All ZWAVE stopped Working - Heating Down - its 3am and its getting cold

🛎️ Get Help Devices
1

If anyone has any ideas I would appreciate it.

It is 3:25am here and 5.5 hours ago I noticed the central a zwave switch was not working.

Thought nothing of it and went to bed.

30 mins ago I noticed it was getting cold, so checked HE.

Zwave devices, central heating, boiler, radiator valves, thermostats, switches, temp sensors etc are ALL unresponsive

I have rebooted HE twice - no change.

Settings/ Z-Wave Details I get

Error 500 A Server error has occurred

Just checked a few logs

ZWAVE stopped working at 21:36 last night unfortunately the logs only go back to 1:25 am - two hours of logs

How do I get ZWave working again so I can get the Hot Water, Central Heating and every radiator working again.

2

Rebooted via menu, or shutdown, pull plug, wait a couple minutes then boot? The second way is often the fix for a stuck Zwave radio...

I probably should spare you the lecture about mission critical stuff on a cheap consumer device speech. But I would have a backup plan in the future just in case.

3 Likes
3

OK will try that

Thank you so much for responding!!!

Mike

4

I have been running all this for 6 years without issue until I switched to HE :frowning:

5

You've been very lucky for 6 years then.... Very bad idea.

Anyway, @neonturbo gave you the 1st things I would try.

Good luck!! Seriously, it is always annoying when things aren't working. :frowning:

3 Likes
6

@neonturbo @JasonJoel

Guys thanks !!!!

Looks like it is working!!!

And here is the irony....

I ran up HE specifically to segregate out systems for greater fault tolerance!!

I have lighting all on Hue Hubs, Heating was going onto HE - once validated - I was about to purchase another one to be a failover.

That was my next task :slight_smile:

Again many thanks for you timely responses!!

2 Likes
7

This is why I dont make my heating system "smart" with zwave or zigbee.
Its not reliable enough. I only monitor temp and alarms.
Im glad you you got it working fast and that you were at home and not on a 2 weeks vacation ..
/M

4 Likes
8

:+1:

In the USA, I would suggest a very cheap "dumb" thermostat set to 50F (10C) wired in parallel to the smart thermostat as a backup. An old Honeywell T87 with mercury switch and no batteries would be ideal for this situation.

Me, I just use Hubitat like you do for enhancement to my normal HVAC system, not as a replacement for a thermostat.

I am not familiar enough with your guy's boilers and TRV to be able to say if a similar backup thermostat could be done.

3 Likes
9

In Sweden we as i often use ”mountainheating” its a 170m 10cm Hole were you hade a tube up and down do heat the water 2-3degres in the tube. Then a compressor makes 40degres water of it and the underfloorheating. It has its own thermostats.

In the picture u se water 0gr from the hole and -2.5back...
the compressor utses that 0gr water and makes the 40gr water to heat the house . I put in 1kw and get 5kw
/m

bild
bild2436×1125 246 KB

1 Like
10

Ok

@neonturbo Not an option to wire anything to this system, not my house :slight_smile:
But had I been fully awake, I could have done other things rather than just focus on Hubitat.

The controller is a standardised snap in with a switched fuse next to it - I could have switched off boiler, with two screws taken out the Zwave dual channel controller and put the 'Dumb' system in and then programmed it, then go around each radiator and manually set 19c for each zwave radiator thermostat, the dumb system has a thermostat hard wired in by the front door for the whole house.

Actually it would be awkward going around the bedrooms manually setting TRVs :slight_smile:

Having never experienced such an undeclared outage before I was poorly prepared for it.

I will be going forward....

I do not want to spend another 90 minutes at 3am in the morning debugging a HA again so that heating is restored.

This is the first zwave or zigbee outage I have encountered in the last 6 years of usage.

The X.10 had its issues, 20 yrs ago, with the send and pray method, when I moved back to UK Lightwaverf had similar issues.

For the last 8 years the Hue Hubs have run 7x24 without issue, admittedly did update them a few years ago. But the lighting has been absolutely solid, all 80 devices, no I had one bulb fail, not zigbee but stopped supporting the colour Blue, which Philips replaced immediately.

For the last 6 years I have been using a Aeotec zwave Tech 5 stick, 7 x 24 without issue.

I have been extremely impressed by the Hubitat Elevation, I started testing it 24 Dec.

In fact very impressed, despite some idiosyncracies and bugs, all of which can be mitigated relatively easily.

The move from a stable PC platform to Hubitat was driven by the desire to spread the loading of a Smart Home across multiple consumer devices rather than have to maintain a PC to run it all in one big basket of eggs :slight_smile:

The plan was, and still is to have one Hubitat run Heating, the Hue Hubs run all lighting, and one more Hubitat to rule them all.

Given the feedback from people on this thread there appears to be a low confidence of Hubitat being reliable and having un alerted ZWAVE outages may be a common occurrence, I my confidence in Hubitat is somewhat eroded.

But despite that, I can mitigate the reported unreliability of Hubitat by implementing the following.

  1. Associate the zwave Boiler controller to a zwave thermostat with baseline setting of 16.5c that will ensure that heating will still go on if it gets too cold as a result of Hubitat failing again.

  2. The Hubitat on a Hue managed Socket so that Hubitat can be Powered Off totally, remotely, if required.

  3. Investigate for an App or build a rule that routinely tests ZWAVE functionality so at least I am alerted of an outage BEFORE it becomes an issue.

  4. Press Hubitat to fix the bug that causes this outage, or at least builds in an alert mechanism that it is failing. So other people are not caught out by this and erode faith in what certainly appears to be an excellent product.

