Finding an In-Home Wifi Smart Water Monitoring Device - StreamLabs Control

This week, I got a surprise with my quarterly water bill.  The bill was over $2,200.00!!  Apparently, there was a leak somewhere.

First things first ... find the problem.  However, there was no obvious leak.  Good, I don't have to worry about another high bill in a few months.  I've spoken with the municipality several times over the past few days, and they've been very helpful.  My guess is that the leak originated with a toilet that I replaced three weeks ago.  The toilet was an older model, so I replaced it with a modern low-flow toilet.  We'll probably never know if that old toilet was the cause of the problem, but the town has verified that only a few cubic metres of water have been used in the past twenty days, so at least I don't need to worry that this is an ongoing problem.

  

Looking forward, I want to prevent this kind of situation from happening again.  For one thing, I don't want to waste natural resources.  On top of that, when it comes to insurance incidents, it appears that water damage is six times more likely than fires, and eight times more likely than theft!  Once website suggested that a staggering 98% of homes on a 25-year mortgage will suffer water damage at some point.  And the average claim for an internal flood or water damage event is now up over $10,000.  Many incidents are well above $25,000+ for repairs.

Needless to say, it is VERY much worth my while to do everything possible to monitor for leaks, regardless of whether the main concern is excessive consumption or preventing water damage.

I decided to do some quick interest research.  I already have the water meter that was installed by the municipality, but my was goal was to find an additional water meter or some sort of monitoring device that would let me monitor consumption remotely in real time, ie. online or through an app, without having to wait for a report from the town.

 

Here were my requirements:

1.  Price was essentially irrelevant.  Ideally, I hoped to keep the budget under $1,000 total, but in the end, the costs of a flood are so significant that investing in a professional solution should be well worth it.  My mantra is that if you don't pay up front, you'll pay in the end.  But you'll always pay.

2.  The device needs to be able to communicate digitally through a browser or through an app.

3.  Push notifications for special events (high water flow) would be fairly important.  Emails and texts would be even better.

4.  I didn't want to exclude devices which would need to be installed professionally by a plumber.  This will be an investment for the long-term.  There's no point saving a nickel to spend a dollar.

5.  I would prefer an in-line device rather than a line piggyback device, if possible.

6.  The ability to shut off water remotely would be a good benefit.

7.  I wanted a solution that didn't have a subscription model.  I really dislike manufacturers that expect you to subscribe to their apps with a monthly or annual fee.  I understand that there are costs for maintaining apps and the back-end server infrastructure, but I think that manufacturers should build that into the cost of the sale, and try to guarantee 10 years of access.

I thought that I'd be able to find an appropriate device pretty quickly, with a basic Amazon search.  I was very wrong.  This is not a mature field.  After spending six hours digging through hundreds of web pages, this is what I've learned:

- After looking at more than a dozen options from various manufacturers, I realized that many do not come close to fitting my needs.  Only five options came reasonably close.

- Many companies offer moisture sensors.  Do not confuse moisture sensors with water monitors.

 

Moisture sensors are fairly common.  I already have some of these sensors - these are basically small devices that you place in low areas that are likely to collect water if there's a leak.  When they get wet, they sent a push notification through text or email to let the homeowner know there's water somewhere.  Ideally, you'd place these in each corner of the basement, and if a pipe breaks somewhere in the house, the water eventually gets to the basement and trips a sensor, which alerts you that there's a problem.  There are a few problems with sensors.  The main problem is that by the time a sensor is tripped, you may already have $20,000+ in damages if a pipe broke inside a wall upstairs.  Batteries can die.  Wired-in sensors need to be within reach of a receptacle, and don't work when the power is out.  Also, many homeowners put these things under a sink, looking for a leak.  Well that's fine, but it's a burst pipe that will cause the most damage.  If you're worried about your sink's P-trap leaking, just look under the sink once in a while, because that kind of leak is not going to release 20,000 gallons into the home.

