Smart Home Water Monitor

Streamlabs Smart Home Water Monitor This monitor is great, it provides immediate and useful information on your water usage via an App. If your incoming water line is easily accessible and made of ¾ or 1”copper or PEX installation is quick and easy. The unit is not large and attaches to your incoming water pipe with simple zip ties, no need to cut your pipe. The only other thing you need is someplace to plug in the power adapter. If your incoming line is schedule 40 PVC you will need to modify your plumbing for this to work. Once installed and configured to your wifi the app walks you through configuring the device for your particular piping. The app is attractive and works well, it will display your current flow rate along with past usage by day, month or year, very nice. I believe the measurement to be accurate, however if you have a small trickle of water flowing the meter does not pick it up. This monitor will work good to let you know if you have a running toilet but if you have a dripping hose bib it will not pick it up. I really like this monitor and wish it would work on schedule 40 PVC. Pros: Easy install Informative app Attractive

I was really excited to try this water line monitor out. We have a new house and we've already experienced a water leak, an irrigation line was leaking and we didn't find out until the water bill came! First the good, the unit is pretty compact. it's easy to install, really straight forward and simple. It does work! I installed it it and had it running in about 10 minutes. It detected the type of water pipe (pex) automatically and it was pretty accurate. The app is pretty basic but informative, it shows you your current water consumption in GPM, your water usage over the past day, month or year as a bar graph and comparative usage. Oh, it also tells you the temperature too. All that is pretty good, the problem is it will require you to do something to intervene, physically. It's compatible with Alexa but that's not all that much help. It would be awesome if it was compatible with a home automation hub like Wink or SmartThings, or even with IFTTT, then if a leak was detected, it could close a valve automatically. The other issue is although installation is simple, it requires a clear section of pipe, in my case there was no clear section to mount it to get it to monitor the main supply. I had to install it on a branch line to test it. The interior radius accommodates up to 1" pipes, in my case the only potential spot had a tee, and it is slightly too big. So it works, but it could be better with more connectivity/integration and a more accommodating installation profile. It's better than no monitor, but unless you know you've got the plumbing to fit it I can't recommend it.

Overall I really like the Streamlabs Smart Home Water Monitor. At first I was a bit skeptical, but it does work as advertised and adds a bit of piece of mind to any homeowner concerned about water. Pro's: * It is super easy to install. Simply download the Streamlabs app to your phone, place the unit on a 6" straight length of copper or pvc pipe directly after the water main, secure with the included zip-ties, plug in, and connect it to your wifi. That's pretty much it. * The app is very user friendly. There is a bunch of information available like real time use, historical data, and of course different alert settings. All of this information can be used to curb water usage or to stop a major catastrophe from occurring. * It seems to be pretty accurate and quick. I flushed a toilet during set up and the app reported that the toilet used 2.3gals of water....which is exactly what it is rated for. In addition, once the tank started to fill up again, the app reported it to me in only a few seconds.....pretty much real time. Cons: * It will detect a leak, however, it will NOT stop a leak. For that, you either need to be home to turn the shut-off, off. Or, you need another smart valve and app to control the main. * The water monitor does not know the difference between someone taking a shower or a major leak. So, for example, whenever someone in my house takes a shower, because of the settings I have my app set to, I get an alert. I'm sure once I start watering my lawn or filling my pool when the weather turns warm again, I'll get alerts for that too. * The app doesn't let you customize any of the reporting periods. I would love to compare my water usage with the Streamlabs Smart Home Water Monitor and my water bill. The app does not allow for that to happen. So, like I said previously, the Streamlabs Smart Home Water Monitor is a great tool to curb water usage and possibly stop a major water problem, and for the price, it really is a good deal. I would definitely suggest it to any friends or family members.

Leaks were not the only reason I got this unit. I run water from my own well to three buildings. Correctly assessing the usage to each building helps to save money on water treatment and power. It allowed me to correctly size my pressure tanks to cover the average flow at certain peak events like showers. Of course you can get that average on line, but your family may not be average. I was able to fine tune my pressure tank saving saving about 40.00 a month on power cost. This product also made it easy to track my water softer for proper operation. I have hard water and incorrect settings are a major headache. Installing is super easy. Just make sure you are after a shut off valve and have at least 6 inches of pipe to connect to. Downloading and setting up the app is no problem. Collecting all the water data I want by hand is time consuming. This unit does the trick. It will help you to use less water. Small leaks can still cause problems. It will pay you to know your water system well enough to act in time. The older your house is, the more important something like is.

