Everyone needs vehicle and home insurance, because you never know when disaster would strike. With that same principal, every home should have a flood sensor because you never know when a leak can occur. Simple!
The easiest way to do this is by using the Shelly Flood. It’s basically a WiFi enabled IoT device that will alert you if water touches the bottom of the device. So essentially, you can put it under the kitchen sink, behind the washing machine, under dishwashers, on a window sill, under your bath and if there is a leak, it will alert you immediately.
The Shelly Flood sensor is battery (CR123A) operated and does NOT need a hub. This means that all you need is the device and WiFi coverage where you’re going to place this device. From our testing, the Shelly Flood with this type of battery would give 1.5 years of life time…unless you have a leak every day, which would mean that the Sensor would need to be more active than usual.
When the device is triggered (meaning, it detected water), it will start beeping and if you’re in the same room, you’ll be able to hear it, no problem. If you are not in the same room (for example, the sensor is in the basement level/garage) you will not hear it. That being said, if you do not hear the alarm the sensor will also send a Notification through Email and through the Shelly app (it’s you’re using that to control your device)
If you are already using Home Assistant, Hubitat or SmartThings as a home automation device, the Shelly Flood will have no issues to integrate with these mentioned platforms.
How much water does it take for the Shelly Flood to be triggered? That’s a very good question! We did some tests and concluded that 2.8ml is all you need. That being said, when we were replacing batteries in April, we also managed to trigger it with the ‘sweat’ on the palm of our hands….yes, they are extremely sensitive 🙂
Shelly Flood also has a Temperature sensor integrated inside it, so if you want to monitor the temperature in your garage and do some automation, you’re covered as well at no additional cost.