Home Assistant Water Delivery Reminder Before Delivery Day

Water delivery is one of those tiny household chores that fails when the reminder lands at the wrong time. If the delivery truck usually shows up early, a reminder on delivery morning is already too late. The useful reminder is the day before, especially when someone is already in the garage and can put the empty bottles outside.

I made a short video showing the updated Home Assistant pattern I am using at Bear Stone. This post is the companion article: the reasoning behind the automation, the pieces worth copying, and the YAML details that are easier to inspect here than on a paused video frame.

The job is not the date

The date still matters, but it should not be the only thing driving the notification. I use one date helper as the source of truth, then let Home Assistant decide when that date becomes actionable. In this case, the actionable window is the day before delivery.

The package uses an input_datetime helper named input_datetime.water_delivery_date. I can set that from the water dashboard when I get the next delivery date, and the rest of the automation stays quiet until the helper says tomorrow is delivery day.

input_datetime:
  water_delivery_date:
    name: "Water delivery date"
    has_date: true
    has_time: false
    icon: mdi:water

Two reminders, one day-before guard

The current automation has two reminder paths. The first is a 5:30 PM reminder the day before delivery. The second is a garage-door reminder that runs only if the garage doors have been open for twenty seconds on the day before delivery.

That distinction is important. This is not a delivery-day garage announcement. Delivery day is usually too late. Both reminder paths are guarded by the same tomorrow check.

trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: "17:30:00"
    id: night_before_time

  - platform: state
    entity_id: group.garage_doors
    from: "closed"
    to: "open"
    for: "00:00:20"
    id: garage_open_day_before

condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: >-
      {{ as_datetime(states('input_datetime.water_delivery_date')).date()
         == (now() + timedelta(days=1)).date() }}

In the full package I also handle blank, unavailable, and unknown helper states so the automation fails quiet instead of throwing noisy template errors. The simplified snippet above is the part worth copying conceptually: set one date, then make every notification prove that the date is tomorrow.

Why the garage matters

The garage trigger is not there because the garage is magical. It is there because it is the moment someone can actually do the job. If the garage opens the evening before delivery, Home Assistant announces that water delivery is tomorrow and that the bottles should go out before you leave.

If the garage stays open, the automation repeats after 30, 60, and 90 seconds. Each repeat checks that the garage is still open and that the delivery date is still tomorrow. That keeps the reminder useful without turning it into a forever loop.

Integrations used

• input_datetime.water_delivery_date for the next delivery date.
• group.garage_doors for the garage-open trigger.
• Alexa Media Player for the garage announcement.
• script.speech_engine for the in-house spoken reminder.
• Activity Feed logging so the reminder is visible later.
• Telegram confirmation when the delivery date changes.

The implementation is public in my Home Assistant config repo. You can inspect the actual YAML here: config/packages/water_delivery.yaml.

There is also an older written walkthrough for the original version of this idea: Home Assistant: Water Delivery Reminders. That post is still useful for the helper and dashboard context, but the current package tightens the timing so the garage reminder is day-before only. If you want more garage-based automation ideas, the broader garage automation walkthrough is here: All the Home Assistant Garage Automations We Actually Use.

Watch the walkthrough

The video shows the flow visually: the date helper, the tomorrow guard, the garage announcement, the repeat behavior, and where to find the repo YAML.