71005 B-hyve Smart Flood Sensor - WiFi Water Leak Detector (5-Pack)

Awesome - saved us by notifying of an unseen leak on multiple occasions. LOVE this product! Easy to configure and install and very useful. Only minor complaint is - if you have a LARGE house - you may need a second wifi-hub for connectivity of all of the scattered about sensor units. not a big deal - just an awareness.

So in spite of the negative reviews, predominantly on battery life, I opted to give these a try. The concept after all is great, right?! And with those reviews already out there, one would think it’d be a real no-brainer for B-hyve to start with batteries that are at 100%! Seriously. I JUST plugged these things in and I have two that state they are at 100% battery life. The other three are at 80%, 65%, and a depressing 32%! I initially thought that was some pretty pathetic QC, and a week later two of them read 100%, with the others at 89%, 56% and 50%. Strange because in between those readings, the battery life was all over the place, with four of the five batteries reading 100% on day two. In short… the battery readouts are suspect and it’s probably good to have backups ready. Temperature readouts appear to be quite accurate. Water alerts were near instant once the level reached about 1/4” of water. I tested it in a dish. It was non responsive to a small puddle, but once there was accumulation, the device sent notification via the app. I received a follow up notice a few minutes after removing the device from the water that “the water had receded.” Connectivity with the Wi-Fi Hub was also a commonly noted problem area in reviews. I have had some problems with it myself and will get notifications of lost signals periodically for no apparent reason. Sometimes they’ll “magically” reconnect on their own. (I have a relatively small house at just under 2500 ft2.) To minimize issues, I have moved the hub to what is nearly the geographic center of the house meaning no sensor is more than 50-60’ from the hub and that helped a bit. But, I had to reposition sensors: the bar sink sensor was moved to the front of the cabinet (bottles interfered with the signal), the bathroom sensors were moved from behind the toilets to the sides (porcelain restricts the signal). That said, I’m still receiving occasional notices and trying to perfect the placement without having a second hub in my relatively small house. Gripes on battery life, connectivity and general QC aside, the product set-up is relatively easy. The information provided is readily accessible via the app. I’m going to stick this out with the thought that the benefits potentially outweigh the imperfections . I really don’t think it would be difficult to turn this into a truly great tool. I hope B-Hyve is on it. Enhance the connectivity and find out why the battery life seems to hop around so frequently and this product quickly becomes a five star product.

Ultimately, I am happy with these and the additional peace of mind for flood monitoring around the house. You get quite a bit of additional info from them as well like temperature, which is nice since I need to have one by my water tank in the garage. The batteries that they come with are not great. If replacement batteries have more of a charge then these are a no brainer if you are already in the B-hyve product sphere. They were a bit of pain to set up and get connected, because it seemed like there was a bit of a lag to detect them, but once everything got going it was great. Just decide where you want all of them and set them up all at once rather than placing them and then trying to figure out which one is which and be running all over the place.

Just purchased, batteries it came with are already dead basically, just 1 day after purchase. Customer service is ... abysmal, and thats being kind about it.

These work great! Batteries from the factory didn't last long. Put in new and haven't had a problem since! It's nice having piece of mind related to water in my basement. I placed them around my sump pump and water heater and haven't worried since!

Orbit 71005 B-hyve Smart Flood Sensor is not reliable. Once the sensor is touching some water it will be dead. On the top, Orbit online supply from the warehouse to the merchandise handling are miserable. They may send the customer returns/secondary/used as new. It is my experiences. Orbit wants to charge me again from the sensors which has been returned to their warehouse. They said, I sent them the wrong models. It sounds like I am the thief.

Easy setup. One for A/C pan, one for water heater pan, one for washing machine

The range from the hub is limited so if you plan to install multiple sensors then you might need multiple hubs. We are also using several sprinkler controllers so we have multiple hubs. With multiple hubs the water sensors work great all around the house. Battery life is about a year with good hub connections. When one gets low, I change them all to keep in sync.

They seem to be working well for several months now but have random disconnect and reconnect notices and the battery level is inconsistent but seem to keep on working fine…..