Once you do get the sensor strapped to the meter (which shouldn’t take more than 5 or 10 minutes) and the bridge connected to your Wi-Fi network via Flume’s app, it’s quick work to get everything running. Flume includes rubber gloves and a plastic meter cover opener to help you out, which is convenient. The bridge hasn’t changed significantly, but it does look a lot more appealing now, and the spindly antenna that made the first version of the bridge look like a kid’s science project has been removed.Īs a reminder, installation means getting your hands a bit dirty, unless your water meter is conveniently located in a basement or garage. The bridge is still a small device that plugs in to an outlet inside your house as near as you can get it to the sensor. This is great news, because loss of signal was a major issue in my testing of the original Flume, due to the fact that my water meter is located not near the house but rather at the street about 200 feet away, buried underground inside a concrete vault. The sensor is now considerably larger, in part because Flume says its batteries now last twice as long and in part because the wireless signal is much stronger. Like the original, the Flume 2 consists of two main components: a battery-powered sensor that you strap to your water meter with a tough rubber band, and a bridge that relays the radio signal from the sensor to your Wi-Fi network (and from there to the Flume mobile app).Ĭosmetically and functionally, both devices have been significantly enhanced. The overall concept is the same, but the Flume 2 is a significant step ahead of the first version, which I also tested for several months. Now the system has been updated and improved with the launch of the Flume 2. The original Flume arrived last year as a clever solution to this, letting you track how much water you’re using and, more importantly, sussing out any leaks you should know about. Wouldn’t it be nice to be alerted to such problems electronically? As in-home disasters go, a water leak is among the worst of the bunch, made even more troubling by the fact that many leaks go undetected in the form of unnoticed drips or toilets that never stop running, all of which can drive up your water bill-not to mention the insidious damage water can cause to your home.

Flume smart water flow monitor