Review: Flo by Moen Smart Water Shutoff with iPhone Control

Smart home devices can improve our lives in a number of ways, but most of them lack the capacity to protect our homes from thousands of dollars in damage. Although a smart water shutoff device isn't something you hear as much as smart lights, locks, cameras, etc. from your iPhone. And another benefit is being able to track how much water you use, even down to the type of fixture. Read on for our full review of the Flo by Moen Smart Water Shutoff and Smart Water Detector.

After my wife's family had a water leak in the basement that ended up causing $ 15 in damage a bit ago, I started looking for potential solutions that could prevent events like this one. I came across the Flo by Moen Smart Water Shutoff and couldn't wait to try it out.

What does the Flo by Moen Smart Water Shutoff do?

Controlling the iPhone to shut off your entire home's water from anywhere is just part of Flo by Moen. The real magic is the combination of the great iPhone app with smart software from Moen that continually monitors your water pipes.

Here's how Moen describes how Flo works:

The Smart Water Shutoff has three sensors that actively monitor water flow, pressure and temperature. These sensors, in combination with Smart Water Shutoff algorithms, allow Flo by Moen to detect and protect the home from issues like leaks, burst pipes and more!

The really awesome part of it all is that a single Flo smart water shutoff device can detect even the smallest leaks - up to 1 drop per hour - from every device in your home.

A recent study found that homes with the Flo Smart Water Shutoff saw a 96% decrease in water damage insurance claims compared to homes without a smart device. In addition, statistics show that water damage in homes is 5 times more likely than theft and 6 times more than fire damage.

In addition to proactive automated protection and control of your water line from your iPhone with the Flo by Moen app, this Smart Water Shutoff offers detailed tracking of your water usage that can even tell you how much you use by type of fixture.

Installation

The Flo Smart Water Shutoff is available for 3/4 inch, 1 inch and 1 1/4 inch water main lines. Unless you have a good background in plumbing and the necessary tools, you'll want to have the unit installed by a professional.

Flo can be used with copper, PEX, CPVC, galvanizing and just about any other type of water pipe. In our case, our plumber also installed manual quarter turn closures before and after Flo to make it easy if we need to do maintenance in the future.

If you don't already have one, you'll need an available outlet to plug in Flo. Moen also offers a backup battery pack and is sold separately as well.

in use

After installing the Flo Smart Water Shutoff, you will go through the initial setup process on the iPhone or Android app.

You start by entering the type of house you have, the number of floors, the type of plumbing, etc.

Then you will give more details about your devices, set a water consumption goal and connect Flo to your Wi-Fi.

Once Flo is installed, you will see the water usage, you will be able to check the water pressure and temperature, but it will remain in “learning mode” for about a week. This means that the auto shut-off feature will not start working until it understands your water usage patterns.

The main features of the Flo Smart Water Shutoff do not require any additional cost beyond the one-time purchase of the device, but if you want a detailed breakdown of your water usage with light detection, a Coverage of up to $ 2500 water damage deductible insurance, proactive monitoring and concierge from Flo experts, and an extended 3 year warranty, the FloProtect plan costs $ 5 / month after a free trial of a month.

You can check out the full comparison between the free and paid plans here.

This is what the app looks like once you're up and running.

In the third screenshot above, you'll notice that Flo detected the water pressure drop while our plumber was doing work.

Flo does an automatic health test every morning in addition to 24/7 monitoring of your water lines. You'll see if you have critical alerts at the top of the app's home screen.

The detailed water consumption per device is also shown above. You can the app provides super granular data like the shower running for 6 minutes and 23 seconds.

So far, Flo has detected a case of unusual water activity in our house. It ended up being our water softener tanks going through a cleaning cycle. Since this is an irregular event, Flo automatically shut off our water line.

The app offers great options to continue to receive alerts for events like the one that has been triggered in the future or to ignore them for a certain period of time.

And if for some reason the Smart Water Shutoff is unresponsive (power failure, etc.), you can turn it off manually.

Flo by Moen Smart Water Detector

Another product in the Flo range is the smart water detector. This can be used with the Smart Water Shutoff or on its own.

It is very easy to install and detects if you have leaks at a single device / location with a water detection disk on a four foot cable. This is ideal for places where you want to monitor your drain leaks, as the Smart Water Shutoff simply monitors your water supply lines.

If you want to use it with the Smart Water Shutoff, it can act as a trigger to shut off your main water line.

You can dial in custom alert settings for the smart water detector for humidity, ambient temperature and low battery warnings (with a nice touch, Moen includes an extra battery in the box).

Once configured, you will see the Smart Water detector (s) as another device in the Flo app.

Conclusion

You've probably already noticed, there's no Apple HomeKit support here. While this is a breakthrough for a lot of smart devices like lights, locks, and cameras, I haven't found it to be a downside with Flo by Moen. I'm guessing HomeKit doesn't support the level of detail and functionality that these devices offer. However, if you use Alexa, Google Assitant, or IFTTT, Moen supports those platforms.

As for why I don't mind the lack of HomeKit support, automated protection is what Flo does best. A smart water shutoff isn't something you turn on and off like a smart light or have to register as much as you would with a smart camera. The value here comes from the peace of mind that Flo is monitoring your plumbing 24/7 and can act on its own to stop a leak. When you want to delve into your water usage habits and other details, the iPhone Flo app provides a refined experience.

After spending over a month with the Flo by Moen smart devices, I wholeheartedly recommend picking them up. I think they offer great value and the Smart Water Shutoff provides the main features advertised even if you don't want to pay the $ 5 / mo FloProtect extras.

The Flo Smart Water Shutoff costs around $ 500 depending on the retailer and increases depending on the size of your main water line and whether you want accessories like the battery backup. The smart water detector starts at around $ 50 or in 3 packs at a discount. You can find Flo by Moen on Amazon, Home Depot, Lowe's, Direct from Moen, more.