Leak detected and siren woke the dead!

[carverofchoice]

My first leak!!! HMS Hazard Remediation with Leak Sensor Saved the day!!!

I mean basically my first real leak EVER.

We’re remodeling our upstairs kitchen. We had to replace the dishwasher and kitchen sink valves (they wouldn’t turn off). After replacing them, we turned the main water back on and everything looked fine: NO VISIBLE LEAKS upstairs. We went on tearing down the rest of the upstairs kitchen (removing the floor, ceiling, cabinets, etc), when suddenly the HMS hub was beeping, like an entry delay. I was really confused since it’s not during the nighttime armed schedule and no visitors could’ve turned on the HMS by accident.

So after disarming it, I looked and wouldn’t you know it, it said my basement laundry room washer sensor detected a leak (the washer is on the basement floor right underneath where the upstairs kitchen sink and dishwasher pipes are). I ran downstairs and checked, and sure enough, there was a significant amount of water falling from the ceiling right above the Washer. We couldn’t tell that anything was wrong from the upstairs kitchen because while putting on the new valve, it caused a leak in the pipe way farther down at a joint down under the upstairs floor in the basement ceiling right above the basement washer in a piece that must have been weak or about to break anyway. We would’ve never seen it or known anything about it for several hours since it was hidden from our view from upstairs.

Here it is hanging from the basement ceiling with the water turned off now, about to be cut and replaced (that 90-degree piece was leaking):

Here is it fixed up:

It might’ve flooded my whole basement without me having Wyze Leak sensors tied to the HMS Hazard Remediation to force a HMS Hub alert. I would’ve definitely not paid any attention to a simple App “Push Notification”…and nobody was downstairs because we were all working on the kitchen and would have been up there for a long time longer, never noticing for HOURS. There would’ve definitely been damage! Maybe A LOT of damage before anyone noticed. The Hazard Remediation upgrade forcing the Hub to make noise saved me a lot of money today. The hub, HMS, and leak detectors more than paid for themselves now! I highly recommend them!!! Put them EVERYWHERE you have pipes and drains! It’s worth it! I can definitely understand why Home insurance companies now give such discounts for things like “Leak monitoring”…the cost-benefit payoff is huge!

@WyzeRyan @WyzeJasonJ Thanks for the great products. Keep up the great work!

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For the curious, today was just kitchen demolition day

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Edit: Look a couple of comments below for the second leak that just happened a couple of days later in a different spot, this time while I had no Internet or power, and Wyze STILL alerted me even without internet or power!!

[WyzeJasonJ]

The tear-down is looking good and I am glad to hear they worked as they were supposed to. The only thing I personally would not be a fan of is using the sharkbite fittings as a repair that will not be easily accessed when complete. That may just be me not having enough faith in them yet as opposed to the old-school sweating.

@carverofchoice
Do you mind if I pass your story along internally?

[carverofchoice]

My brother-in-law (who used to apprentice as a plumber long ago) did the repair for me at no cost, so I was definitely not complaining about however he wanted to fix it. I’m guessing they were just doing what was cheapest or on hand or something. I only cared if it was fixed. We plan to move again in a few years and buy more of our dream home after we basically retire, so I won’t be dealing with it later.

You’re absolutely welcome to pass on the story.

[WyzeRyan]

@carverofchoice

It might’ve flooded my whole basement without me having Wyze Leak sensors tied to the HMS Hazard Remediation to force a HMS Hub alert. I would’ve definitely not paid any attention to a simple App “Push Notification”

Hi @carverofchoice , appreciate your sharing. Your words make us feel the value of our work!

[WyzeJasonJ]

@carverofchoice
They have asked for authorization to use your story, I am guessing for possible marketing in some way?

[carverofchoice]

Leak 2 occurred while I was without power/internet and Wyze still warned me and saved the day!

@WyzeJasonJ @WyzeRyan This occurred just 3 days after my previous leak story (and yes you have my permission to use it as you wish)

We had an electrician over to fix some problems:

1. Our breaker box wasn’t up to code and was kind of screwy
2. Some of main wiring had metal staples stuck INTO the wiring!!! Yeah…that was not safe
3. Several outlets had makeshift fake containers that would not contain a fire if there was ever any arcing to occur.
4. A couple of the outlet wiring boxes had burn marks all around them
5. The wiring placement was a little screwy and needed to be repositioned

Suffice it to say, we needed an electrician to come fix stuff so we don’t die in here. Of course they had to shut down power to the house to do all of this. Power was cut to the house around 11:43 AM, at least that is when Wyze sent my phone a notification that the HMS Hub no longer had an internet connection:

Sometime around 1pm (an hour and 15 minutes later), I was finally getting ready to go to sleep (I had been up all night trying to hit an important deadline for work, so I was definitely exhausted and falling asleep by this time). I’m laying in bed, putting in earplugs when suddenly the HMS hub starts the hazard remediation beeping…for the second time this week.

