Top positive review
337 people found this helpful
Piece of mind; worth the price and monthly fee
By R. Precourt on Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2020
I've heard about these for a while and thought it would be a nice thing to have, but never actually bought one, until now. After our neighbor's house flooded for the second time I thought it might be a good idea to have this, since all of these houses were built by the same builder. If they're having that many problems it could be a matter of time before we do as well, as both times their house was severely damaged. I'm not a plumber but have basic skills and had no problems installing the Flo valve. I used a 2" nipple between the Flo and our water filter and a shark bite on the other side to connect into our PEX pipe that comes off the PRV. It took less than an hour to install. Setup was simple and instructions were easy to follow. It took an hour or so for it to realize that it was installed, and then took another week or so to 'learn' our usage habits. Right after installation I began getting real-time data on flow rate, pressure, temperature, and gallons used. The data is pretty cool, but historical data is extremely limited. In the app, you can only get hourly data for the current day and weekly data for the current week. On the website you can only view/download hourly data for the current and prior day, daily for current or past four weeks, and monthly for the past 12 months. We've had the Flo installed for just over two weeks now and had no problems with it. We subscribed to Flo Protect but thus far it still has not identified individual fixtures. A note on that; they say 'we need a couple weeks of data before we can identify fixtures.' I contacted support and they told me it's actually three weeks. I suggested to them that they change their messaging on that to manage expectations. I've seen quite a few people unhappy that they have to pay $5/mo for the Flo Protect plan after paying $400+ for the valve. I have no problem with paying for it. We pay $15/mo for our alarm monitoring after paying around 2k for our system to protect our home. Water can cause severe damage, so I'm good with paying $5/mo to monitor that since it's probably more likely to happen than a break in when you think about all the places plumbing could fail and the extent of damage it can cause. Sure, insurance will probably pay for most of the repairs, but as I sit here listening to them jack hammering up the hardwood floors a couple doors from me for the entire day and watch all the various work trucks coming and going, I think of the inconvenience of it all. Overall I give the system a 4 star rating because availability of historical data is quite limited and I'd like the ability to download detailed hourly or daily data for a large period of time into Excel to perform more detailed analysis. If the data was more available I'd give it a full 5 stars. Support through the water concierge chat is excellent but anything I've sent via e-mail has gone completely unanswered, so I recommend using the chat. Today I purposely left our kitchen faucet on at a trickle while I was eating lunch and they called my phone after around 30 minutes to alert me to long water duration. I also got an e-mail about it and an app notification, all of which gave me the option to turn off my water immediately or ignore it. They said if I did not respond they would shut it off in five minutes. I'm pretty sure if a pipe broke and a lot of water was flowing it would have alerted much faster, but I only left the faucet barely trickling. All things considered I think this is a great product and both it and the monitoring are worth it in my opinion. Update 3/8/2020 Usage by fixture finally became available after a little over three weeks of use and I wanted to provide some information on this. My expectations were pretty low for this feature and thus far I would say they may have just barely met them. My thoughts on this are that it would be quite difficult to isolate usage to a particular fixture, since the only data points they could use to identify fixtures would be flow rate and duration and many things could have similar flow rates, not to mention overlapping usage (i.e. you flush the toilet, then go and wash your hands, washing machine could be running while you're taking a shower, multiple people using water, etc.) That being said, it has done a fairly good job in identifying faucets, toilets, and showers/baths, but not always correctly. It has not been able to isolate anything else, such as the washing machine, dishwasher, refrigerator, etc. You do have the ability to go in and reclassify an event but I'm not certain that it learns anything from that or not. I know I changed one it got wrong from faucet to shower/bath and later I looked and it had changed it back. When you look at the event details it only provides the time, duration, and gallons used. It would be extremely helpful if it also provided the flow rate, as that is one of the most useful data points in identifying what fixture may have been using water. I plan to make that suggestion and hope they'll consider implementing it. If I can accurately reclassify events and it actually learns from that then maybe it would get more accurate over time. My overall rating and opinion of the device is unchanged and I still feel it is very useful and provides an extra layer of protection for our home. Update 4/7/2020 Upgrading my overall rating from 4 to 5 stars because they just added expanded access to historical data which was the one thing that I felt was lacking. You can now view data by day, week, month, year, and even by custom date range. Being able to view a custom range is helpful if you want to compare the Flo data to your water bill as you can set it to the same billing period.
Top critical review
1,302 people found this helpful
It's a love/hate relationship.
