WaterCop LeakStopPlus, 3/4 In.

This appears to be a very well made product. My plumber, who installed it for me, has looked over it carefully and was impressed with its quality. I've also contacted both the seller and the manufacturer with a few questions about it, and have received very thorough and professional responses to all of them.

My two star rating is not for the valve as much as it is for the vendor who sold it. Since the value was to be installed in a water line, upon receipt the value contained a Proposition warning that the value contained lead and suggested it should not be used for a drinking water line. No where was this disclosed by the seller. I contacted the seller through Amazon's system and a return was authorized. The catch was I had to pay the return freight of close to $14. I believe the seller should have paid the return freight since they said they were an authorized Watercop dealer and therefore should have known to disclose the lead containment warning. Also, the seller was very slow to ship. If you look elsewhere on the internet you can find the exact same product for one-third the cost with free, quick 2-day shipping. A big price difference I believe!

Using this as the water stop for the water coming into our home, just downstream of the well pump sensor.

Works as stated. Heavy duty as well. Simple on and off push button switch. Nice long sensors. Hope it will last 10 years or more.

works great

Works like a charm.

love it

Like everyone else, I've heard many horror stories about washing machine water hoses breaking and quickly flooding a home. I’ve always shut off the water valves to washing machines when not in use, but I still worry about faucet hoses, dishwashers, ice machine plumbing and the other various sources of potentially causing water damage to expensive home features like hardwood floors, especially if something were to happen when no one is home to quickly shut off the water.The obvious solution, to me, was to install an electrically activated water valve on the house supply line connected to sensors wherever I wanted it to detect leaks. The story below is provided in hopes of helping someone benefit from the approach I took.I researched leak sensors and water valves and found many brands and a wide range of prices. The inexpensive models were initially attractive, as with many things, until you realize that you generally get what you pay for (sometimes a lot less than you pay for). The cheaper models tend to be less reliable, and it would certainly be annoying to have one of them fail just when you need it.WaterCop makes an excellent product, and this is the brand that I installed a couple of years ago. It is well constructed, simple, reliable, and can be purchased with a lead-free valve which I’d consider an absolute “must have” for a home water supply since you drink the water and cook with it (the WCLSLF model is WaterCop, LeakStop, Lead Free). This brand is a more expensive product than some, and less expensive than others. It comes in several sizes from ½” up through 1-1/4” and in a couple of versions, the latest and most convenient being the wireless variety which makes placing sensors/probes much easier. Of course, there are then batteries to change out if you don’t have a 120 VAC outlet nearby for a power adapter, plus additional electronics with every sensor that could fail. Wireless can also get pretty pricy, especially if you want to cover every likely water leak source: toilets, sink faucets, dishwashers, washing machines, ice makers, water heaters, etc.As an electrical engineer, I tend to enjoy doing a little engineering with most things that I design and/or build, and this system was no exception. I laid out a system to cover every water-handling device in the house (those listed above) and decided to build a hard-wired sensor system. The hard-wired version of the WaterCop valve is called LeakStop, and it has two attached probes. I found that the actuator circuitry is just as happy with several hundred feet of wire in the loop as it is with the relatively short probe wires that come attached (I connected a 500 ft spool of wire between the actuator and a probe and it worked just as well). My main water supply line enters the house in the basement, so I ran 4-wire cable (security system wire) from that point to every faucet valve, toilet, water heater, dishwasher, ice maker, washing machine, etc. I used 4-wire cable even though you only need two wires for this because 1) I had some, and 2) it provided a spare wire pair to each location in the unlikely event it would ever be needed. Since we have an unfinished basement, I was able to get wires run either up from the basement or down thru the walls from the attic without too much trouble. I ran all of these in parallel, bringing a single wire pair back to the actuator where I cut off one of the probes and connected to the actuator.For sensors, I wanted something that was extremely sensitive, customizable and required no maintenance. I purchased a roll of very narrow copper foil tape with an adhesive backing ($5 plus shipping on eBay), and I made my sensors by sticking two pieces of this metal tape on a surface, side-by-side about 1/32” apart, soldering a wire to the end of each strip. These can be easily stuck to a tile floor just under a toilet water valve/hose, stuck inside a cabinet below faucet water valves, etc, and can of course be as long or short as desired to address an area. Since they are actually on the floor or the bottom of a cabinet, even the smallest little splash of water that bridges the two strips in any of the locations will provide sufficient conductivity to trip the actuator long before a pool of water forms (which would typically be required to be sensed by one of the commercial probes). A little labor intensive, but cheap and extremely effective.This arrangement is all that’s needed to shut off the water supply, but I was also concerned about the approx 3 gallons of water in our pipes that is still initially under 55 lbs of pressure when the supply is shut off. Especially for the first floor, any leak would continue to leak until that pressure bleeds off and potentially until some water drained from the second floor, and a few gallons would be more than enough to damage flooring. I decided to purchase a second LeakStop motorized valve to use as a way to bleed off that pressure. I removed the valve body from the actuator housing, turned it 90 degrees, and re-installed it so that it would actually be closed when the actuator thought it was open (the “normal” or “green” condition for the actuator). These valves are simple ball valves, and every 90 degree turn either opens or closes them. I then clipped off one of the probes and connected the wires to the relay contacts of the primary shut-off valve so that whenever the supply valve was activated (shut off), this secondary valve would also be activated (opened). Then I added some minor plumbing by tee’ing into a low point in our copper piping and running the outlet side of the valve to another piece of copper pipe that “vents” through the basement wall and outside the house.So, in the normal day-to-day configuration, the water supply valve is open to flow water to the house, and this additional valve is closed (even though its Watercop actuator module thinks it’s open, because I rotated the mounting). If a leak is detected anywhere in the house, the primary valve closes to shut off the water, and this additional valve opens (thinking it’s closing) which allows the residual water in the plumbing system to flow through the valve and vent outside. The system works very well, as it takes only seconds to vent the water pressure. Any detected leak would just about immediately stop, except for gravity fed water in the line where the leak is. Regardless, damage should be none or minimal.One other side note is I decided to connect my two valves to a small Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) designed for home computer systems. The chances of a water leak occurring during one of our rare power outages is probably as close to zero as you can get, but it would be just my luck, so I decided to eliminate that possibility with an UPS that was sitting around not being used. They can be had for about $50 or less on sale.This is a great product that you can count on. You may never have a water leak in your house, but if you ever do and you didn't install one of these systems, you’ll remember this little write-up… :-)