Moen flo - Sense for water?

Anyone seen or have a Moen flo? Quite expensive, but looks like a water version of Sense. Don’t think I can justify that cost, but the ability to shutoff a leak is interesting.

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It’s cheaper on the MeetFlo website :slight_smile: Still expensive though

https://meetflo.com/products/flo-home-water-system/

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Although I don’t use the Moen product, please check-out (Phyn.com). For months, I’ve conducted an indept personal cross-analysis against its competitors.

Phyn is my selection for my Smart Home. You’ll find the associated $850.00 price substantial. However, its quality is second to none… This is important, given that this will be my home forever!

I’m targeting my purchase and installation, the first week of March 2019. This is exactly the type of thing that’s worth saving for.

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It would be nice to see where all my water usage goes to for conservation purposes. The only place I have a flowmeter connected is my irrigation system, but it has been very helpful in two ways:

  • I can better understand which plants / beds are soaking up the most water. When you program in terms of drip heads, sprayers and time, you never quite know.

  • The Rachio flow meter has also found several surprise leaks that I wouldn’t have found for weeks. Much easier to find and fix. I get an alert that tells me which station is seeing increased (or decreased flow).

https://www.rachio.com/wireless-flow-meter

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I have a rachio, no flow meter attached yet. While it would be nice to separate the water by device, I’m just not sold on this being very useful other than to shut off the water. It’s pretty easy to separate the irrigation system cost from other, by comparing the winter to summer bills.

For me it was an easy $150 (flowmeter cost plus pro install) given how many hours I have spent battling drip line leaks and broken heads over the past 15 years.

I have a Rachio + flowmeter that hasn’t been installed yet, but that only covers the irrigation system. Would consider something similar for the domestic water too if the product marketplace is at a point where they’re refined and cost competitive. I have a private well, so other than the electrical use of the well pump as reported by Sense, I don’t have an easy way to track water consumption.

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That’s pretty awesome. How many units do they have installed? How well are they in identifying individual components? $850 is quite a sticker shock!

Awesome is RIGHT! I don’t know how many have been sold… However, I’m sold!! Unlike Sense Energy Monitor, you can “train” the unit to recognize all of your water sources. Afterwards, let the monitoring begin!

I love Machine-Learning devices… Please let us know, which product that you decide to implement.

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That’s funny… I just became aware of this one

Which sounded good but because you don’t have to cut into the pipe to install, it can’t automatically shut off the water. So then I found the Moen one. I am seriously on the fence about it, because I would love to be able to monitor this, especially since my washer/dryer are upstairs in my house, and because I found a couple of water spots on my ceiling downstairs and can’t determine if they are active leaks or old ones.But since those spots are right over my very expensive TV, I think it might be worth it. Would love to hear from someone who has something similar how it works and whether it is worth it.

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Interesting. I have a device called “Flowie” which is basically a monitor you strap onto (literally) your existing water meter.

It uses a cellular connection to a back end which provides not only stats on your usage (there’s a nifty app), but also learns your usage patterns (like Sense) and will send you a barrage of alerts (text & email) if it detects anything abnormal. It also has a paired flood sensor I have in my basement in my utility area that will immediately alert you if it detects anything.

Although the system has no ability to turn the water off on it’s own, it is still very useful so far as alerting you there may be a problem, even if the power is off since it connects via cellular, and also has built in backup power. It has on several occasions alerted me to toilets that were left running, and of course when we are refilling our pool in the spring or changing the water in our hot tub it loses it’s mind, but you can dismiss the warnings. :wink:

I got it for free through my house insurance company including a years worth of service. It just occurred to me that I’m now over a year and it’s still working, so not sure what’s happening there, but I won’t complain.

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There seems to be two basic means of measuring water flow: a turbine like your water meter has and Flo uses or a less intrusive ultrasonic strap on device like Streamlabs. I choose streamlabs since it is half the cost (199.00 vice 399.00) even if I add a remote Z-Wave valve shut off such as the Dome it only adds 85.00 to the bottom line.

