4 Small Smart Devices That Can Prevent Major Home Damage

I don’t like surprises, especially the kind that cost me money. Our sump pump failed one winter during a flash thaw, but I didn’t find out about it until several inches of water ruined the electronics, books, and furniture in our basement. I could have avoided that damage with a simple smart water-leak sensor, which would have alerted me to the problem early. If you’re the kind of person who loses sleep worrying about home catastrophes, you can ease your anxiety with fairly inexpensive smart-home sensors that can detect small problems before they become big expensive ones.

Smart-home sensors can be discreetly placed all around your house, don’t require any expertise to use, and leave you with some peace of mind knowing that if mayhem strikes, you’ll have enough time to act before it busts your repair budget. Some smart-home sensors can be set up by themselves, while others work best when integrated with Apple HomeKit or another smart-home hub like SmartThings or Wink, which let different smart-home devices work together. All can send notifications to your smartphone when triggered, and many work with smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Nest Hub, letting you check their status just by asking or receiving voice notifications through the speaker.

Here are some of the smart-home devices we think are useful for most people:

Water sensors

Water is great when it’s coming out of the faucet on demand. But when it’s slowly leaking under your sink or around your old washing machine, rotting the floorboards or flooding a room, it becomes an expensive menace. Water leak detectors can help spot it early. Wirecutter recommends the Flo by Moen Smart Water Detector since it’s easy to mount on a wall or place under appliances, and it delivers quick alerts in case there’s an emergency related to water, temperature (including freeze alerts), or humidity, as well if it experiences Wi-Fi connectivity problems. The main sensor has probes on the bottom, and an optional cable can be laid out to extend its reach up to 4 feet.

The Flo by Moen can’t be integrated with smart-home platforms, though it does work with the larger Flo by Moen Smart Water Shutoff system.

Smart smoke alarms

Most homes already have smoke alarms, often more than one, and they’re an essential safety feature for anyone. But they have one major shortfall: They’re only effective if you're actually home to hear the siren going off. A smart smoke alarm does that but also notifies you when you’re away, letting you call the fire department and a trusted neighbor to ensure a faster response and the safety of people who live nearby.

Our favorite is the Google Nest Protect, which senses both smoke and carbon monoxide and sends a notification to your smartphone in a smoke event.

Temperature sensors

Aside from helping you regulate the climate in your home, temperature sensors can notify you of changes in temperature-critical locations such as wine cabinets, humidors, crib rooms, or pet enclosures. Let’s say the heater in your anaconda cage blows out in January. A temperature sensor can alert you to the problem, giving you a chance to fix it before your snake catches a cold. Most temperature sensors are small, about the size of a matchbook, and can be discreetly hidden away. If you connect one to a smart speaker like the Amazon Echo, you can set custom announcements, such as “snake is chilly,” to warn you of a problem. We like the Centralite Temperature and Humidity Sensor with Zigbee-enabled Alexa speakers (it also works with SmartThings and other Zigbee hubs). We also like the Eve Weather sensor for Apple HomeKit users. In addition to being a smart sensor, it features a display that lets you see the temperature without having to open an app on your iPhone.

Contact sensors

Used on doors or windows to determine if something is opened or closed, contact sensors are usually part of a security system that alerts you when an intruder enters your home. But they can be used in lots of other practical ways to protect your belongings: A contact sensor on the fridge can let you know the door is open so you can close it before your food is ruined. One on the garage door works much the same way, letting you close it before you’re too far away from home (and a smart garage-door controller allows you to close it remotely).

If you have a liquor cabinet or other valuable storage space, you can set up a contact sensor to let you know when snooping hands go where they shouldn’t. If you have toddlers and worry about them accessing certain parts of the home, contact sensors can quickly alert you when small hands push open a gate. We like the Aqara Door and Window Sensor because it’s tiny, affordable, and easy to add unobtrusively to doors and drawers alike. You’ll need to purchase an Aqara Hub to use it, but that hub will be able to support over 100 sensors. If you don’t want a hub, the Centralite Micro Door Sensor can be paired with compatible Amazon Echo or other Zigbee hubs for connectivity.