Prevent Water Damage 24/7: A Flo by Moen Review
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Have you ever had your feet hit the floor and make a splash? In your kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom? You NEVER want to experience it again. If you are here looking for a way to prevent water damage, this Flo by Moen review is for you.
PEACE. OF. MIND.
That’s the first thing I would say when it comes to Flo. That’s also my entire Flo by Moen review in three sentences.
Having experienced a water supply leak under my slab foundation, I’ve chosen to prevent future water damage to my home with Flo by Moen.
Well, now that I have one I’m even more sold on it than I was before (as I discussed here Protect Your Home From Plumbing Leaks: Flo and Phyn).
Easy to use. Easy to review your usage and status. Moen’s Flo is your warm and fuzzy that your home is safe from the most common home emergency: water damage.
If nothing else, Flo is a whole house water supply valve continuously monitoring for a new leak and gives you the ability to shut off water to your house with or without your intervention.
(8/11/2020 –there has been a lot of activity since this original post. There are some new videos and water monitor testing/changes coming out soon. While most of this post is still valid, it seems Flo is ill suited for the hot and arid desert environment. However, thanks to Flo, I will continue to test and experiment with a new unit in a more hospitable environment, protected inside a basement. In it’s place on my own house, I will install Phyn. The experiment continues… Also, I’ve started a YouTube channel since this post and have started an entire series on water monitors. Flo specific videos are included at the bottom of this post.)
How Flo by Moen works.
You place a Flo inline on your water main coming into the house, after your shutoff to the house as well as any watering system.
Flo is installed after the quarter turn shutoff as well as planned lines for a yard watering system.
Flo monitors high water usage and continuous long running water usage and sends emails as well as robo calls if it detects either scenario. It will also send alerts if the issue is resolved in time before shutting off the water automatically.
A screenshot of my phone after Flo detected high water usage from watering citrus trees in the back yard. The missed call is from Flo.
You can clear the alert if it is not an issue. If you do not respond, you will receive another email and robo call stating the valve will get automatically shut off in five minutes. Again, if you do not respond the valve will turn the water off to everything beyond the valve.
You can always shut it off sooner yourself if you are within range of your phone. However, if you are like me and often have your phone on silent, Flo will do its thing without your knowledge at all.
Flo by Moen also runs a daily health check to detect any slower leaks…leaks as slow as one drop a minute. It runs this health check during times when you do not usually use water. It uses your past usage to determine what time is optimal. If you do happen to turn on a faucet or appliance during the health check it will immediately interrupt the diagnostic test and turn the water back on. The switch back on is instantaneous so you don’t notice it was on except for the notification email and status entry in the event history log.
Generally, I would expect you wouldn’t interrupt Flo at all during the health test. When it ran in the middle of the afternoon, it was because I had it run a learning week when we were out of town and only the irrigation system ran in the middle of the night. Unless you work a night shift, just had a baby and are up all hours of the day, or are out of town often with some kind of yard watering system running during the cooler hours of the day, your Flo health test is probably going to happen in the wee hours of the morning.
You can turn the valve off manually. Flo is a worst case scenario backup if the shutoffs at both the water main as well as the stack go bad.
Here it is in the off position:
And then back on:
You can also see the status of the device. It would be nice if it were possible to turn them off from a security. Flo is well advertised at night with the glow of the status lights.
Daytime and nighttime running lights.
You may have noticed there is also a button between the online status and valve status where you can reset the device.
I’ve only had to use it one time. The GFCI circuit where Flo is powered went offline after a recent storm rolled through. After a reset of the circuit as well as a reset of Flo, we were back in business.
Just so you can see where the magic happens–you can take off the bottom cover where the water flows through the valve inline:
If you ever need to remove Flo, it comes with a installation spacer which can also double as a fill in. Just remove Flo and thread the spacer on like any other union joint.
The Flo app.
The Flo interface is straightforward and simple.
The first screen focuses in on the daily usage:
The daily stats include the gallons spent, your daily goal, current flow rate of water through your plumbing along with the 24 hours of the day where water was used.
The second screen focuses in on the weekly usage:
The weekly stats include the gallons spent, your weekly goal, current flow rate of water through your plumbing along with the 7 days of the week where water was used.