  5. Purchase a second Hubitat put on Hue managed socket, then build into both a reboot and total power off each night - hopefully reducing the frequency of these outages.

  6. Build into the Master Hubitat a failover rudimentary Heating control for use if the Heating Hubitat fails.

  7. Keep frequent backups of both on a local and cloud drive in case of a hard failure.

  8. I have a whole pile (10) of Secure SRT321 zwave thermostats, that are not working under Hubitat,but have hope that that will soon be fixed. When they are I can associate each key (because I don't have enough for every Thermostatic Radiator Valve) room/radiator to. It will potentially complicate how it is managed and may not be possible.

11

Just as an FYI - Hubitat backups do not include radio-paired devices.

12

Uggggghhh

13

You can try and justify why you think it is OK all you want, but consumer home automation hubs can not guarantee 99.99% uptime. They are not appropriate fits for life/security management systems or critical systems that could cause large damage if they fail (like heating in the winter).

Do what you want - your house, your decision. Just don't come crying to anyone if the heat doesn't come on and your water pipes freeze because you didn't have a more reliable fallback system.

For example, what happens if last night's issue happened while no one was home (you are on holiday or other)?

4 Likes
14

As someone who uses Hubitat to control my HVAC system, I feel like I need to chime in on this thread. I don't agree with those that are saying Hubitat is too unreliable to use for HVAC. I do agree with those that are saying HVAC is mission-critical so the system must be designed to go to an acceptable state in the presence of the failure of individual devices or in the presence of a complete Hubitat failure. States where heating is completely off for long periods are not acceptable states. Neither are states where heating or cooling run constantly.

In the automotive industry, we use Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA), a tool that I believe originated in the Aerospace industry, to anticipate failures that might happen, systematically think through what the impact would be, and take actions where appropriate to mitigate any potential severe impacts. The same type of analysis is needed here.

My heating system is a zoned forced air system. I do something similar to what neonturbo proposed, having one of my thermostats wired to the furnace in parallel with the ZWave relays that normally command the furnace. The zone dampers are set to open if they do not receive any signal for awhile. Therefore, if Hubitat completely stopped, the system would function like a non-zoned system. I have other features in the software for dealing with other types of failures, such as intermittent missed messages or individual thermostats going offline.

4 Likes
15

@JasonJoel What can I say - I am on the bleeding edge and an enteral optimist :slight_smile:
Thank you for your contribution.

As for the away ....

I am pretty sure you did not mean to come across as harsh as it read :slight_smile:

Last night, as described in the thread above, there were other things I could have done had I been awake enough, we got a new puppy two days ago, let's just say, not conducive to a good nights sleep.

But I will try very hard not to come crying to anyone :slight_smile:

As far as absence form the house - I can only dream !!!!!! I have been shielded in the house since all the Covid started so ironically saw this a great opportunity to switch to a new HA system, especially as the total lockdown has just been extended until end of March.

I have been blessed with 100% Heating and Hot Water reliability uptime for 6 years so I suspect I got complacent.

This is a good opportunity to implement the risk mitigation and service continuity plans outlined above.

With a total HA failover to Zwave direct association between the Boiler controller and centralised Thermostat set to 16C and the Holiday mode of HE setting every TRV to 16C, then if HE goes offline the heating will continue to operate.

By the time I have added a 2nd HE, on order, to provide oversight, I will have a fairly robust system, especially as they will be on UPSs that should cover the HE's for at least a week.

Then all I have to worry about in my absence is the boiler breakdown, loss of Gas supply or loss of Electric supply.

But they happen while I am away a failed HA/HE is going to be the least of my concerns.

1 Like
16

Eh, doesn't sound harsh to me. I see multiple times a year where someone is doing something ill advised, it all goes wrong, and they come pounding the pulpit about how "your crappy system damaged my home!!!!".

Not saying that is what you were doing, but that is why I don't spend a lot of time worrying about people's feelings if they are doing something seemingly risky.

And if they are not in the end (other mitigations, etc, they didn't mention) then the comment doesn't apply to them so there should be no offense. :slight_smile:

4 Likes
17

I had an issue where intermittently the heating would not turn off at night.
I ended up putting in additional rules to mitigate it from happening.
Last week I was looking at the rule just to see if there was something wrong with it and bang there it was. Schoolboy error.
Corrected it and everything has been fine since.
All I'm saying it is easy to blame something else for issues as I'm sure you are like me and never make mistakes.

In the OP's case the situation was much more drastic than mine but all I'm saying is it may not always be the hubs fault.

1 Like
18

That's what I tell my kids... In reality I wish that were true. Lol

2 Likes
19

I had a similar issue to this though not related to HVAC. I have a webcore piston I have been building to shutdown my 3D Printer when it is done. Though everytime it ran it would shutdown early ( would just notify currently, I didn't have the shutdown switch put in yet). I copied the piston from my washing machine as they use the same device (power monitoring). Turns out I had the washing machine still as the device it was looking at for power consumption. Made me feel like an idiot when I realized it was looking at the wrong device. Though, especially when copying logic, its an easy mistake to make. After that, it was working as intended and it put in the command to shutdown when power drops below a certain level, after a certain time interval.

2 Likes
20

I have certainly made quite few of those kind of goof ups that have had me slapping my forehead.

But in this instance two issues had me stopped in my tracks.

One was a long standing bug that I uncovered in the Rules for Thermostats, will be fixed in next release

The other was an unknown feature of the ZWAVE just locking up and blocking all ZWAVE traffic - that is what caused this minor panic :slight_smile: