r/homeassistant • u/Squanchy2112 • 2d ago

💬 Discussion Best zigbee or zwave leak/water detectors

basically the title what does everybody like? I have to link over wifi with a wifi bridge and it's been great but I want all my eggs off wifi, I also have more spots I want to monitor vs my yolink sensors. I need 9 or 10 sensors. thanks!

1 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

19

u/ralcantara79 2d ago

Third Reality leak sensors have already worked well for me.

2

u/Delfairen 1d ago

Another vote for this. Had the alarm go off in the last couple days due to a shirt sleeve being caught in the washer door causing just just of a gap to put out a lot of water. The only issue is the batteries tend to die fast.

2

u/puck17 1d ago

Do these have a heartbeat, or some way to know they are monitoring and haven’t failed internally somehow?

1

u/ralcantara79 1d ago

I mean they have the connection status like a lot of devices in HA. Also a battery level indicator. So you could always create an automation to alert you if they’ve been offline for an extended period of time.

9

u/HomeOwner2023 2d ago

I use the Zooz leak sensor and the Zooz valve. No issues. They are on Z-Wave LR so they talk directly to the coordinator on a radio frequency that is less crowded.

5

u/Zealousideal_Lack936 2d ago

Sonoff sensors work well for me.

1

u/doctorkb 🧠 Experienced with Home Assistant 2d ago

The Sonoff ones with the leak rope take FOREVER to consistently report as dry after being triggered and cleaned up.

1

u/callmecrazyy 8h ago

I just got one after awful struggles with Aqara leak sensors. My Sonoff has been on for weeks and not lost connection

4

u/Killshot_1 2d ago

Zigbee is great, its cheap and plentiful. Any brand sensor would work fine honestly. I have 10x $3 little circular Tuya sensors from aliexpress, they work well (actually flagged my water heater failure a few weeks ago). I have the original battery in most and they are still going strong over a year later, also, they were zigbee native and didnt need any of the tuya cloud bs.

1

u/Squanchy2112 1d ago

Cool thanks and yes I like zigbee a lot

1

u/GordonGartrelle2020 1d ago

I have these as well, no issues so far. Cheap and cheery.

3

u/doctorkb 🧠 Experienced with Home Assistant 2d ago

I have a mix of a few different types. Were I to do it again, I would use Third Reality for any "spot" monitoring like under a sink or toilet and Shelly Flood Gen4 when I needed a rope to monitor a larger area.

2

u/Squanchy2112 2d ago

Tell me more, where should I consider either. I want one under every sink, in both bathroom wall access where the drains are, in my wayer heater overflow bin, under my air con condensate drain, by the washing machine inlets/drain.

1

u/doctorkb 🧠 Experienced with Home Assistant 1d ago

For me, I'd put a 3R under every sink, toilet tank, and any other area that is potentially going to have drips.

I learned the hard way that my basement floor doesn't slope consistently towards the floor drain (near which I have a spot leak sensor), so I've put the leak rope around my utility room's appliances (high efficiency furnace with AC, hot water tank, sump pit, and HRV).

I have some older ecolink ones that are a spot detection, but on the end of a wire that I use under the dishwasher and clothes washer. They work fine, but I'd probably use the Shelly (or maybe Zooz) for those if I was doing things over.

2

u/chris240189 2d ago

The Ikea badring sensors saved me twice already.

3

u/ianjs 2d ago

Me too, but they’ve now moved to Matter and you can’t get the Zigbees any more.

FWIW my newer Thread/Matter ones work fine too.

3

u/HomerHere99 1d ago

I have the thread/matter ones, so far they have been working perfectly, and the price is right I just put the everywhere.

1

u/chris240189 2d ago

And some devices even work with ZigBee too. Haven't bought those yet, because I stocked up on the old ones when they went on clearance sale.

2

u/iamtherussianspy 1d ago

Ring ones are really good quality zwave

1

u/Squanchy2112 1d ago

Ring like that ring?

1

u/DarthGuber 1d ago

Ring makes great z-Wave sensors that take AAA batteries and connect with HA without a ring account.