The dashboard gives you a real time reading on the flow rate, pressure, and temperature of the water.
You can also set daily goals. When you miss it, the app let’s you know when you’ve gone over your goal.
What that first screen looks like after Flo shuts off your water if you do not respond to an issue, preventing further water damage. Notice the water image on the bottom does not flow through the “OFF ON” label:
If you know it is something you are obviously doing (like watering a tree), turning water back on is as simple as swiping the button from off to on:
Back to the regular main screen after an alert has not been addressed. It’s pretty obvious something is wrong.
If you want to see a history on all the activity–from health test results to alerts–you can find it all in the activity log:
If your device goes offline you’ll also know from the change in color of the background. That is, on top of another set of notifications from the app as well as your email. Flo will continue to send your reminders if your device stays offline.
The online interface of Flo is only through a phone app. There is no computer access.
It also would be nice if the chart at the bottom of the screens were clickable so you could see usage for that particular hour (on the daily screen) or day (on the weekly screen). This is a new enhancement inclued in the 2.0 Flo App.
Requirements
Flo requires a GFCI protected power source. The device comes with an AC adapter with 10 feet of cable. If your power source is further than that distance you can buy additional 25 foot approved extensions. You can daisy chain up to four extensions. If you need more than 110′ of cord, dude, your house is huge and you can probably afford to drop a new outlet close to Flo.
We ended up buying two Flo low voltage extension cords for our install.
Flo also requires Wi-Fi. There is no hardline internet connectivity available. So far Flo has always been available when I’ve pulled out my phone and it has not signed me out of the app.
I clearly am not abiding on the watering system suggestion as I use a Melnor Raincloud to irrigate the citrus trees in the back yard using four water hoses off a hose bibb.
Temperature Limitations
Do not install Flo if your temperatures go above 140 deg F (60 deg C) or below 32 deg F (0 deg C). As with any other copper installation, if a freeze comes through, you’ll want to include Flo in your protective measure if you have outside plumbing (as obviously displayed in this post).
I’ll update how Flo holds up against UV rays in a few years…
(Update 8/31/2019–2.5 weeks after this post went live) I’m sharing this with you because this is an honest review.
My Flo died after 4 months. It was not the ending I wanted, but the Flo support team was ON IT on a Saturday afternoon trying to help me out. The support on the weekend was phenomenal.
Seriously.
I sent an email thinking I’d still be calling on Monday during regular hours when a response came back almost instantaneously. After some debugging which, unfortunately, did not get it going, a new Flo is on the way.
In any case, here is what I think happened: I live in the Sonoran desert. While our temperatures are not 140+ F, it gets hot. Really hot. And sunny. Really sunny.
Our plumbing is obviously outside. The stack is on corner of the house that gets hit from sunup to when the sun goes behind my neighbors house, based on the direction my house faces. The sun is relentless.
I think it got baked. Perhaps a little water got behind the unit as well and there seems to be some cracking in the gasket surrounding the power cord.
During a discussion at IBS we had inquired about testing in a desert environment and were given a positive response. I’ll admit to still having my doubts knowing my situation above. However, with the size limitations of the house plumbing (outlined two sections below) and my excitement over trying out this very necessary smart home device with our travel schedule, I was willing to try it out.
If I wasn’t doing this blog I would have fabricated a protective housing around the device before I even bought it. Because that’s the kind of person I am. If I’m going to invest in something–and this is a rather large investment for something pretty new to the market (…although little in comparison to the destruction of a leak)–I’m going to try and do as much as I can to keep it going.
So now I’m going to build a cover for the new unit. Pictures will be coming…
If you live in a hot, arid environment where the unit will be in sunshine all day, I’d still recommend a Flo, but I would build something to protect it. If you don’t see an update here, the new unit is still going strong.
Now, for a comparison, I have a Melnor Raincloud (my review is here) I still have watering my citrus trees in the back yard. It’s another plastic housing unit dividing my hose bibb into four so I can connect four water hoses. This lives in the shade full time for the entire year. I had serious doubts about it lasting through the first summer, but it is still going two summers in. Flo is has a much sturdier construction. It is also why I risked the first one to the elements.
Would I buy it again? Yes, as long as it is protected from the sun. Flo is standing behind their product.
