Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

NEW - HS-WV100+ Z-Wave Plus Water Valves!

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • sonypoolplr
    replied
    Originally posted by lwatson10 View Post
    HomeSeer HS-WV100+ Z-Wave Plus Motorized Water Valve

    Is there a setting for this valve that would allow you to only partially open or close it? I would like to add these valves to my pond which has 5 waterfalls, and wanted to automate each waterfall. I need a valve that would allow me to only have 20 percent of the waterflow on several as well as turn off others.

    Thanks,
    Lex
    I don't think so. I only see open/close as the commands. I put a manual valve before the auto valve to control the flow through the valve.

    Leave a comment:


  • lwatson10
    replied
    HomeSeer HS-WV100+ Z-Wave Plus Motorized Water Valve

    Is there a setting for this valve that would allow you to only partially open or close it? I would like to add these valves to my pond which has 5 waterfalls, and wanted to automate each waterfall. I need a valve that would allow me to only have 20 percent of the waterflow on several as well as turn off others.

    Thanks,
    Lex

    Leave a comment:


  • Ceteav
    replied
    I purchased the new Z-Wave Plus Water Valve. It comes with 10 ft cable between the valve and controller. How long can I extend this cable and not interfere with valve operation?

    Leave a comment:


  • madbrain
    replied
    Originally posted by lveatch View Post
    I can't suggest a Homeseer logging database solution. However, many years ago I created my own custom solution sending all of my device changes to influxdb and graphing with Grafana.
    It almost seems to me like this is something that should be part of HomeSeer - or if not, there should be a pluggable DB interface ... Might get quite complex to write rules that use both device plug-ins and DB plug-in, though. Or even just device-plugins and built-in DB. This is inherently complex stuff.

    Why that work really pays off is that you can get away from paying for all the cloud services. For example, I have a free cloud service from my Rainforest Eagle smartmeter, but they only keep 1 week of data. I get a summary email every week, but not the whole realtime curve every 15 seconds. I can download a CSV manually from the device, but if it loses power, the device DB is lost and starts up empty the next time...

    Enphase has an API for access to the solar meter DB, but it unfortunately depends on cloud services for my old Envoy-R device. At least the cloud service has been free for the last 12 years, though. Neweer Envoy-S/IQ Envoy DBs can be queried locally without the cloud service.

    The various IoT manufacturers that make energy measuring smartplugs each have a different interface for accessing the data. The vast majority of them relies on cloud services.

    There would be a lot of value to me in having something that accesses the devices directly, and doesn't need any cloud services, since many of them can go away or become paid subscriptions over time.

    I believe Google did something with their Energy meter that could aggregate multiple devices, but of course, it was a cloud service, and they canned it years ago.

    Leave a comment:


  • madbrain
    replied
    Originally posted by integlikewhoa View Post

    There is more then one free plugin for databases but nothing built in. I have used Jon00 database from his website myself http://www.jon00.me.uk/index.shtml

    You can defiantly do what your thinking with homeseer, its capable.
    Thanks for your response. I meant to ask if I could do it with Homeseer, or with one or more plug-ins for Homeseer. Ie. not having to implement the database hooks/plug-in myself.
    I really don't know enough about how HomeSeer works and what the plug-in interface looks like. Every meter, electric or water, or gas is going to be different in what it measures, how often it measures it, etc. So, it's hard to design a generic interface that works with multiple types of meter. And even harder if you want to combine data from multiple metering devices, such as electric solar submeter, CT meters, plug-in meters, etc.

    I think what your thinking of doing is fine for manually finding a small leak. 1 min interval probley too short as a small leak might not be a gallon a min or register much change every min. if its a small leak, but yes maybe like 3-5min or so.
    Yes, 1 minute interval may be too short if the leak is smaller than the resolution of the meter. 3-5 minutes might make more sense. A lot is going to depend on the capabilities of the meter.

    If you have a real water leak you wouldn't want to wait for 24 hours of data to shut off the water valve or something. At that point an alert sent to you to manually go check out the data is probley what is needed.
    I waited a year and a half with a tiny water leak in my toilet bowl, almost invisible. The toilet was an in-wall toilet. The failure was in the in-wall mechanism. There were no parts available due to COVID. Finally, I had it replaced with a regular toilet, but this cost thousands due to the need to open the wall, extract water lines, change the floor plumbing for the waste line, etc. There was also electrical since I added a bidet toilet seat. I have 4 other in-wall toilets in the home, sigh. House was built with 5 of them, I didn't put them in. The others aren't leaking, fortunately, and are barely used. We often won't go into those bathrooms for many months at a time. The water bill is every 2 months, so we would like to know before the bill comes due if there is even a small leak.