Here's what I've learned in my research so far, in case anyone else follows this same path.  First, I'll share seven options that didn't appear to be suitable:

Aqua Data - No useful homeowner solutions.  They have monitors from Neptune, Siemens, and vonRoll Hydro, but they basically just offer industrial equipment that is more appropriate for utilities.

Rachio - Discontinued in-home products, now specializes in sprinklers and irrigation.

Orbit B-Hyve - Only does irrigation and moisture sensors.

Belkin Wemo - Looked promising in 2015 with their Echo technology, but now discontinued.

Eve Water Guard - Moisture sensors only.

Home Wizard - Appears to mount on top of certain types of analog water meters (a screw-on or strap-on device).  It then does a visual reading that is somehow converted to digital (AI?) and then feeds to an app.  Perhaps an option for some homeowners, but that would depend on what type of meter got put in by your utility.

David DROP - This is a hub system with lots of individual devices, mostly moisture sensors.  The company focuses mainly on water treatment systems, and their monitoring hubs look good for that sort of application, but not appropriate for a whole-home application without water treatment.

 

I eliminated all of the above options pretty quickly.  Now let's move on to the most promising five possibilities:

Water Hero - This was the most expensive option that I found, and would cost around $1500 just for equipment.  Ok, that's pricey, but I wasn't going to eliminate this option yet.  However, I tried to find more photos, write-ups, or reviews, and there was nothing.  Thankfully, YouTube had a bit of info, including one short 2-minute from the company.  But I was worried by the lack of reviews.  Also, this product requires a subscription, which really annoyed me.

Phyn Plus - Don't confuse this with the original Phyn, when you're looking for info on the internet.  The Plus model is newer and better, but there's less info online.  This was the option that I initially thought looked most promising.  However, it had a lot of negative reviews re. manufacturing quality and poor tech support.  Also, this system takes several weeks to "learn" your home's water usage, which may not be good for people with erratic consumption patterns.  You don't want the system to shut off your water when you're taking an abnormally long shower.  Also, this unit only connects to 2.4 gHz wireless networks.

Flume -  Good reviews, and a low price.  Also, you don't need to hire a plumber to install it, since it's a strap-on rather than an in-line unit.  However, since it's not in-line, there's no shutoff control, and the sensor half of the system uses a proprietary battery pack.  Many people reportedly that the batteries last less than half a year, especially in cold locations.  Finally, this model now has an annual subscription plan.

Moen Flo - This is an in-line device with some decent reviews, but a concerning number of reviewers who said that the internal valve died within 2 years and they needed to replace the entire unit.  Like the Phyn Plus, the unit needs several weeks to learn consumption, and might not be a good choice for a residence with erratic consumption.  On a positive note, the Flo does not require a subscription anymore, although it did a few years ago.

StreamLabs - They have three devices, the Scout, the Monitor, and the Control.  The Scout is just a standalone water detector, so not what I was looking for.  The Monitor is the mid-range model, a full water leak detector, which uses ultrasound and is not inline.  Still not quite what I wanted.  The Control model is the most comprehensive device.  It's not cheap (around a thousand dollars) but it seems to be well-built.  My only concern here is that they seem to prefer that the owner have a subscription.  Argh.  You can apparently use the device without a subscription, but in that situation you only get push notifications instead of push/email/text, and your data access is limited to the current period instead of the two years of historical data that are visible with a subscription.  On a positive note, if you have up to five homes (which seems ridiculous) you only need one subscription to monitor all five locations.

 

Right now, I'm leaning toward the StreamLabs Control device, but I haven't made up my mind yet.  At some point, once I've picked a device, I'll update this post.  And then later, once I've installed it and used it for a bit, I'll do another update.

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Here are all of my updates since I made my original post:

January 29th:  I decided to try the StreamLabs Control, but they're out of stock at all the regular retailers like Home Depot, Lowes, etc.  I just ordered one direct from the company in California, so we'll see how long it takes to get here.  UPS is saying that it will arrive in three days.