Flo by Moen does give impressive analytics by fixtures but only if you subscribe at 5.00 per month, There is no detail analytics available for streamlabs but no subscription cost either. There is a simple daily, monthly and yearly consumption bar graph as well as real time consumption. Streamlabs and Flo both provide leak alerts for free.

I use this on a Airbnb rental to watch for leaks. It is easy to toggle between Sense and Streamlabs to see if it the dishwasher or washer that is consuming the water. Handwashing, toilet and showers each use different flow rates so I can see what is on if I am truly interested. I did receive one leak alarm when a guest decided to wash his car with a running hose.

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Found another one by Grohe

https://www.buygrohe.us/products/smarthome/grohe-sense-guard-smart-water-controller

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I chose to use a less intrusive strap on device for similar reasons as @brownwoodrental, but the one I chose was Flume instead of StreamLabs. The Flume is an external device that attaches to your water meter, so it can track everything, including landscaping. Its detection rate seems to be more sensitive than StreamLabs; I’ve had it notify me about a leak that was as small as 0.03gpm (which ended up being a toilet whose handle needed jiggling).

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I recently bought the Flume, which was just mentioned by @warmenhoven, only $199:

It straps to your water meter, and senses the magnet inside the water meter to measure flow. I also considered the StreamLabs one, but Flume can detect 0.01 gpm leaks, while StreamL:abs can only detect 0.25 gpm (because of the ultrasonic technology). Flume caught a leak in a toilet almost immediately that was ~ 0.02 gpm, which StreamLabs couldn’t have caught. The Flo also has a low flow measurement limit of 0.30 gpm, so much worse than Flume. Rachio also measures only down to 0.5 gpm. Phyn can do 0.08 gpm by measuring flow, and smaller leaks by closing the valve and monitoring the decrease in pressure. Flowie seems to use the same measurement principle as Flume, so I assume it’ll have similar precision, and the same problem with the metal lid that I mention below. I haven’t yet found the info for the Grohe one, but I’ve inquired with them.

I ended up having problems with the Flume because I have a metal cover on the water pit, which is on the right-of-way next to the street. The metal cover degraded the RF signal too much, and our water utility didn’t want to help. So sadly, I had to return it. But I probably had the BEST experience ever with customer service with any company, complete with their RF engineer on the phone for 30 min as we tried different orientations and physical arrangements to try to improve the connection.

So I would very highly recommend the Flume for people who only want monitoring and not an integrated valve (or who would install a separate valve that could be triggered by the Flume via IFTTT or similar).

It is easier to identify individual devices for water than electrical use, because their use is much more sporadic. A lot of the time there is zero use, then you flush the toilet, an hour later the irrigation system comes on, an hour later you take a shower and so on. I had no trouble identifying various items, and even the gallons per flush measured by Flume for the toilets matched the specs.

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Would you mind sharing the details of your in-depth analysis of Phyn and its competitors. I’ve also researched them a bit (see my post just above). I like the Phyn as well, but it’d be useful to see what other characteristics you have compared etc. You can PM me if you don’t want to post it here.

The flume is definitely intriguing; other than the issue you had w/ the RF signal, it sounds like you were pretty happy with it.

I’m very happy with it. I can also attest to how great the customer service is. It’s easy to configure the leak notifications, and (un?)fortunately I can confirm that they work well. I do wish it had integration with IFTTT or similar, but for how easy it is to install and how sensitive and accurate it is, I’m willing to wait and see if they add that later.

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I highly recommend the Flume, if your water meter is anywhere except in a metal pit with a metal lid. Concrete or plastic lids, or meters in the house etc. should work great.

Like Sense, it is a startup company, so I am sure IFTTT etc. will be coming in the near future (much like some of the features we are requesting of Sense).

Does flume have a community forum? I’d be curious to hear about others experiences.