But I don’t have power anywhere and no internet, so Wyze can’t send me an app notification about what the problem is. I am wondering if that same pipe has another leak, so I check it first, but no, it’s fine. Now I am wondering what else it could be. Maybe this time it is a Freeze alert somewhere due to losing power and heat, but it could still be another leak with bad timing. So I start running around the house checking everywhere that has leak sensors first, and then will check the HMS climate sensor areas afterward for freezing.

Then I realize what the problem is and where the leak is! We turned off the power, so our sump pump was no longer running, and it had been running like crazy lately, especially with a recent storm. Now that it isn’t clearing out the little well it is in, all the water from the property is pushing it’s way upward and would eventually flood into my house if I didn’t get the sump pump restored with some power. Luckily, the Wyze hazard remediation gave me enough warning to start doing something about it. before it got too critical.

Here are pictures with the point at which it warned me that the water got too high:

I went and got my 2 APC/UPS battery backups that I have, but suddenly neither of them were working. I thought maybe the Sump Pump had some issue where it couldn’t be fully submerged and needed to breath or something, so I got the pump for emptying out our pool, and it wouldn’t work either. The APC’s were just not responding to anything. By now the water was getting dangerously high in the sump pump well and I was starting to panic. I could run to the store to get a generator or long enough cord to reach from my car to the sump pump. But if I left, the house would definitely be flooded by then.

So even though I haven’t slept for more than a day and am exhausted already, I started manually and constantly hauling two 5-gallon buckets full of water out of the well to a shower drain. But it seemed like I was barely keeping the house afloat with constant bucket hauling, and the electricians said power wouldn’t be back available for another 5 hours, and what I was doing was completely unsustainable, especially since I was already so exhausted. I couldn’t do this for 5 more hours. My wife was out of town and daughter at school. I started contacting family and friends, and after an hour of hauling buckets of water out of my well, I finally got my hands on a loan for a higher-end 1034Wh portable power station. Got it connected to the sump pump and saved my house from flooding:

The HMS Leak Sensors with Hazard Remediation saved me TWICE in just 3 days! This 2nd time it worked even when I had no power or internet, it STILL saved me! That’s crazy fortunate.

So…thanks again Wyze…The next purchase I make is going to include some more of your leak sensors now! Whoever it was that added the Hazard Remediation warnings to work with the hub speaker in an update last year, I feel like I love them so much right now! The system still worked even without any internet or power to my entire house and still warned me and saved the day. That’s just amazing. Even if I hadn’t been home, Wyze would’ve sent me a push notification that the hub had lost internet, so I still would’ve been alerted that there is a concern with my monitoring system I should go check on. That’s just cool.

Now, if we could just figure out what fried in the furnace when they turned the power off. They couldn’t get it to turn back on We had to use space heaters in all the bedrooms last night. Our Home Warranty is sending an HVAC guy out tomorrow morning for that though.

Wyze needs more sensors!!! With this, I’m a big fan of your sensors. I know it’s the year of the camera, but I won’t complain about any of the “Few Exceptions” you hinted at that could also come, I promise. Some of your non-camera devices just saved me thousands of dollars! With this experience, I’m sure I never have to worry about my wife being concerned about how much I’m spending on Wyze stuff! This alone already more than paid the cost of everything I have from Wyze, and I’ve got nearly 300 total Wyze devices and all the subscriptions, so that’s saying something! There’s a reason why Wyze is my primary go-to company for great affordable tech.

Let’s just hope this is the last time I’ll have to report a story on any Hazard Remediation sensors saving the day for a long time…

[R.Good]

Get a second pump… Physical failure and floods happen even when you have power.

This comes from experience

Lift it about 6 inches higher than the one sitting on the bottom. Fail over.

[carverofchoice]

Yeah, we were just talking about doing this. Going to possibly get one that has battery backup built into it too.

It’s my first time living somewhere that needed a sump pump, so we’re just not used to the issues that come along with that terrain. Figuring it out fast though!

[R.Good]

Yessir, I learned the hard way, 3 times

[HTRon]

Could you maybe post links here to the leak sensor and hub and any other important pieces you’re using (like if the subscription is an important part?) so we can duplicate your leak sensor setup? Or tell us what to search for?
Great story, and thanks!