Here's a good video that I discovered in my research:

February 5th:  It took 7 days to arrive.  Now I just have to find time to schedule in a plumber.  Also, UPS is a terrible company.  I had a total of seven misadventures with them, everything from a website that wouldn't let me create an account, to eventually getting a message that the driver had attempted delivery (when there was an inch of fresh snow on the ground and clearly there were no tire tracks in the driveway or footprints leading to the house).  But at least the package arrived, eventually.

 

February 27th:  UPS has been trying to tell me for the past five days that I have to give them money for customs clearance for "my package" coming in from StreamLabs.  After four attempts to deal with this, I finally got a phone call from a competent person at UPS, and I told them that I don't have any shipments expected, so I wasn't paying them to clear "the package" that was allegedly held up in customs.  After some discussion, UPS finally realized that the package they were calling me about was going to a completely unrelated third-party in Ontario.  I don't know how that company survives.

March 4th:  The StreamLabs Control has been installed!  Jon Phinney of Cory Allen Plumbing came in and installed it at the end of last week.  You can see the following two photos, and for reference, I built the wooden casing as a semi-protective measure, even though it wasn't necessary.  Jon is just getting started in the first photo, and the second is a close-up after installation is complete.

March 4th:  The Control may have already proven its value!  I have it set up to do a Drip Detect test each morning at 5am, to see if there is any leakage (pressure drop) throughout my home plumbing.  It does a ten-minute test when nobody is using any water (it aborts the test if it senses that someone has turned on a tap or flushes a toilet, to prevent a "failed" test).  Anyway, it's registering a failure for two tests in a row.  On the first test, it showed that 0.1 litres of water had been "consumed" since midnight, and since I didn't use any water, that means the system must have somehow lost between 51 and 149ml of water.  I'm going to investigate further over the next few days, to see if the 5am testing keeps giving "failure" results, and then I'm going to start digging around to try to find out where I'm losing the water.

 

March 12th:  I have Streamlabs Control devices installed in two properties now.  The app can see both of them, and I'm finding that the devices are giving me some VERY good insights about water use at each property.  I did end up getting the annual subscription to their app, so I could get email updates when alerts are triggered.  Texts still aren't working, but maybe that's because I'm an international customer for them.  Push notifications on my phone work great.  Also, I've learned that the water pressure is quite high (around 97psi) coming into the main entrance at each property, so I'm getting water pressure regulators installed shortly.  My intent is to dial back the pressure within the properties to around 65 psi.  I know that a lot of people like very high pressure, but anything above 65-70psi can be hard on pipes (more chance of eventual failure) and hard on washing machines and dishwashers.  Also, by reducing the pressure to a more reasonable level, people will be using slightly less water when they shower, and conserving water is a good thing.

By the way, here's a screenshot of one part of the app.  The app itself is pretty buggy, but functional if you are patient and play with it:

I've had a lot of interactions with Support at StreamLabs.  Not because of any major problems, just because I've had several minor questions.  They've been very good at responding to everything, so there's a big upvote for StreamLabs on that front.  I also learned that if I'm having problems with the app and opt to delete and reinstall it, I do not need to go to the physical locations of the Control meters to reconnect and recalibrate.  Simply signing into the app gets me back up and running without the need for a physical visit.

I'll make future updates here, any time that something notable happens...

March 18th:

I have my warnings set up for two different types of leaks, in Home mode or Away mode.  For Away mode, since I don't have water conditioners or anything that would come on automatically, I've set it up to give me a warning for pretty much any amount of usage, regardless of how minimal.  For Home mode, I have it set up so I get a warning if the flow rate is greater than 0.4 litres/per minute for greater than 15 minutes.  Obviously, a long shower or watering the lawn could trigger an alert, but I just have it set up as a message reminder, and not to actually turn off the water supply when this happens.  I got my first alert today!

 

The odd thing was that I was just sitting at the computer at the time, so there should not have been any water usage.  I thought about this for a minute, as I was concerned that the Control device was giving me a false positive.  Then I wondered if a pipe had burst, but that seemed to be an unlikely event.  So next I wondered if I had left a tap running while cleaning paintbrushes.  I checked that ... the tap was off.  Then I thought that I had used one of the toilets a short while ago, so I went up to check it.  Sure enough, the flapper inside the tank hadn't settled back in place correctly, and there was a very slow faint trickle of water when I listened closely!  I fixed the flapper, and I got a "warning cancelled" message just a minute later.  Very impressive!