    For me this is similar to what I have already and it DID help me with the pool evaporation sort of. But none of that logic is tied to shutting off the water valve.
    Yes, that makes sense. Seems like the shutoff valve comes in handy for very large leaks, and when you are away from home. Valve is used to fix the symptoms, not for detection.

    I'm more worried about water heater flooding the house or something that is gonna cause a big issue.
    Yes, that happened to me once. Fortunately, I was home. We have two tank water heaters in the house, also, sigh. There have been 3 water heater replacements in 12 years.

    For that I still have to rely on "Dumb" water sensors that work great and fast. they sense water they shut off the water valve going to the house and send an alert no matter if I'm home or not. The water stops flowing instantly and saves alot of cleanup, baseboards, drywall and flooring repairs. I did have a small leak under a RO unit that feeds the icemaker and drinking water. That was the only time it has actually auto shut off the water to the house. It was a small leak and surprised the dumb sensor even had enough water around it to trip.
    I have had RO leaks as well. This was a nightmare. My kitchen is upstairs due to the view. Underneath is the home theater. I found out about the RO leak by getting showered during a movie, sigh.

    Unfortunately the flow device I have just can not replace that especially if I have to wait for 24 hours to check.
    Different rules could be created for a shorter duration of time. For example, my 95 gallon bathtub takes 20 minutes to fill up.
    My 380 gallon hot tub takes roughly 75 minutes. If one has a record of all the data over even the last few hours, it should be possible to create rules that differentiate a major leak from one of those fillups, as long as there is a way to analyze the data, and not just the meter value between two times t1 and t2.

    Leave a comment:


  • lveatch
    replied
    Originally posted by madbrain View Post

    OK, so it sounds like this is a limitation in Homeseer. What I want to do is take a water usage reading periodically. Say, maybe once a minute, and save that to a database.
    Then, once a day, I want my event to check the last 1440 samples, and if none of them have zero usage, this would be a pretty good indication of a leak. Of course, the interval could be tweaked, but you get the idea. Reading between 2 samples of course is not enough to determine whether there is a leak.

    I am quite new to Homeseer (just installed the trial version yesterday) so I don't really know its features. I have seen that it has an energy monitoring feature . Does it have any kind of database that records usage over time somehow ? Something similar would need to be done for water usage. Maybe that feature is not there.
    I don't have one of these valves to control, however, I too had small water leaks I wanted to monitor for - in my case, an outdoor inground watering value had a slow(ish) leak. I implemented three water main counters tracking hourly, daily and monthly "usage" by putting a hall / reed sensor on my water meter which is enough to know when the water runs for a set amount of time. "Usage" is not the correct word as the sensor is detecting when the meter's magnet spins enough. I then check the hourly and daily counters for when they go past a set threshold. While not perfect, it's good enough to meet my current needs.

    Event for when the water meter sensor changes:
    IF Basement Utility Room Water Meter Status changes and becomes Flowing
    AND IF Outside Irrigation Irrigation Value Schedule has a value equal to Off
    THEN Increment counter Water Main Hourly
    THEN Increment counter Water Main Daily
    THEN Increment counter Water Main Monthly

    Daily and Hourly counter checks:
    IF Water Main Daily value has exceeded this: 400 OR
    IF Water Main Hourly value has exceeded this: 100
    THEN Send an Email to xxxxxx@gmail.com with the subject Check Water Main
    THEN Speak Check Water Main. Possible Water Main leak. Daily usage count is high. To: SERV1EFAULT HOMESEER:BASEMENT And Wait for Speaking To Finish

    Reset the Hourly every hour event. Likewise, the daily / monthly resets are ran according to the counter's name:
    IF The event will automatically trigger every 1h, 0m, 0s
    THEN Execute the command: &hs.WriteLog("Info", "Water Main Hourly Counter = " & hs.CounterValue("Water Main Hourly") ) and wait for the command to finish befo
    re continuing , and also only allow one instance of the script to run at a time.
    THEN Reset counter Water Main Hourly (To Zero)



    I can't suggest a Homeseer logging database solution. However, many years ago I created my own custom solution sending all of my device changes to influxdb and graphing with Grafana.

    Leave a comment:


  • integlikewhoa
    replied
    Originally posted by madbrain View Post

    OK, so it sounds like this is a limitation in Homeseer. What I want to do is take a water usage reading periodically. Say, maybe once a minute, and save that to a database.
    Then, once a day, I want my event to check the last 1440 samples, and if none of them have zero usage, this would be a pretty good indication of a leak. Of course, the interval could be tweaked, but you get the idea. Reading between 2 samples of course is not enough to determine whether there is a leak.

