The Fear of Burst-Pipe Calamity Haunted Me. This Simple DIY Device Has Brought Me Peace.

The YoLink EVO Valve Operator, shown installed on a valve in the middle of a water pipe.

After my wife and I bought a house last year, we settled into a paranoid routine. The house is a century old. The upstairs plumbing looks like it is too. So every time we’d head back to our apartment in New York, we’d go down to the shadowy basement, shut the main water valve, and drain the kitchen and bathroom pipes dry.

It didn’t worry us to leave the furnace on. We didn’t fret about the pilot lights on the old stove going out. But the idea of a pipe bursting while we were away gave us chills.

When I mentioned this to Wirecutter’s smart-home editor — whose house is older yet — he suggested that we follow his example and install a smart valve controller. The concept seemed pretty comforting: When the device detects a water leak, it shuts off your water automatically, preventing catastrophic flooding.

I liked the idea, and I tested two simple, no-plumber-required valve controller models at my house this fall. Further testing at Wirecutter headquarters cemented our recommendation: the Yolink EVO 2. It’s easy to install, reliable, and intended to work with valves of numerous designs — we built five different setups and tested the EVO 2 on each of them to confirm it.

If you’re worried about unnoticed catastrophic leaks — if you travel often for work, for example, or have a weekend or rental property that you can’t keep daily tabs on — it’s an attractively barebones way to gain peace of mind.



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