I'm really starting to like this device, now that I'm getting accustomed to it.

Assessment and Mitigation of Fire-Damaged Stands

The 2017 wildfire year was a devastating one for British Columbia.  Although 2018 has ultimately turned out to be even worse, it is the results of the 2017 fires that are currently starting to impact BC's tree planting industry.

In 2017, approximately 1.2 million hectares burned.  The majority of the ground that burned did so in July and August.  Although projects began to be tendered in September and October of 2017, for planting projects that would take place in the spring/summer of 2018, those projects generally did not address ground that was burned in 2017.  Certainly, a few contractors saw some burned ground, but that was only because ground that had already been prescribed for 2018 planting happened to burn.  The projects were not yet intended to target the 2017 devastation in a general sense.

Fast forward to this year, and there are significant projects coming down the pipeline right now which will cover ground burned in 2017.  In some cases, foresters are re-planting blocks that were planted in 2016 and 2017, as those are often the easiest to start with (for a number of reasons that I won't list here).  An example of a contract such as this can be found in BCTS Williams Lake district.  Many of the blocks in the northern part of that region (south of the Clisbako River, up the 4600 road) are ones that my camp originally planted in 2016.  For the most part, that series of blocks burned completely, and not a tree survived.  Nor did the duff and upper organic layers of the soil.

In other cases, foresters are targeting blocks that have become fairly well established, and are close to their free growing date (ie. around twenty years old).  In these blocks, the plantations have reached heights of twelve to twenty feet or greater, and were becoming very healthy stands until the fire hit them.  An example of a contract such as this would be either of the pair of MOF Kamloops projects up the Scottie Creek FSR (north of Cache Creek), and up the Battle FSR (north of Big Sky).  Incidentally, Evergreen is planting one of those MOF contracts, and A&G Reforestation is planting the other.


The contracts that I've mentioned above are probably just the very tip of the iceberg with respect to what's coming later this fall, and what we'll be seeing for the next several years.  As if the 2017 fire wasn't bad enough (with some government estimates suggesting that the industry would have to plant 200,000 hectares over the next decade just to mitigate 2017 damage), this year turned out to be another record-breaking year, which is simply going to make matters far worse for the next several years.  To be honest, I don't think BC has the capacity to ever repair all of the wildfire damage from last year and this year, but that's another story which needs to consider nursery capacities, labour supply/demand shortfalls, and other issues.


The reason that I'm bringing all of this up is due to the safety issues relating to fire-damaged stands.  There exists a danger to any workers within such stands, due to unstable burned trees (danger trees).  Now to be perfectly clear (in case my mother reads this), I think there are more serious dangers out there.  I believe that the risk to any tree planter of sustaining serious injuries or a fatality is many times more likely to be the result of a vehicular incident, not having a tree fall on you.  But having said that, it doesn't mean that we should disregard the issue of danger trees in wildfire stands.  We are not completely free of risk.

In my mind, the problem with these stands lays in determining how to assess the danger trees within the stands.  Within BC, there is a specific certification that forestry workers can obtain, called the Danger Tree Assessor certification.  To obtain this certification, the participant must attend a two-day training course and pass both a written exam and a field exam.  I've received this certification twice (the certificate expires after four years), and I found that it was a fairly comprehensive course.  You have to be quite intelligent and be paying close attention in order to pass the course.  In other words, it's not a superficial course.  I should also point out that there are different varieties of Danger Tree Assessor certification, aimed at either forest harvesting and silviculture, wildland fire safety, or parks and recreation personnel.