(Update 12/20/2019) I’m on my third Flo. On 11/13/2019 I received an email from Flo support:
After a recent firmware update we found that your Flo device may intermittently be providing false readings and will need to be replaced. We would like to proactively send you a new unit for replacement and have the original unit returned for review. Could you verify your mailing address below where the new unit can be sent along with a return label for the original unit? Please reply to this email with confirmation or if the device must be shipped to a new address.
Was it the “backflow” I noticed in this follow on post: Flo by Moen Quirks: A Running Review? Maybe. I’ll find out when we leave town next and update that post when I find out.
Again, the support has been quite impressive. They were forthcoming with the issue. The device seems to have some development issues, but all I have to do is spin off the union connections, slide the old unit off and put the new one in place.
The phone app also has a new interface. We’ll see how the device performs this summer. If all goes well I might dive into recreating some of the photos.
No matter what happens I’ll be updating this post in the fall of 2020 after this summer.
Why Flo instead of another water monitoring system on the market?
Uponor’s Phyn is currently the only similar competitor on the market. There are a few reasons we went with Flo over our beloved Uponor.
Cost
Let’s be real: price is a big deal for most people, myself included, even though I tend to splurge on my house than any other item in the budget. Flo is regularly $499. Phyn is $850 as of 8/31/2019 it is now $699. While there are some added benefits included in the price of Phyn that can balance out in the long run (2-3 years), that is a significant difference in price.
However, consider the price difference to an actual water damage claim. The average claim is $7,500. Between handling the claim, the inconvenience of dealing with contractors, living during repairs and balancing time away from work, the $499 price tag (or even $699 for Phyn) is worth it. Insurance companies agree–to the point where some companies give a discount on your homeowners insurance premium.
I went into a much deeper cost analysis between Flo and Phyn in this article: Protect Your Home From Plumbing Leaks: Flo and Phyn
Size
As you can see in the pictures we had to change the configuration of plumbing in order to accommodate even the smaller Flo. There was not a lot of copper run between the stack coming in from the street and around the corner into the house. A Phyn would not fit in this space.
Same photo as above–just for easy recall.
Size is what really made the decision for us.
What if you need to remove it for any reason?
Flo comes with a spacer to put in place if you need to remove Flo.
Real life scenarios.
After installing Flo I’ve experienced a legitimate slow leak and several critical “failures”. These are actual situations similar to what you might encounter with a Flo on your home.
“Small drip detected”: The leaky toilet.
I have a four year old daughter who can go to the bathroom on her own and even wash her hands without a step stool. This means I don’t have to stand there and help her do anything when she goes to the bathroom. Second, I don’t use her bathroom other than cleaning it.
It is delightful.
What I didn’t know is that the toilet handle had slowly been getting calcium build up over time.
One time my daughter did not move the toilet handle fully back into the off position after flushing due to the buildup. After some amount of time, we happened to be working on the yard close to Flo. I heard the valve turn and then checked my phone.
Sure enough, I had an alert.
I quickly went through the mental checklist in my head over what we had just done. We weren’t watering plants, no one was taking a shower, and I hadn’t been cooking or doing laundry. I turn the valve back on and quickly raced through the house, listening for water. We were able to solve the problem quickly.
This isn’t the first time these 1.25 gallon per flush low-flow toilets have had a problem like this. Since it is a cantilever type tank it is possible to stick it in the on position, especially if you are not familiar with these toilets. After hosting a rather classy affair, I heard water rushing through this very same toilet after the party had died down. Someone had gone to the bathroom and left the flapper on so who knows how long the water had been going–literally–down the toilet. I don’t recall a high water bill but Flo would have caught that long before the party was over.
Lesson #1 It it not always a big leak that gets you.
While these scenarios do not prevent water damage, they show how often a small oversight, like like a leaking toilet flapper, can be caught in the beginning. Finding a problem when it is small is doable with Flo.
High water usage AND extended water usage: Yard irrigation
Looking back, I have to laugh on this one too…a product of too many smart devices interacting with each other…
So my Melnor Raincloud did not play well with the Moen Flo…of my own doing. When I set up the schedule the goal was run the water at a trickle for four hours a night on a different tree four nights in a row.
