It often takes several days to detect water leakage in the house. So that by the time you find it you could have wasted a lot of water or damaged your property.
This routine is part of the Automation Bank, a community-driven list of over 50 practical automation ideas for your smart home. Read more about Automation Bank or search ideas by room, by device or by use case. Also, have a look at best home automation ideas as voted by our users.
The danger with pipes bursts is that they can flood your house in seconds. Those accidents cause on average $5,000 in damage on average.
There is a simple way to avoid this and probably the idea with the return on the investment.
How does it work?
Install an automated shut off valve linked with leak sensors that would stop the water supply immediately at any sign of water.
- Place leak sensors to all wet areas. This is generally under each sink and bathrooms/laundry rooms
- Shut off valve should be installed on mains (recommended) or in each wet room
- Plumbers support is recommended when installing mains water shut off valve
ADVANCED TIPS
You can use the water shut off valve to switch on and off your mains remotely when leaving for a long time. Perfect for holiday homes or for peace of mind
What do you need? (And How Much It Costs)
Read: Automatic Water Shut Off Valves Review (And 10 best wifi water valves)
You might also consider:
- Smart Hub ($60 – $100; assumed exists already) – As we discussed in our smart home manifesto, all of the advanced automation require a smart hub to manage the routines and control all your systems together. We recommend SmartThings v3 hub ($239.97) for the majority users, but please see our definitive guide to smart hubs (and review of 3 best smart hubs out of 10 we reviewed)
How to set up this automation?
Section below will have step by step instructions how to set this automation routine in the most popular smart hubs like SmartThings, Home Assistant, HomeSeer and Hubitat
Please leave comments below if you have any questions, or interested in the instruction for a specific system. This will help us to better focus our effort.
3 Steps Process How To Prevent Water Leaks Using Home Assistant
Setting this automation in Home Assistant is very straightforward. Below is a simplified example using Z-wave sensors and valves.
Add Your Leak Sensors and Shut Off Valve To Home Assistant
As per the table below we recommend using Z-wave for such a crucial part of your automation. Similar to Zigbee you do not need to change anything in the configuration files to connect to the sensors and valves once your Z-wave controller connected.
Create Leak Prevention Automation Rule
The automation is very simple it has a single trigger and a single action.
- id: Leak Detection alias: Leak Detection trigger: - platform: state entity_id: binary_sensor.aeon_labs_zw100_multisensor_6_sensor from: 'off' to: 'on' action: - service: switch.turn_on entity_id: switch.shut_off_valve
Add notifications
You might want to add notifications to your mobile and also a TTS warning if there is somebody home. Check out my Github for more examples.
Test and Enjoy
Last update on 2025-01-12 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API