When a certified Danger Tree Assessor enters a stand to assess problems within the stand, there are going to be a lot of questions about how dangerous a given tree must be in order to be considered "dangerous."  Some trees will be found to be unquestionably of no significant risk to workers in the stand.  Other trees will be found to pose definite problems, and will have to be addressed through methods such as flagging off a no-work-zone, or having a professional faller come into to drop the tree.  Trees in either of those categories are not a problem, in my mind, because their status is clear.  However, there may be many other trees within the same stand that fall into the "grey zone" between those two extremes.  Trying to decide if those trees are dangerous enough to require further mitigation is the issue that many people will be trying to grapple with.

On the one hand, looking at things from the point-of-view of a planting contractor, the preferred situation would be to be told that most of the trees are not dangerous.  If the trees are considered to be dangerous and have to be dropped, two problems are created:  Fallers need to be hired to come into the stand with chain saws, to fall all of the problem trees.  Planters then have a harder time planting the stand, because they have to crawl across all the dropped trees (and there may be additional eye-poke hazards).  This slows them down and reduces their earnings.  Both of these problems ultimately turn out to be expensive for a planting contractor.  Of course, there are also problems if the trees are not dropped.  What happens if one actually falls over and injuries a worker while the planting is taking place?  The odds may be very low, but it's not a negligible risk.

Looking at the situation from a different point of view, one wonders if cutting down hundreds of thousands of potentially dangerous burned mature trees could pose a safety risk to the fallers.  Of course it would!  It would be terrible to ask a faller to go into a stand to cut thousands of burned trees, and then to have the faller be injured or killed because a falling tree acted unexpectedly and caused a crush injury.


My understanding of the situation is that the abiding principle to follow is that of "imminent danger." Tree planting is considered to be a low "level of disturbance" (LOD-1) activity in terms of danger tree assessment criteria.  This would be opposed to a high LOD activity such as running machines through the stand for harvesting.  With a low LOD, mitigation efforts are not required to be as strict.

For planting, it may be possible to implement standard working protocols for the stand that depend on external measurement criteria.  For example, it may be possible for workers to plant within the stand as long as the wind does not reach a speed equal to or greater than 40 km/hr.  If the wind speed does get that high, then workers would be required to cease work and evacuate the stand.  I should point out to casual readers that if this seems like a lot of wind, these wildfire stands don't have leaves or needles on the trees anymore (and in many cases, even the branches have burned off), therefore there is less surface area on each tree to catch the wind.  So in other words, it takes a pretty strong wind to really move these burned stick trees.

The principle of imminent danger is intended to avoid cutting too many trees unnecessarily, and therefore reducing the exposure to risk of the workers who are falling the "danger trees."  Ultimately, this means that there is a balance between the risk of a tree falling spontaneously on a planter, versus the risk that the same tree falls on a certified faller during the process of cutting the tree down.

I should point out that the concept of imminent danger may apply to most wildfire stands, but this doesn't mean the same approach can be taken with dealing with danger trees around a temporary planting camp.  In that situation, the exposure is much longer (a period of perhaps weeks under potentially dangerous trees, rather than minutes) and there is more chance during this time period of adverse external events occurring without prior warning (ie. a wind storm that arises in the middle of the night).  The "imminent danger" protocol would therefore not be useful for saying that it's ok for planters to set tents up under potential danger trees.  And by the way, planters should have the common sense not to set tents up under ANY trees that look like they could blown down in a windstorm, regardless of whether or not there was wildfire damage to the tree.  However, common sense can sometimes be anything but common in a planting camp.

To directly quote an associate with whom I conversed about this topic, "It is incumbent on the Clients to make it clear at the viewings what the standards are for assessment, to live up to their due diligence obligation to make bidders aware of the hazards involved in the work."  Of course, in my experience at viewing meetings, the level of due diligence demonstrated by some clients is highly variable.  Some firms are very specific about this topic.  For example, Forsite Forestry Consultants tend to be quite clear about what the hazards are, and what their expectations are pertaining to how the site should be dealt with.  Other clients offer less clarity.

Incidentally, I've heard rumours that in some areas, DTA personnel may be required to wear tracking devices that will show their trails through the block, to ensure that the block was checked thoroughly, and that WorkSafe will then come in to do a follow-up inspection of what was assessed and/or cut.  I'm looking forward to learning more about this new practice.

