Interesting remark, Peter. The most troublesome part of my Z-wave network is the cupboard where I have placed several Coolcam and Fibaro wall plugs to control individual parts of my AV system. It happens very often that I have to pull the plug to make them responsive again.
I consider changing some of the plugs for Zigbee or KaKu wall plugs. If your diagnosis about “too close together” is correct, that might help indeed.
I have been struggling with this too. One particular Aeotec Door / Window Sensor 7 is quite far away and I can’t get it to mesh with other powered devices, and as soon as I take the device that extra metre to where it has to mount on the door it loses connectivity. I cannot get the “Heal” function in the Atom Developer Tool too work. It simply does not seem to force a mesh. In reading the many posts on this topic I noted that taking the battery out of the device can initiate a re-mesh. So I removed the battery, placed the device in a different part of the house or yard, left it for about 10 mins and then put the battery back in. A new mesh pattern was evident. I then tried this in a few different places until I found the optimal path. Note: As per other comments on this forum, Don’t put it close to other devices, this doesn’t seem to help at all.
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Sorry for the necroposting…but since the topic is “ZWave Network Heal” I found the thread searching for the heal function.
My question is: does the heal function actually do anything? I have been testing it for several days (mainly to see if some of my illogical routes would get more logical)…but I haven’t seen any changes at all.
Can someone explain what the function is supposed to do…if it actually does anything?
Thank you from Sweden!
I cannot explain the functionality of “Heal” but this my experiences:
- All my problems related to Z-wave mesh relates to bad devices. After recognizing and removed the faulty devices Z-wave mesh is rock solid. In some cases it could work to make a factory reset but one or two devices I had to retire.
- I have never succeeded to heal a bad meshing device. What works for me is to “heal” a good meshing device and sometimes it could pick up meshing with a device that is off meshing. But a faulty device will always cause trouble sooner or later again.
- A robust mesh needs a lot of alternative routes, meaning more strategic placed main-powered devices the better. If I see a lot of routes and not going the shortest way I think that is good. No problems for a year now and devices in a garage 15-20 m away from main building.
Maybe not what you asked for, but what I can share.
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Thank you Morgan!
I don’t really have any problems in my z-wave network (yet)…I’m more interested in understanding the heal function if it has any function.
One thing that really annoys me is developers that provide an option that has no function. If it’s there is should do something…otherwise just remove it. 
Another example is the gear symbol in the bottom left corner of the web gui of Homey. I guess it’s supposed to point to basically the same settings function as in the app…but clicking on it now you only get: “This page is currently under construction.” which it has been since I bought my Homey over a year ago.
Sure, the devs might be working on having this function on the web gui also (which in my opinion really should be there) but until then…just remove the gear symbol.
Good to hear that you have no issues with z-wave network. 
“Heal” is updating and restoring routing table for the device. For example if something changed in the network you can force the update. If you don’t do it will be updated later.
I will think that Athom regret putting the gear-symbol and the leaf-symbol there too early. But as a danish poet Piet Hein wrote (translated): “Things Take Time”
Put up in a place
where it’s easy to see
The cryptic admonishment
T.T.T.
When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb,
it’s well to remember that
Things Take Time.
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Nice poem! I think I will make some kind of plaque with “T.T.T.” on it and hang somewhere where I can see it everyday! 
Athom should really remove the inactive symbols until they are ready to launch the corresponding functions, or at least grey them out. To me it it feels a bit kickstarter/beta to have dead links. Homey is no longer a beta system and Athom should act like the big boys they are. 
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I think you guys are miss interpreting the heal function (and routes taken) a bit.
The heal function resets/renews a table inside every mains powered device called a “neighbouring device list”.
This is a list of all Z-Wave devices in the neighbourhood that it can directly talk to.
Just resetting this list on 1 device won’t do much in terms of routing if it routes trough multiple devices.
The route shown in Homey doesn’t necessarily mean it is the shortest route, but the last it has taken, and thus the fastest (the shortest isn’t always the fastest, even with wireless signals)
It also isn’t the only route it will ever take, it is just the last route taken, so that it is the same everytime could be a coincidence.
Example, if a node that seems shorter is a very busy node or not as responsive, some devices might take another route, as you yourself would do the same if said intersection is usually busy or pretty bad road you would take another faster route too. (or the road towards said intersection for that matter)
Mesh systems like Z-Wave are a spider web of routes that can be taken, not just 1 or 2.
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Thank you Caseda! That really cleared things up for me. 
So if one would like to do a (let’s call it a) “clean up”, one must do the heal-command on every mains powered node in the system one after the other? And one should not expect any earth shattering results from doing it, at least if one have a working system?
If we turn the question around; in what situations is the heal command a really powerful tool?
That is correct, though technically, Homey usually sends commands with the “explore” tag on, that should keep the neighboring list pretty well up to date.
The heal command is just something build into Z-Wave natively.
Homey is pretty much the only controller that has no network wide heal-ling ability, but has it separate for every single node.
But with the explore tag on (does add some potential slow down in terms of milliseconds) the heal command isn’t very useful unless some battery devices are having difficulty to communicate.
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