    I am quite new to Homeseer (just installed the trial version yesterday) so I don't really know its features. I have seen that it has an energy monitoring feature . Does it have any kind of database that records usage over time somehow ? Something similar would need to be done for water usage. Maybe that feature is not there.
    There is more then one free plugin for databases but nothing built in. I have used Jon00 database from his website myself http://www.jon00.me.uk/index.shtml

    You can defiantly do what your thinking with homeseer, its capable.

    I think what your thinking of doing is fine for manually finding a small leak. 1 min interval probley too short as a small leak might not be a gallon a min or register much change every min. if its a small leak, but yes maybe like 3-5min or so.

    If you have a real water leak you wouldn't want to wait for 24 hours of data to shut off the water valve or something. At that point an alert sent to you to manually go check out the data is probley what is needed.

    For me this is similar to what I have already and it DID help me with the pool evaporation sort of. But none of that logic is tied to shutting off the water valve.

    I'm more worried about water heater flooding the house or something that is gonna cause a big issue. For that I still have to rely on "Dumb" water sensors that work great and fast. they sense water they shut off the water valve going to the house and send an alert no matter if I'm home or not. The water stops flowing instantly and saves alot of cleanup, baseboards, drywall and flooring repairs. I did have a small leak under a RO unit that feeds the icemaker and drinking water. That was the only time it has actually auto shut off the water to the house. It was a small leak and surprised the dumb sensor even had enough water around it to trip.

    Unfortunately the flow device I have just can not replace that especially if I have to wait for 24 hours to check.

    Leave a comment:


  • madbrain
    replied
    Originally posted by integlikewhoa View Post

    I had it around 2-3 years, no difference in flow.

    You make your own events in homeseer. There is no auto anything without you creating an event. So you make an event to check the reading, then recheck it in X amount of min. So if you have an event check the reading then check again in 5min and if it used more then 1 gallon shut off water valve.

    But as you can see how would you know if that was because you flushed the toilet during that time or if it was leaking during that time. Or if you washed your hands in the sink.

    The best you'll be able to do is check in the middle of the night when normally your asleep and no water should be used. But if for some reason the icemaker uses water or you just happened to get up at that time during the night then it will shut off water even though it shouldnt have.

    Bottomline its not that easy using flow to check for a leak.
    OK, so it sounds like this is a limitation in Homeseer. What I want to do is take a water usage reading periodically. Say, maybe once a minute, and save that to a database.
    Then, once a day, I want my event to check the last 1440 samples, and if none of them have zero usage, this would be a pretty good indication of a leak. Of course, the interval could be tweaked, but you get the idea. Reading between 2 samples of course is not enough to determine whether there is a leak.

    I am quite new to Homeseer (just installed the trial version yesterday) so I don't really know its features. I have seen that it has an energy monitoring feature . Does it have any kind of database that records usage over time somehow ? Something similar would need to be done for water usage. Maybe that feature is not there.

    Leave a comment:


  • integlikewhoa
    replied
    Originally posted by madbrain View Post

    Nice how long have you had it ? Has it reduced the water pressure inside your home at all ?



    I wonder why it's that hard. A leaky toilet would show continuous consumption. That should be one of the easiest cases to detect, if water consumption never goes to zero in say, a 24 hour period. It would likely need sub-gallon resolution, though. What's the interval between readings ? Seconds ? Minutes ? Hours ?

    I'm a bit wary of the feature "Automatically turn off water if TOO MUCH water is flowing" . Sometimes I do want to fill up my 95 gallon bath tub, or 380 gallon hot tub. Is that automatic stop feature configurable ? I hope so.
    I had it around 2-3 years, no difference in flow.

    You make your own events in homeseer. There is no auto anything without you creating an event. So you make an event to check the reading, then recheck it in X amount of min. So if you have an event check the reading then check again in 5min and if it used more then 1 gallon shut off water valve.

    But as you can see how would you know if that was because you flushed the toilet during that time or if it was leaking during that time. Or if you washed your hands in the sink.

    The best you'll be able to do is check in the middle of the night when normally your asleep and no water should be used. But if for some reason the icemaker uses water or you just happened to get up at that time during the night then it will shut off water even though it shouldnt have.

    Bottomline its not that easy using flow to check for a leak.

    Leave a comment:


  • madbrain
    replied
    Originally posted by integlikewhoa View Post

    I have a Fortrezz unit that works with HS3 or 4.
    Nice how long have you had it ? Has it reduced the water pressure inside your home at all ?

