Smart Water Leak Detector

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After finding out we had water issues while away on a vacation, we recently set up a smart water leak detector for our ground floor to notify us in the event of a leak. I picked the Fibaro Water Leak Detector to use in our home, which is Z-wave compatible to integrate with Google Home and Home Assistant. A water leak detector could also be handy to put in places where you don’t go often, like the basement.

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Backstory

We have a townhouse, which has a half level on the first floor with a powder room and the other half being the garage. After coming home from a short vacation, we found a leak in our first-floor powder room. Everything on the ground was wet and also leaked through the wall into the garage. If we had gotten a notification that there was a leak, we could have had a friend or family member check up on our home to investigate while we were away.

Leak Detector Requirements

Before looking for a solution, I came up with a list of requirements that would give us peace of mind if we had a future leak.

Z-Wave compatible to integrate with Home Assistant
Send a notification to our phones
Verbal alert from all Google Homes in the house. This is incredibly useful if the leak happens at night to get us out of bed.
An audible alarm from the sensor
Temperature sensor built in (more of a nice to have)

The Fibaro Water Leak Detector checked all the boxes and was reasonably priced ($50 at the time of writing). There were a few negative reviews, but they were mostly around setup issues. We have a lot of Z-Wave devices across the entire house, so I wasn’t concerned that range would be an issue.

Setting up the Fibaro Water Leak Detector

Setup worked on the first try by adding the sensor as a secure node. I also had the sensor right next to the Z-Wave hub during pairing, which was recommended by the provided instructions.

The bottom of the sensor has 3 gold pins that detect water. Once a pool of water connects 2 of the pins to connect a circuit, the sensor will alarm. The sensor sits pretty low to the ground, so it should be able to detect a very small amount of water.

Home Assistant & Google Home Integration

The sensor was added to Home Assistant, which integrates with Google Home. I created a simple automation in Home Assistant to send a text-to-speech alert to all of our Google Nest speakers. Since the Fibaro also has a temperature sensor, I can track the temperature in the lower level to see if the powder room gets too cold in the winter. From what happened with our leak, my guess is that the temperature was too low and condensation was building up on the toilet tank.

Note: The Fibaro sensor will not directly integrate with Google Home. A Z-Wave hub is needed.

Here’s the alert from our Google Nest speakers when the sensor detects water.

Water sensors are one of those set-it-and-forget-it smart devices. You’ll never use it on a daily basis, but having peace of mind is well worth the price of the sensor. We’d rather spend the $50 now than have to pay a lot more to fix future water damage!