of our overall plumbing plan for our home build. When you compare the cost with the peace of mind around preventing a potential water catastrophe it’s a no-brainer. We learned our lesson when a sump pump failed in our Minnesota home failed and flooded a large part of our finished basement. I’m not risking that again.
I’m curious if this is something you’d consider. Have you experienced the frozen pipe flooding? Or maybe worse, the long-term slow leak that leads to rot, mold and other issues? Or are you just really curious about your water usage? I really like the analytics aspect as our new home will be well fed. Obviously living in Texas there can be some rather dry years. Understanding that and how they impact water levels in local wells will give Debbie and I some insight into how we can adjust water usage to do our part to conserve.
Let Debbie and I know in the comments, DMs and emails about your thoughts around controlling water damage and home water usage monitoring. Thanks again to all those following Debbie and I through our home building journey. It’s great to hear your success stories and suggestions as we move through the process. And if you like the content I’m posting each week, don’t forget to ‘Like’ and ‘Follow.’ Until next week …
SmartHomeOnTheRange.com
In full disclosure, I’m not an affiliate marketer with links to any online retailer on my website. When people read what I’ve written about a particular product and then click on those links and buy something from the retailer, I earn nothing from the retailer. The links are strictly a convenience for my readers.