[SlabSlayer]

I also have Wyze Leak Detectors. One of them is slid back under the back of my refrigerator in case the condensate pan gets plugged up or the ice maker supply fitting decides to leak (wouldn’t be the first time).

Tonight, I knocked over a pitcher of water on the counter and it went EVERYWHERE… including under the refrigerator. Before I could get the refrigerator pulled out to rescue the sensor, my add on - wake the dead screech siren was blasting, my phone in the other room was blowing up from the macro I wrote reacting to the push notification sent by the sensor, I was getting text messages from Noonlight, and my HMS Hub was alarming. Before I could walk over to get to the phone to disarm the Remediation Alarm they were calling me. And, all this with the HMS in Disarmed mode. WOW!

Components:

• Wyze Home Monitoring - minimum requirement is the Wyze Sense Hub (see note below)
• Wyze Leak Sensor
• Add on LOUD Siren: Honeywell WAVE-2 Two Tone Siren
• Power Supply for Siren: 2pcs, JOVNO 12V 1A Power Supply (I bought one for my outdoor alarm blast siren as well)
• Wyze Plug to power the Siren so the Rule will turn on the siren when the Leak Sensor is triggered.

Note: Wyze does not sell the Hub individually. It is sold as a component of the Home Monitoring Service which includes professional monitoring for Leak Detection and Freeze Detection along with Home Security. HMS is a subscription service. However, the Hub will operate without the HMS subscription in a limited capacity. Leak sensors can be installed to trigger rules to activate plugs and other Automations as well as send push notifications, but there will be no Hub Remediation Alarm or Noonlight professional monitoring without the HMS subscription.

[WyzeRyan]

Thanks for sharing your story.

In addition to the native Environment Hazard Remediation brought in by the HMS subscription, you may also expect additional home insurance discount using the monitoring certificate from Noonlight with Leak or Freezing ability checked,

Meanwhile, HMS will release the Home Monitoring Rules not far away. In the future, you can configure the HMS to trigger Wyze Rules when there’s a hazard—so you don’t need to manually write scripts to achieve your goal!

[SlabSlayer]

@WyzeRyan

you may also expect additional home insurance discount using the monitoring certificate from Noonlight with Leak or Freezing ability checked,

I did request my new Monitoring Certificate from Noonlight and received it quickly. I sent it to my insurance agent, however I haven’t received a reply yet.

@WyzeRyan

Meanwhile, HMS will release the Home Monitoring Rules not far away. In the future, you can configure the HMS to trigger Wyze Rules when there’s a hazard—so you don’t need to manually write scripts to achieve your goal!

You can’t imagine the anticipation anxiety you created when you first announced this! Being able to use the HMS Mode in Rules will be AWESOME! Thanks for the update!

[carverofchoice]

@HTRon

Could you maybe post links here to the leak sensor and hub and any other important pieces you’re using (like if the subscription is an important part?)

Sure!
Go to Wyze.com and click on Security then Home Monitoring and Automation:

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Then Get the Wyze Sense Hub that all the sensors will connect to, and which has a battery backup in it and a speaker to trigger a siren or the HMS Hazard Remediation alert (leaks, freeze detection alert beeps):

and some Leak Sensors and Probes to put anywhere there are water pipe connections or drains:

And some Climate sensors (Temperature/Humidity) to put around water pipes to alert you to freezing risks:

Contact sensors for Doors/Windows to alert you to a break-in, trigger an alarm, possibly call Law enforcement if needed (or you can leave it in test mode to do self-monitoring to avoid having police called unless you specifically call and ask them to come yourself).

Motion sensors - Though I mostly use these for automations with lighting, etc, I also use them for security while I’m out of town:

As for the subscription, I personally recommend paying for the yearly (annual) HMS subscription with the hub. Doing so gets you the hub for free and it’s cheaper to pay for it yearly than monthly. But some people like Monthly, or they don’t want the security subscription at all, so they’ll just try the monthly one and cancel it. You can still do a lot without the subscription, but honestly it’s worth it for all the extra features, and most Home Insurance companies will actually give you a discount on your Home Insurance for having the professional monitoring. Wyze offers professional monitoring for Burglary, leaks and freeze monitoring right now, so if you do all of those, sometimes you get a discount off your insurance that saves you more money than the cost of the subscription, meaning you actually get PAID to have the monitoring subscription! That’s a no-brainer. In some cases maybe you just get part of the money back, but the money you save makes it more than worth it anyway especially with the extra benefits! So it’s totally up to you and your situation, but I recommend it, at least try it out and talk to your Home insurance about how much they’ll lower your costs for having professional monitoring for burglary, leaks, and freeze detections. Who knows, they might actually pay you more than you spend for it!