The StreamLabs UFMT-1000 Smart Home Water Monitor is an interesting product. First of all, I'm amazed that it works at all, not to mention working pretty well. It clamps onto the outside of the main water pipe with zip ties. It has two soft sensor pads that contact the pipe and use ultrasound to detect movement of water in the pipe. All setup is done using the smart device app. I used my iPhone. During setup the pipe type is automatically detected. Initially I got errors that the pipe type wasn't being detected. The troubleshooting section of the app suggested it wasn't mounted tight enough to the pipe and to tighten the zip ties, which fixed the problem. The app shows a lot of information, including instantaneous flow rate; cumulative usage by day, month, and year; comparable usage compared to the previous day, month, or year; a bar graph of usage by each hour of the day, each day of the month, or each month of the year. It also logs the time, duration, and gallons for each leak alert. I particularly liked the animated 1 minute graph showing the flow rate per second, and would like an enhancement to extend this graph period up to an hour. The app requires a password. I found the password requirements overly conservative for something that isn't much of a security risk - minimum of 8 characters, including one cap, one number, and one special character. Alerts can be set for "slow leak" and "major leak". For slow leak alerts, you can set the flow rate between 1/4, 1/2, and 1 gallons per minute over a period of 5 minutes to 1 hour. For major leak alerts you can set the flow rate to 2, 4, or 6 gallons per minute over 2.5 to 30 minutes. The flow rates and usage numbers generally seem accurate. My 2.0 GPM shower head measured 1.9 GPM. My 7 gallon-rated dishwasher measured using 7 gallons. I was a little dismayed to see my vintage washing machine measuring 44 gallons for one load. It would be easier to measure appliance usage if the app included a "trip meter" counter that could be set to zero and read when the usage finishes. As it is I have to record the current daily usage and subtract it from the final usage amount. So, the good parts are that it reports cumulative usage and can be used to measure specific water usage for appliances, lawn sprinkler systems, showers, and what have you. It will also reliably alert to leaks that meet the listed requirements. The part that didn't fully meet my expectations is that flow rates below 1/4 gallon per minute might not be detected at all. While flow rates are reported to the tenth of a gallon, an experiment with slowly turning on a faucet showed the flow rate jumping from 0.0 to 0.3, never showing 0.1 or 0.2. At 1/4 gallon per minute, a faucet is running a steady stream and wasting 360 gallons a day. I have included a photo of the water stream showing a flow rate that wasn't detected. Also the gallons used didn't seem to increase as long as the flow rate was showing 0.0. I did another experiment with the faucet on a "fast drip" of 4 drips per second for 30 minutes. No measurement on the app changed during this time. As a test, I set the major leak alert to 2 gallons over 2.5 minutes and got prompt alerts for both a shower and the washing machine. To level set expectations, it works well for monitoring and reporting cumulative usage and detecting major leaks like a burst washer hose. It doesn't stop leaks or detect what I would consider a slow leak of less than 1/4 gallon per minute. It comes with an extra set of zip ties and sensor pads so it can be reinstalled elsewhere if desired.

Smart Home Water Monitor is sufficient in monitoring the home water piping for leaks and water usage reporting. It has many positives but also a few negatives. Positives include the ease of installation (no pipe cutting needed - just straddle the monitor over the existing water pipe and secure it using the included plastic ties), WiFi capable, downloadable smartphone App, historical usage data (albeit rather basic reporting), and alert notifications of possible leaks being sent to a smartphone. The instructions state to place the monitor prior to any branches of the main water line but in my case, I didn’t want the sprinkler system, the pool refill valve or the outside lawn faucets to be monitored so I placed the monitor after the branches to those areas I wanted to exclude – which ended up to be just after the water softener. Two other nice features are the built in temperature sensor and the Away Mode. The temperature reading is presumably used to determine if pipe freezing may occur; and the Away Mode is used when away from the house and it greatly reduces the time water flow is sensed to when an alert is sent through the App. The major negative is its inability to detect a leak with a water flow of less than ½ gallon per minute. Although my primary purpose for this product was to detect major leaks (water heater, toilets, clothes washer, ice maker, water softener, etc.), it would be beneficial if it could detect much smaller leaks such as a pin-hole leak. While the instructions listed acceptable pipe as copper, CPVC, and Pex, it didn’t reference galvanized pipe as either being compatible or not. I looked online and couldn’t find any FAQ if this monitor would work on galvanized so I decided to try it anyway. I thoroughly cleaned the area of pipe using steel wool and wiped it down with rubbing alcohol. As far as I can tell it works just fine (the App determined the pipe was copper which I accepted) but it makes me wonder why galvanized isn’t listed in the compatible pipe types. Overall, I am satisfied with this product and view it as a safeguard against major leaks and resulting water damage.

The concept of more accurate information about your water use can be tantalizing to some. The app and easy installation are unfortunately not backed by, in my opinion, a usable nor robust product. INSTALLATION The monitor requires a long, unobstructed, clean pipe segment prior to any branches - this is almost impossible to find. My house was built in 1947 on a raised foundation. The water supply pipe pops out of the ground in the front of the house and immediately branches out to the front sprinklers. So getting to it before the sprinklers is pretty much impossible. This means that you'll never get the full water use reading, as lawn sprinklers (especially in California) are a large portion of your water bill. I checked out my parents house which was built in the 80's on a flat concrete slab, and the same situation occurs there: The supply pipe immediately branches to the front sprinklers as soon as it comes out of the ground. So the dream of getting an accurate water reading to compare to your water bill is not realizable in most situations. APP The app's interface and ease of use is pretty much the only good thing about this system. It's clear and shows a number of different usage graphs, including real-time water use (although there is about an 8 second delay). ACCURACY Despite calibrating the app a number of times, the fidelity of this device is not good. With all other water sources turned off, i slowly turned on a single faucet. With water running at about a pencil width, the monitor recorded 0. When the water flow was increased, the app jumps up to 0.5gps. When lowered a bit again, the app ping-ponged between 0 and 0.5gpm, meaning that is the smallest increment that can be captured. The app allows you to set leak alarms for water flow. But seeing the issue with the low flow increment, i'm not sure how the alarm would even trigger with tiny leaks. SUMMARY Great app. Installation is easy if your house happens to have the right amount of pipe in the right location. Accuracy of product leaves you wanting, and questioning the results you get. Needs improvement.

