People might not be aware that installing the motorized shutoff valves does NOT automatically turn off the water – you have to set this up in your phone app.
Why doesn’t it? YoLink makes all kinds of sensors and actuators – door and window sensors, security sensors, sprinkler controllers, garage door openers/sensors, etc. So, while adding the sensors to your app automatically tells you when they’re wet – what do YOU want to do about it when that alert happens? You have to tell it what to do explicitly.
There are 2 ways to do this – scenes, and automations. Each have some advantages and disadvantages:
- Scenes and alarm strategies
- Pros – Reacts to a leak alert from any sensor – when added into the system, new sensors are automatically added into the alert strategy
- Cons – Any alert shuts off the water – and if you lose internet, that triggers an alert saying it’s lost internet, so it shuts off the water when that happens. Our internet is pretty stable, so that’s fairly rare – but it does happen
- Automations
- Pros – unlike scenes, losing internet doesn’t shut the water off. You can tell an automation to only trigger when an actual leak alert occurs.
- Cons – You have to have the automation trigger from every sensor in your system – if you add a new sensor, you’ll have to modify the automation to include that new sensor. Otherwise, you’d get a leak alert – but not shut the water off.
Making a scene to shut the water off (note: even if you use automations, scenes are a handy way to turn off/on both hot/cold water quickly)
How do you know if your shutoff valves are working?
Just like your smoke detector, you should test that your sensors shut off your water at least once a year:
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First, validate you can turn the hot/cold water on/off with your phone
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Back to Setting up leak sensors, etc. - what do you need, and how to set it up