If you have the subscription, set up the Hazard remediation monitoring (Leak/Freeze). I talked about where I found those options when I first found it here:

HMS Hazard Remediation updates - Leak & Freeze Monitoring certificate now available

Hazard remediation is live now! Looks like the monitoring certificate that we send to our insurance for discounts off our monthly rate has now been upgraded so we aren’t just limited to burglary monitoring. We can now get it to include Freeze and Leak monitoring: [image] Monitoring Tab → Home Monitoring Settings → Monitoring Certificate → Learn More (to see the above screenshot in the app) In addition, it looks like there is a new Hazard Remediation feature I didn’t know about where our sens…

If you choose to cancel the subscription, you can still have leak and temperature notifications sent to you even without any subscription. Here are the notification options that you get even without the subscription:

The Climate sensors also have notifications even without the subscription:

Plus both of them allow you set up Rules to trigger other devices to do something (flash lights, cause a siren to go off on a camera, etc):

The hub won’t beep when there is a leak without the subscription, but you can still set up a rule to make a camera trigger a siren alarm when a leak is detected. This option will only work while you have internet and power though. The subscription will allow the hub to alert you even if internet and power are out.

Regardless of the subscription or rule details, just make sure to put leak sensors anywhere there is a water pipe joint or drain joint since that is where most of the leaks will occur. So: under sinks, washing machine, dish washer, hot water heater, maybe bathroom floor (careful about this one, since sometimes liquid can come from people getting in and out of the shower/bath, or people being terrible about aiming where they “go” when they stand up to relieve their bladder…but definitely somewhere on the bathroom floor to alert you if the toilet overflows or something would be good), also somewhere on the floor underneath water pipe and drain areas (since those pipes might leak onto a lower floor), sump-pump area. Maybe near weak spots in the roof/attic or windows that might get left open or broken and leak when there is a storm. You get the idea.

I hope that helps.

[carverofchoice]

Haha, Leak alarm went off on the leak sensor monitoring my main water line a few days ago Yeah, imagine my potential panic…

Turns out, it was just one of my passive-aggressive cats who peed on it because they were mad that my daughter didn’t clean out their litter box…I’ve never been so relieved to learn that my cats peed on something.

[secondary_2g]

Oh my…

[secondary_2g]

Do they charge hourly or by the job?

I’ve got some things I’d like peed on over the next few weeks.

We should schedule an appointment…

[carverofchoice]

@secondary_2g

Do they charge hourly or by the job?

I think they charge by the lifetime…might be a little overpriced for the level of their work ethic and attitude, but they are cute most of the time, and usually fairly well-behaved when their minimal demands are met.

[TomG]

10 year old Rheem gas water heater sprung a leak last week. Samsung leak sensor worked as designed, as did the Dome water shutoff. A handyman neighbor replaced the heater last time because I was working and didn’t have time. Found the same heater at Home Depot except the part number ended in 1 instead of 0. Looked the same. Tank height and diameter same. Planned to swap it and not mess with sweating, which I am terrible at. Got the heater in, nat gas no leaks, flue connected, and the da&% hot water pipe nipple is 1/4” higher than the old tank. The copper pipe hits the joist before the fitting lines up. No room for the gasket. I don’t have any experience with SharkBite, and every time a plumber was here, they sweated.
So I called the plumber to cut and sweat the pipe. He had a Milwaukee battery operated crimper and used couplers with o-rings inside.
Neighbor owns a tool rental company but doesn’t have that tool. I need to fix the hot side also, and would rather not pay another $210.00 for 30 minutes and some copper pipe. If I can rent the tool, I can do the job.
About 30 years ago a leak developed in the basement that required pipe replacement. No YouTube back then, so I winged it. Wife was gone for 5 hours and when she got home I had 3 leaks. Thought I had it fixed, but when I turned the water on, the fitting leaked. Now I have water in the line, and even after opening all faucets upstairs, water was still dripping from the pipe. FIL said to shove bread in the pipe to act as a temporary stopper. I used flux, and learned later that I was getting the fitting and pipe way too hot. After the 4th trip to the hardware store, I found a fitting that was the grandfather to the SharkBite. They have been in use for over 30 years, with no leaks. But if I can rent the tool, those fittings are being replaced with the crimp type.

[R.Good]

The thing I learned about sweating… clean the pipe inside and out, flux like crazy, solder like crazy, only heat enough to get it to melt. It’ll only pull what it needs