Leviton ZWave Switches

[jerny]

I have probably 40 or 50 Leviton Zwave (Vizia RF) light switches in my home of all different varieties (120W, magnetic dimmers, etc). I have had them working for about 15 months now, and at various times, I have had two of them just die on me. One continued to work as a switch but was unable to communicate via zwave anymore (I couldn't remove it or re-add it to the network -- the zwave chip just stopped working altogether). The other one has stopped working entirely (the led light underneath it went dead, and it doesn't turn on/off the light at all anymore).

Is this happening to others? I'm concerned that a ~5% failure rate after 1 year is pretty bad. I sent this first failure back to Leviton and they shipped me a new one for free. I intend to do the same thing with the second one, but this is getting old. What have others found?

[kaldoon]

Have 50+ devices in my place 20+ Leviton (RZI and VRI) no failures to date on the Leviton's also have 15 devices at my parent's house(all VRS) no failures there either to date

[bjhampe]

The other one has stopped working entirely (the led light underneath it went dead, and it doesn't turn on/off the light at all anymore).

Is this one a 600W dimmer? Did you check to see if the bulb blew? The 2-wire dimmers will appear dead if they do not have a filament to get power from.

[jerny]

Is this one a 600W dimmer? Did you check to see if the bulb blew? The 2-wire dimmers will appear dead if they do not have a filament to get power from.

Thanks for the tip. Something bizarre happened. The switch was actually wired to control an electric outlet into which two plug-in under-counter lamps in my kitchen were connected. The Leviton switch appeared to be totally dead (no LED, no response) for a couple of months.

Just yesterday, I turned off the switches on the two lamps and turned them back on. Suddenly, the Leviton wall switch came back to life. Now it's all working fine. Weird...

[riw]

I've never had a problem with my Levitons, but the ZRW103's--they appear to be completely horrible. I have about 15 of them, about a third of which have been replaced within the last two years for complete failures. There's one broken in my dining room right now--I killed the breaker, replaced a light in another room, turned the breaker back on, and the light attached to the switch (not the one I replaced, you understand--this fixture was perfectly fine before killing the power and restoring it) flashes rapidly. The switch won't turn off or on, just this rapid flash mode. I've had to pull the switch, and live without a light in that room until a new one comes in. Surprisingly, I don't have any extras--I used to keep 5 or 10 of them in a box, because they break so often.

So, off I go to order yet another switch--this time I'm buying a Leviton. As these ZRW103's break, which I know they will, I'll replace all of them with Levitons.

Sometimes when this sort of "flashing mode" happens, I can "reset" the switch by killing the breaker and turning it back on. I normally have to "reboot my house" this way about once twice a month to keep the ZRW103's working.

The one thing that kills ZWave is the extremely poor quality of the hardware, in my experience.

Russ

[Mitch]

if these switches are similar to the GE and dragon switches I proverbially can repair them. I charge $10 plus shipping for the repair if I am able to fix them you can contact me mg@cecg.com