Using Zooz Zen17 as water sensor

Hardware
1

Hey everyone. I’ve got a Zooz Universal Relay Zen 17 and am thinking of using it as a water sensor. (Ultimately I’d like to hook it to a shut-off valve but as of right now am not sure my valve has the required 3 inches of clearance on either side, but I can solve that quickly in the future.)

Right now, I’m using just a standard flood alarm. I actually have an extra so what I’m thinking is to just cut the wire off one of them and use that leak sensor “pickup” to feed into the proper input on the Zen17. Does this make sense? In my understanding, I could get something like this Floor Water Sensor for Flood and Leak Detection (6 ft) but that’s essentially the same thing as cutting the wire off my current one. Am I missing something? It’s just regular wire, but made to be easily installed close to the floor, but not touching, so as to quickly pick up minute quantities of water.

I sometimes don’t understand electricity so don’t want to make a dumb unforced error.

2

I have serious doubts that Zen can read bare water leak sensor. You likely need sensor switch aka water leak alarm with binary output.

3

i don’t understand enough about how dumb flood sensors, or the Zen17 function to be able to answer that question. it came up in this post as a suggestion: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/1bdgghi/what_are_good_zwavezigbee_leak_detectors_and/ and although I was skeptical, I guess if there is sensor sensitive enough to trigger an audible alarm in a $15 flood sensor, that same type of sensor could be in the Zen17. I guess it’s simple enough to test on my own if no one can independently verify. And even especially for a water sensor, what technically works might not be what I entrust with protecting my house from flooding. So anyway, I appreciate the response!

4

From the description on the leak sensor’s website:

It behaves as an open circuit when no water is present, and behaves as a (roughly) 1.4MΩ resistor when water is present. The resistance of it depends on your water

And from the Zooz Zen17 manual:

S1 C: wall switch to control R1 or dry contact sensor to monitor leaks (max 40k Ohm when on), open/close status, or motion.

So the Zen17 is guaranteed to detect a switch as “closed” if the resistance drops below 40 kOhms. The water sensor is expected to drop to around 1400 kOhms when water is detected, but could be different depending on how dirty/ionized the water is.

In other words, using these two devices together as a leak detector is going to be unreliable and therefore a bad idea.

5

I’s not a question of sensor sensitivity or price. It’s question of Zen not being designed for that kind of input.