That didn’t happen the first week after I turned the Raincloud back on for the summer. A quirk of the device, it certainly turned on the second week…only after I asked my neighbor to turn the water on at full blast. My intent was to run the zones manually, compensating for the missed watering session. With this technology I could overcome what I thought was a problem with the Raincloud by looking at the berms through my Wyze cams and verifying the water is flowing through the Flo app. However, 8 to 10 minutes won’t get me very far when the water is only at a trickle. Hence, changing the water on at the maximum pressure.
The only problem is I forgot to change the scheduling so that the Melnor Raincloud is in eco mode, for instance, running the water 2 minutes and off 6 minutes. They key is stopping the water flow from time to time–“telling” Flo that all is well and it should restart it’s monitoring again when the water restarts.
462.71 gallons and 68 minutes later, Flo hit me up with a critical failure for extended use, another for abnormal usage, and then a third warning of an impending shutoff if I didn’t respond within five minutes. I also received three phone calls and conjunction with the alerts on the phone.
That was awesome.
While 462.71 gallons is a lot of water, imagine if the water kept on going for another 180 minutes. That comes out to an additional 12 hundred gallons. I also lucked out the first scheduled zone is the big tangerine tree that also feeds into the grapefruit tree so both trees got watered.
After I woke up to Flo alerts I immediately reset all of my zones. Then, I cleared out the alerts…but didn’t turn the valve back on.
Of course the next two nights, Flo told me it only watered one gallon.
I manually watered with the Melnor Raincloud to make up for the missed watering after turning the valve back on.
Lesson #2. You can work with Flo by stopping the water from time to time.
The is no way Flo would let me run anything at any pressure for four hours unless I put it in sleep mode. I’m not waking up in the middle of the night (during cooler temps to keep at that irrigation water from evaporating), much less reminding myself to put it on sleep mode that regularly. Instead, modifying the water cycle to stop or change the water usage from time to time seems to keep both me and Flo happy.
High water usage AND extended water usage: The long shower
Recently my husband and I took turns cleaning up in our walk in shower. We did this without turning the water off in between our turns since there isn’t any problem walking in and out.
The problem is, Flo didn’t think that was such a great idea. Thankfully, I went first. So when he called out, “Flo cut me off!” I grabbed my phone and helped him rinse off the bubbles.
This scenario in conjunction with the last scenario taught me a few things about Flo.
Lesson #3 Flo really does take your previous water usage into account.
The week after learning it allowed the water to run full blast for 68 minutes. Two months later it only allowed the water to run about 15 minutes before sending an alert. Flo knew it was unusual usage at an unusual time. If we used it more like this, it would not shut us off so quickly.
Likewise with a slightly smaller continuous stream of water (the ½” pipe feeding the shower head as opposed to the ¾” line to the hose bib) Flo let’s the water run longer. It took about a half hour to cut us off.
Lesson #4 If you want someone in your household to stop taking long showers get a Flo.
You could let Flo cut them off…or you could blame Flo even though it “could be” you on your phone… Just sayin’. 😉
Prevent water damage with your own Flo by Moen.
I truly hope this Flo by Moen review helps you decide to take your fate into your own hands.
Having saved myself from literally flushing money down the toilet, Flo catches all sources of supply plumbing leaks. Big and small, Flo by Moen catches them all (cheesy but true!).
Proactively detecting a leak prevents large home insurance claims later. Just ask someone who paid their deductible. $500 now or $1000’s later, I’m going with prevention over future headaches.
It’s not to say there won’t be anything to fix if you have a catastrophic leak, but it certainly will not be as bad.
At least you know and that’s the point.
Check Flo out for yourself here <–if you are a friend and I sent you here to read this article, send me a message before buying it.
I’ve created a follow on post as this one is already at a hefty 3700+ words and 25 pictures. While I’ve updated this one when it seems appropriate, the follow on post describes long term observations:
Flo by Moen Quirks: A Running Review
If you want to read more on the benefits of a whole house water monitoring system, check out this post: Protect Your Home From Plumbing Leaks: Flo and Phyn
For those of you nerds like me wondering, how does this help me if a leak is hidden in a wall or under the foundation…check out this post here: Advantages of a Plumbing Manifold System
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