    But using it to automatically detect a leak is near impossible. One extra flush of a toilet at 2am would throw everything off. There is too many variables for it to work out. With sprinklers, pool auto top off, ice make, water softener and other automated water users that may run random times or days it near impossible to tell a leaky toilet from a normal activity.
    I wonder why it's that hard. A leaky toilet would show continuous consumption. That should be one of the easiest cases to detect, if water consumption never goes to zero in say, a 24 hour period. It would likely need sub-gallon resolution, though. What's the interval between readings ? Seconds ? Minutes ? Hours ?

    I'm a bit wary of the feature "Automatically turn off water if TOO MUCH water is flowing" . Sometimes I do want to fill up my 95 gallon bath tub, or 380 gallon hot tub. Is that automatic stop feature configurable ? I hope so.

    Leave a comment:


  • integlikewhoa
    replied
    Originally posted by madbrain View Post

    Ah, I see ! I understand now. I already have water leak detector devices, but they are just dumb ones, not smart ones. A lot of sinks in the house, so I have about 10 such detectors.

    I'm concerned about detecting other leaks, though, in toilet bowls or even irrigation. This is something that would require long-term water usage data, and some sophisticated algorithms to analyze it. Are you aware of any water meter device that works with Homeseer ?
    I have a Fortrezz unit that works with HS3 or 4. But using it to automatically detect a leak is near impossible. One extra flush of a toilet at 2am would throw everything off. There is too many variables for it to work out. With sprinklers, pool auto top off, ice make, water softener and other automated water users that may run random times or days it near impossible to tell a leaky toilet from a normal activity.


    I have used it in the past just to check into things like when I thought my pool was leaking water due to alot of water usage only to find out that when I run a waterfall on the pool water evaporation like trippled vs. without it on that lead me to change the way or time when I use the waterfall rather then anytime the pool pump is on.

    But actual automation it's never helped me in the last few years.

    Leave a comment:


  • madbrain
    replied
    Originally posted by integlikewhoa View Post

    You would be mistaken. This is a water "Valve" not a meter or flow detector at all. This valve is just a motorized ball valve. Only sensing it does to a small degree is if the valve is open or closed. On it's own it doesn't know if water is leaking or flowing at all. That control would come from Homeseer and other input devices you might have.

    Normally you would buy this and also buy several leak sensors and place them around the house (under sink, next to hot water heater, next to washer and dryer or other areas of high chances of a leak). Those leak sensors just detect water by the continuity of water and closing/completing a circuit on the sensor. They also don't measure flow.

    To detect/sense flow and measure it you will need a water meter with a magnetic pickup on it and a zwave pickup device.
    Ah, I see ! I understand now. I already have water leak detector devices, but they are just dumb ones, not smart ones. A lot of sinks in the house, so I have about 10 such detectors.

    I'm concerned about detecting other leaks, though, in toilet bowls or even irrigation. This is something that would require long-term water usage data, and some sophisticated algorithms to analyze it. Are you aware of any water meter device that works with Homeseer ?

    Leave a comment:


  • integlikewhoa
    replied
    Originally posted by madbrain View Post
    Can this valve be used as a water meter, to get graphs of water usage over time ? I assume it has to measure water usage already to some degree for the leak detection.
    You would be mistaken. This is a water "Valve" not a meter or flow detector at all. This valve is just a motorized ball valve. Only sensing it does to a small degree is if the valve is open or closed. On it's own it doesn't know if water is leaking or flowing at all. That control would come from Homeseer and other input devices you might have.

    Normally you would buy this and also buy several leak sensors and place them around the house (under sink, next to hot water heater, next to washer and dryer or other areas of high chances of a leak). Those leak sensors just detect water by the continuity of water and closing/completing a circuit on the sensor. They also don't measure flow.

    To detect/sense flow and measure it you will need a water meter with a magnetic pickup on it and a zwave pickup device.

    Leave a comment:


  • madbrain
    replied
    Can this valve be used as a water meter, to get graphs of water usage over time ? I assume it has to measure water usage already to some degree for the leak detection.

    Leave a comment:


  • NetworkGuy
    replied
    Originally posted by cc4005 View Post

    If your piping is copper, most likely some soldering will be necessary. A union fitting will make removal simpler in the future. A flexible section (copper water heater connector, etc.) or two can also make installation more DIY friendly, depending on the situation. If you'll post pictures of your specific piping conditions I'm sure you'll get some helpful suggestions.
    Sorry for the late reply. I really like Tapatalk, but since the board upgrade, it no longer works for me. And I can't get board email notifications because it floods my inbox! I am going to have my HomeSeer water valves (7 total) installed using unions before and after each HomeSeer valve with a manual 90-degree turn valve in front of each HomeSeer valve. That way I can turn off water flow in the future if a replacement valve is needed. Appreciate the comments!
    Last edited by NetworkGuy; October 9, 2018, 06:35 PM.

    Leave a comment:

Working...
X