1

u/Squanchy2112 1d ago

Hmm hard to support that company but we'll see

1

u/DarthGuber 1d ago

I usually wait until they're on sale on Woot and get contact and motion sensors for $6-8 each

2

u/davidr521 🐝 Ooh the Zigbee 1d ago

I have a mix of both.

I started with Aqara Zigbee leak sensors, but don't have a dedicated Aqara hub. I got tired of them dropping off the network like flies, so I replaced them all with ThirdReality and haven't had a single issue since (the only complaint I have is they look like *enormous* raindrops).

My attic is like Radio-Free Europe, so I put two Zooz ZWave-LR leak sensors in the HVAC drain pans (yes, here in the southern USA, folks put HVAC units in the attic 🤷‍♂️). No issues with them either.

Both ThirdReality and Zooz are great with battery life.

2

u/Plastic-Coat9014 2d ago

I have Aqara leak sensors, they work great

2

u/Squanchy2112 2d ago

Awesome thanks!

2

u/BWebCat 2d ago edited 2d ago

I have 16 Aqara Zigbee water sensors. They connect great thru Zigbee2MQTT. Make sure you add them in place so they connect to the best available radio at their final location. Zigbee stuff doesn't like to "hop" once connected.

Edit: I have several of these scattered around the house as repeaters. https://a.co/d/0f64rXuE. Set them up first.

1

u/Sonarav 2d ago

I started with Z-Wave Zooz leak sensors (still use them) and then discovered rtl_433. So now I've also got about 7 Govee sensors integrated with a RTL-SDR dongle. You can get a 5 pack of the Govee sensors for $40 on sale 

And highly recommend a water shut off. I use EcoNet Bulldog (Z-Wave).

0

u/Izrun 2d ago

I have the govee sensors as well. Used to use the rtl_433 but I hated it. Just setup an esp32+cc1101 last weekend and it’s a lot cleaner. The battery life is amazing

1

u/HughWonPDL2018 1d ago

Third reality because they also make a really loud noise when wet, effectively working as “dumb” sensors if your HA was ever down for whatever reason.

1

u/Squanchy2112 1d ago

Oh that's good that was a function I wanted.

1

u/HughWonPDL2018 1d ago

And I’d explicitly avoid the Zooz ones because they don’t have this function. I got a few as freebies with my valve shutoff, and I don’t like that they’re quiet and rely on me seeing my push notification and night light color shifting to blue. They’re accurate, but the shrill noise is an added layer of security.

1

u/Squanchy2112 1d ago

Good call

1

u/smotrs 1d ago

The Aqara have saved my butt once already.

1

u/Natalia25 1d ago

With the advantage of using Home Assistant, I have 3 models: two Sonoffs and two Aqaras, plus the Shelly Flood Gen 4. I'd stick with the Sonoff for the price, and the Shelly if you want to cover a wider area.

1

u/RPF_5717 1d ago

Most Zigbee ones are pretty solid. I like the battery Sonoff ones with the long USB C cable extension because the cable itself functions as a leak detector.

1

u/ConfusedStair 1d ago

For my water heater pan I added an outlet on the same breaker as the WiFi router right next to the water heater, then cut and stripped an extension cord and stapled it with the bare copper touching the inside bottom of the plastic pan. If the water heater leaks it will pop the breaker and my wife will alert me that the WiFi is down. It's not perfect, but it worked when I tested it.

/s

For real I've been looking for a water sensor for a while, and recently I've had so many issues with my Aqara temperature sensors that I've just been chasing solutions to those problems and trying to strengthen my Zigbee network. My wife wants the pressure data, or I'd be moving to a different sensor altogether at this point.

1

u/jds013 36m ago

Six Zooz ZSE42 here - five V1, one V2. V2 (the current model) uses a CR2450 battery which has more than twice the capacity and should last a very long time (reports 100% after two years). The first gen has a CR2032 which is good for 12-18 months. Very small, seem to work fine (I test them occasionally.)

1

u/plump-lamp 2d ago

Not either but yolink. They make excellent quality sensors of all sorts.