My personal advice is that if a bidder is not satisfied with the clarity of the information that they have received, they should ask the client specific questions, in writing.  Clear guidance is an important part of the process of due diligence.



My final concern is that some bidders may try to win contracts by "cutting corners" when it comes to stand assessment and, even more particularly, with mitigation of potential dangers.  It would be a shame if such a contractor won a job someday because they didn't budget for proper assessment and treatment of potential danger trees, and a worker was subsequently injured or killed by a falling tree.  In my mind, that would make the both the contractor AND the client complicit in responsibility for the accident.

It would be easy to come up with a solution to this problem, and to level the field for planting contractors:  the client should deal with the stand assessment and mitigation separately, rather than passing the responsibility on to the planting contractor.  In a low-bid system, it simply doesn't make sense for contracts to be set up this way.  If clients ensured that a separate firm took care of DTA assessment and danger tree mitigation from a separate funding source, there would be no risk of cost-cutting contractors gaining a competitive advantage to the detriment of the long-term safety of their employees.


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Here's a link to a WorkSafeBC publication about Danger Tree Management:
http://www.replant.ca/docs/Danger_Tree_Management_Worksafe.pdf

Watch Out For Moose!

In many parts of Canada, large animals on the roads are a significant danger at night. If I'm not on a full divided highway, I rarely drive much above 80 km/h at night, and often slower than that, much to the annoyance of my passengers. Although it is kind of slow and painful, it occasionally pays off, like the other night.

On Thursday evening, I was driving a few kilometers away from my property in Port Elgin, and saw a moose on the highway. I swerved to the left, and missed it by about a foot. It's a good thing I swerved left, because if I had gone to the right, I would have hit a second moose behind the first that I didn't see initially. Or maybe even worse, I wouldn't have made it past the first one and hit TWO moose at the same time. This is exactly why I drive a lot slower at night.



(Click on the photos to see them in higher resolution).

I find that moose are harder to see than deer. For one, their coats are darker, so they don't stand out as much. Also, deer are skittish and usually turn to face an oncoming vehicle, so motorists often see the reflections from their eyes. However, a moose is usually either stupid or indifferent, or too high off the road surface for drivers in low cars, so you never see their eyes.

Hitting a moose isn't anything like hitting a deer. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have hit deer. It's the kind of thing that nearly every rural driver expects could happen at least once in their life. But all that a deer usually does is trash your car. I don't mean to downplay this type of accident, because hitting a deer is still very dangerous. Unfortunately, more than a dozen people die every year in Canada because of collisions with deer. I looked up the stats for deer accidents and the numbers in the United States are stunning: there are an average of a MILLION AND A HALF collisions per YEAR between deer and vehicles. That translates to about 150 deaths, which means that 0.1% of collisions result in fatalities. It seems like a low percentage, but that's still far too many. But your chances of getting killed when hitting a moose (or elk or caribou) are a LOT higher. A deer might weigh up to 200 pounds. A moose is usually north of a thousand pounds. Check out the photos at this link:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/moose.asp


Recently, our part of the province saw a very high profile moose accident just outside of Moncton, where a young couple died, leaving behind a 2-year old child:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2010/10/07/nb-neguac-funeral-rousselles.html


Here are a few tips from a BC website:

- Moose eyes do reflect the light from headlights, but often the moose's eyes are too high above the beam to catch the light. A grown moose often stands taller than a car.

- Moose are a hazard in summer (as well as in winter). They crave salt and often get it from the side of the road.

- Long straight stretches of road are still hazardous. Drivers tend to speed and thus cannot react in time if a moose or other animal does appear.

- Deer are herding animals. Just because you miss one does not mean you are clear of them.

- There are no studies proving conclusively that deer whistles work. It is better to be wildlife aware when driving, and not to rely on the whistle.


Anyway, next time you're driving at night and see a "wildlife on highway" sign, remember that you're going to get to your destination a lot FASTER if you don't run into an animal. Driving slowly isn't a bad idea.