This device is accurate and helpful for monitoring purposes but does not do anything to stop or prevent a leak. Installation is basic and does not require anything more than two zip ties to hold it in place. There is no need to cut or drill into pipes. The biggest potential difficulty in setup can be finding a suitable pipe location on which to attach the device and then having a source of power. My interior water main shutoff is too close to pipe couplings and bends to allow placement of the device between the valve and the water heater so I had to put the device upstream of it. Not too big of a deal, it just meant I had to shut off my water at the street in order to calibrate the device. I also needed to drill a hole through a wall in my storage room in order to pass the power cord through to an outlet (the device cannot run on batteries) as there are not any close to the water heater. The power cord is 10 feet long which seems a little short. Calibration is rather quick. The device can even detect the type and size of your water line. When viewing in the app it shows whether water is actively running and at what rate. It shows total use for the day and at what times. Comparison is also made to the day before as well as the month and year. Alerts can be set up to detect prolonged water running or if water is running at all while you're not at home. The app can also integrate with third party software such as Nest to automatically tell the device you're not at home although it seems slow to update. There are no fees involved. The main shortcoming of this unit is that while it can tell you a leak is occurring, it does nothing other than giving you that knowledge. Other devices can attach to the shutoff valve and turn it. All in all, helpful monitoring with perhaps additions to come in the future.

We know two families whose homes were destroyed by floods caused by broken water pipes. This device gives you peace of mind that there isn't a water leak in your home. My husband installed it in less than 15 minutes without cutting any pipes, plugged the unit in and got the app on his phone with no problem. It is working perfectly. It reports the gallons of usage and you can customize your alerts to be sure you detect a leak before it becomes a disaster. As soon as he set it up, we ran the sprinklers and the alert almost immediately came to his phone as a "slow leak". The WI-FI is built into the unit so there isn't any additional set up required. I was wondering if it would work since we have a well (not city water) but that isn't an issue. We travel quite a bit and we don't shut the water off for short trips. This device will let us know if there is a water leak while we are away. If we move, we will definitely take this with us. Great investment!

Fun and informative with limited utility, it’s really an expensive toy. The unit touts itself as means to detect leaks that are wasteful and potentially catastrophic. But the product really doesn’t address their fear mongering well. It left me wishing they would have taken the product to the next level beyond detection to prevention. The Streamlabs water monitor is butt simple to install. The most difficult part of the installation is finding the right place to install it since it has to be on the main water line and close to electrical power. The software installation and setup also went flawlessly. In just a few minutes it was monitoring our water use. I like the idea of monitoring my water use. Especially here is southern California where we continue to have limited supply and frequent hikes in cost. Several years ago my water district supplied me with a free wireless water monitor (see photos) that communicates with our meter. It uses the same method the water district collects for billing data. But it is an unfriendly device that display data in cubic feet meaning you need to convert to understand it. The Streamlabs software provides more friendly data in gallons and it displays it in real time and give you a snapshot of comparative usage to yesterday, last week, and last month. Really easy to understand. They could have made it even better if you could get more than just snapshot data. I did some testing to see how accurately it measures usage (filling 5 gallon buckets) and found it nearly spot on. Where the Streamlabs monitor falls short is addressing leaks. It will alert you if you have an ongoing leak like a toilet valve running (So will your water meter). And if you have a big leak that could potentially cause a flood. But if you are on vacation or away from your home when that big pipe burst occurs it can’t help you. It would have been so nice if they would have included a shut off valve capability with the device like their competitor “Flo” (note: I reached out to meetflo.com to see if we could do a head to head product comparison but they never responded). That way if there is a problem with a large leak it will shut it down before your furniture is floating in the living room. So bottom line the Streamlabs system is a $200 toy in my mind. Fun to look at data but after a few weeks you’ll probably forget about it. If you think you have a small leak save your money and check your water meter. And when that big leak happens you’ll know because you'll see/hear the water if you’re home and if not it will just add to your anxiety. About my rating: 5 stars – Exceeds all expectations. Better than the competition in all aspects, design, cost, operation, and support (A+). 4 stars – Nicely done. Better than the competition and solves the problem. (B) 3 stars – Works as expected. Has some shortcomings but gets the job done. Might be short in design, cost, longevity, or support. (C). 2 stars – Falls short of expectations and needs improvement. Pass and look elsewhere. (D) 1 star – Fails miserably. Does not get the job done, might even make things worse. Someone at the company should be fired. (F)