By Jordan W. on Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2022
I've been in the homeowners insurance industry for 18 years now. I know the devastation that water damage can cause. After finding out about this device from a few of my companies (and a few of those even give discounts on insurance for having the device installed), I, my parents, and one of my business partners decided to give it a shot and have the device installed on our homes. I definitely wouldn't say it was an easy process. While most of the instructional videos on YouTube indicated that the device should be installed at the supply line to the water heater (located in our garages) were all told by our plumbers that the device should actually be installed outside on the main water line because there it would be able to monitor the entire water supply to the house and not just to the water heater and plumbing fixtures fed by the water heater, which made sense. Installing it outside, however, also required an electrician to install a waterproof junction box for the power supply to the device. Between the cost of the Flo, the plumber, and electrician, it ran about $1200. This is where the fun began. After the plumber installed the device, it would not connect to my Wifi. The connection button on the device did not work. As there was no other way to connect it to my Wifi, I contacted Moen's tech support. They advised me to buy a new device and return the defective one. After some back and forth with them over the cost of the plumber now having to come back out, un-install, and re-install the device, Moen agreed to send out one of their preferred plumbers at their cost. After it was installed, it worked perfectly. When the device is first installed and the app is learning your water usage, there are definitely 'growing pains'. If you take a shower longer than 5-10 minutes or if the device learns you take your showers around the same time every day, taking a shower during a different time will trigger the app to think there's a leak. You'll then get a message on the app, an email, and an automated phone call from Moen saying they've detected abnormal use and your water will automatically shut off in 5 minutes if the notification on the app isn't cleared. I've recommended the Flo to a number of my clients who have all said the same complaint about the device shutting the water off while showering. Anyways, for the 2.5 years I've had the device installed, it's worked great. This brings me to the present day. Each week, the app sends a notification of weekly water use. Two weeks ago, it said it didn't register any water use. I thought it was odd, but figured it was an error. This week, I received the same notification, so I contacted Moen. I was told that this likely means the turbine inside the device that reads the water flow is clogged with debris and that it's as simple as removing the device and flushing it out. I'm not handy enough to do my own plumbing work and even if I was, there's no way in hell I'd be messing around with my own water main. I called the plumber who Moen had sent out to do the first replacement and was told they only do installs and do not do service on existing devices. I called a few other local plumbers and was told the same thing. I called Moen back and they sent me a link to all of their recommended plumbers. I'm located in South Florida. Between Jupiter and South Miami, their list has 25 plumbers. The first 22 that I called all said the same thing as the first plumber. It wasn't until the 23rd who said that they would try -- it could be debris in the turbine, but he's also seen the turbine blades break due to water pressure -- so he can't guarantee a fix. This is when I took to trusty Twitter to @Moen. Their first response was again for me to me to remove the device and flush it myself, which I'm not doing myself, Their second response was to send me that same list of plumbers. That's when I called Moen back and was told that I should buy a new device and then send Moen the receipt from the original device and they'll reimburse me. The problem with that is 2.5 years ago, I paid around $400 for the device. As of April 2022, you can't find this device ANYWHERE and third-party sellers on Amazon are price gouging for between $800 and $1400, and Moen would only reimburse me for the original price paid. I went back to Twitter, this is when I finally got help. They asked if they could contact me directly, to which I obliged. They said that if the plumber cannot fix the issue to call them back and they'll send me a replacement device under warranty (but I'll still have to pay for the plumber). At this point, I think this is the best I'm going to do. In the end, caveat emptor. The device isn't cheap (especially as of April 2022). The installation isn't cheap, unless you're one of those super handy people who can do it yourself. If something goes wrong with the device, you're going to have to pay for a plumber again... if you can find one to service an existing device. Moen's product support, after a bit of pushing, is very helpful and they do stand behind their product. Even with these costs and hassles, the benefits of the device do outweigh the stress and costs of having a pipe burst and your house flood. Just know what you're getting yourself into. -------- **UPDATE** Now, 14 months later, my app started giving notification that my water pressure is low. I tested all my faucets, and it's fine, so I called tech support. They ran their tests and determined it's a bad sensor inside the device that's just not reading pressure anymore, so here we go again! They've sent me yet another replacement device, and it's great that they stand behind their product... but I still have to spend hundreds of dollars to get a plumber out to replace it. Now, two years in a row... ridiculous. ---------- **ANOTHER UPDATE** A few months ago, i got the same low-pressure warning again. Again, with a call to Moen, they sent me a replacement. I had the plumber come out again -- again spent hundreds of dollars to replace it. This time, despite Moen's written promises to reimburse me for the cost, I keep getting the classic "the check is in the mail" response. Meanwhile, last month, I got a call from my mother in a panic. Her Flo app was telling her that there was a major leak somewhere in the house. She was running around the house checking sinks, showers, toilets, hoses, water heaters, refrigerator lines... there's no water anywhere. She called a plumber who came out to perform a leak inspection. Over $500 later, it was determined there was no leak and it was, you guessed it, another faulty Flo device. Exasperated, she had the plumber remove the device from her home. I will be doing the same when (not if, but definitely when) the device fails on my home next. THIS DEVICE IS A MESS AND SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN RELEASED FOR SALE WITH *SO* MANY FAULTS.
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