Water Sensor for FAU Secondary Drip Pan

The link on the Vera Page is for a Vision Sensor but when I click the Buy at Amazon button I land on this ecolink sensor. Is it the same? Will it work with Vera?

Also, my HVAC guy is suggesting installation of a shut off sensor. The link sensor above looks like a door sensor with an external input from the water probe. Could I use a door sensor (I have a box of them) with external input from the sensor they instal as a Z-Wave water sensor?

I use an older Ecolink door/window sensor to sense contact closure from my smoke alarm loop, and it works famously. I happen to have the newer ZWave Plus model laying around, so I pulled it out and included it. It also has the aux contact block internally, and it works identically to the older model (leave the magnet off/far away/unused, and the contact block can sense closed/open circuit and signal Vera accordingly).

My guess is that the one you linked is identical, but why take the chance? Here’s the one I have: Amazon.com

More… you would attach this to a pan float switch, of course, and that float switch would be connected directly and only to the Ecolink sensor–no 24V or any other wiring in common with the HVAC system. Also, I would not rely on any ZWave device (especially a battery-powered one) or Vera to exclusively provide the shut-off function. I would still use an additional float switch in the HVAC system’s pan connected through the unit’s control voltage (24VAC typically–not ever the line voltage circuit).

That looks to be just a door sensor? Is there another part missing in the amazon page for the water sensor?

The HVAC tech already installed the cut off safety switches even though I hadn’t actually approved it with the owner of the company which is a friend of mine actually so I’ll just go with that for now.

The only thing adding Z-Wave to this at this point would be to get a notification, but I could probably do that with Reactor anyhow, but it wouldn’t necessarily be a clogged Primary Drain but rather just when the unit got shut off…

You’re correct on not using Z-Wave only for the cut off switch. This is better by far. Hopefully it didn’t cost too much because I KNOW it is something I could install myself but how to find the time? There’s HA stuff that I still haven’t incorporated yet as it is.

For the door sensor (with aux contact) I linked, an additional float switch would be the water sensor. You can effectively use another of the same model switch your HVAC tech already used for cut-off. Let me be clear: you can use the same model switch connected to the door sensor, but you cannot use the same switch (the switch connected to the door sensor must be separate from the already-installed cut-off switch).

If you want a water sensor such as the one you originally linked, that will likely work fine as well, just be sure the contacts for the sensor do not make contact with the pan, if it’s metal–that would, of course, short the contacts and give you a false alarm.

That is what I was thinking. The float sensor just looks like a door sensor with a float switch on the Aux terminals. I could double side tape the sensor to the pan, right? At this point I might not even bother because the safety shut off switches are already installed. This would just be frosting on the cake but not be a necessity…

Now for something completely different…

Can that float switch be wired to a door sensor and then use a Z-wave valve controller to auto-fill my pool?

Well, the sensor in the one you first linked is not a float, it’s a water-contact sensor–the water in the pan bridges the contacts, causing a sufficient signal to trip the sensor (hopefully). This might be OK for under a sink or toilet where the house water supply leaks, but for condensate leaks, there may not be enough salts and other impurities in the condensate at that point to be electrically sufficient to close the circuit.

I would use RTV or a similar adhesive to affix any sensor rather than double-sided tape, if it doesn’t otherwise have a mounting system I could use (the float switch I linked has a clip-on bracket).

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I meant the door sensor part but RTV would definitely be better… Thanks for helping out, Patrick!

I’ll probably just leave it as is but thought I’d ask.

One of these days I’ll get my pool and HVAC off Scenes on on Reactor. All I need is time!

So much this. Where does the time go?

As @cw-kid I re-purposed a broken/old door sensor, like he did:

I will borrow its mod to remove the battery very soon. So, even if you don’t find door sensor with external contacts, you could always hack a very cheap one :slight_smile:

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There are only a few Z-Wave door / window sensors that have binary dry contact input connectors inside them, I recently tried an older Vision one as pointed out above, however I was unable to get it working properly with Vera. I just wanted to attach some external metal door contacts.

In the end I had to solder the wires for the external metal door contacts to either side of the internal reed switch instead and not use the actual binary dry contact connector block.

I also added a Mini DC to DC buck converter to run the sensor off a USB lead / plug rather than batteries.

However it seems you can use any old Z-Wave door / window sensor and solder wires either side of the internal reed switch for connection to an external sensor / contact closure.

I have had good success previously with Everspring SM103 door / window sensors, they have a binary dry contact input connector and work very well with Vera, however I cannot find anywhere to buy them now for EU frequency.

The Fibaro door / window sensor also has a binary dry contact input connector however I have never used one myself.

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