I am new to Home Assistant and everything around smart home, so I hope you are patient… As a first project, I want to set up water leak sensors and automate our main water supply valve - if a water leak is detected anywhere, I want the water to be turned off.
Criteria regarding the sensors: ZigBee, must have an alarm/speaker so it does sound an alarm even if home automation is down, decent battery life and battery sensor.
Criteria regarding the main valve: We have an ordinary gate or globe valve - not so sure which one, but it does not make much difference for my purpose - I need some motor that turns the valve knob/handle.
With leak sensors you only detect a leak if it is in the neighborhood of this sensors.
What I did was placing a flow sensor right after the main valve.
Motors to control the main valve you find on uncle Ali.
Or install a solenoid valve after or for the flow sensor.
Sure, I want to have a leak sensor under the kitchen sink, another one behind the washing machine, etc. - and if one of them detects a leak, it should turn the valve closed…
If you are into DIY it is easy enough to make your own leak sensors with ESPHome: Wifi Water Leak Detector
Though now that I have a robust Zigbee network I would just use Aqara leak sensors. There are some pretty cheap Chinese zigbee valve actuators on Aliexpres too.
I guess you could tie it with the home zone sensor.
But that still leaves it open for water leaks at night without it saying anything.
Or gives false positive reports in other cases
I would assume most water leaks are just dripping or slightly more and thus nothing that is very easy to detect with a flow meter
And if it’s more than that it would be hard to know the difference from a burst pipe or one or more faucets being turned on at once.
Even if you could detect small leaks and set some sort of time based thing it would be hard to figure out what to set it to. I do something similar with my irrigation system and set it to 5 minutes. but that’s easy since the flow is either supposed to be 0 when the valve is told to be off or >0 when it’s told to be on. And I know when it’s supposed to be in which state. But for regular plumbing that wouldn’t be viable.
Just use a leak sensor (or three) to know if water is going where it shouldn’t because that’s the real concern. not whether a faucet is just leaking into the sink and draining away to where it usually would go. One is a nuisance while the other is damage.
I only get a warning after 45min, If I’m honest, it is more to detect if I forget the hose to fill the pool or a problem with the grass sprinklers, Or a big leak somewhere else.
It’s that “big leak somewhere else” that’s the problem. After 45 minutes of a big leak your basement (if you have one) could have several inches of water in it.
You can still use the flow sensor for the other things you described (as I do for my irrigation system) but for leaks that you don’t want to damage stuff then use leak sensors. I mean, their suggested use is literally right in the name. they are fairly cheap insurance.
As a first project, I want to set up water leak sensors and automate our main water supply valve - if a water leak is detected anywhere, I want the water to be turned off.
they are fairly cheap insurance.