Sense finds free water for my garden and yard

Device: AC
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My house has a basement sump pump. I was looking for a way to monitor the pump via Sense to make sure it’s working and get advanced notice of potential pump failures so my first indicator of a problem wouldn’t be a wet basement. Using Sense, I was able to set up an alert to notify me if the pump hasn’t run for a defined period of time. But during this process, I realized that the pump runs a lot in brief cycles of on-off. I noticed it runs 300-500 times per month during June and July.

Sense helped track a problem with our pump.

Device: AC
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The component that turns our pump on and off has had some issues lately. Occasionally the contacts don’t close and the pump continues to run when it shouldn’t. Being able to identify this problem using Sense has done more than save money on energy; it may have saved our pump’s life expectancy.

Electrical spikes

Device: Other Appliance
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When I had my solar system put on my house in Florida about two years ago, it came with Sense. While the solar was being put on I also had the electrical enclosure and the circuit breakers replaced. Within days, I noticed electrical spikes while observing the electrical draw in the Sense app on my phone. I finally called an electrician to look into it.

Turns out, the installer for the electrical enclosure used wire nuts rather than NSI connectors. My high voltage oven and air conditioner lines were both arcing, the wire caps showed signs of overheating in one case melting. The electrician put on NSI connectors, the spikes disappeared, and a house fire was avoided.

In Florida, I have ceiling fans in every room and the Lanai. They are always on. Because of Sense, I have my Always On down to about 300W and I can see the house is well below average usage.

Heating element in my dryer not turning off

Device: Dryer
Make: Samsung
Model: DV316LES/XAA
Estimated Savings:

Two days ago after running a load in the dryer, my daughter tried putting in a new load, but the dryer wouldn’t start back up. The cabinet was also very hot to the touch. It got so hot that it blew the thermal fuse, likely preventing a fire.

Checking the device power-meter in the Sense app, I noticed the dryer’s heating element (about 5000 watts), had been on for about 45 minutes. From historical Sense data, the “normal” for this dryer it to turn the heating element on for about 1 minute, then off for about 1 minute. So 45 minutes of continual on-time was very uncharacteristic for the heating element to run.

Sense saved my water well pump

Device: Water Pump
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My well pump (2000 watts) had been running for a day straight when we weren’t even home. I immediately shut the well off remotely (I use a Third Reality switch to turn off the well pump switch) and started investigating once I got home.

Upon investigation, I realized that the well pump never turned off because it wasn’t making enough pressure to trigger itself off. I opened the well head cap to see that water was spraying out of the pitless adapter (part of the pipe that takes water from the well and sends it underground to my house) and back down into the well.

If Sense didn’t alert me to this odd usage, the well pump would’ve stayed on the whole time I was out of state, and likely would’ve burned the well pump out. My house wasn’t losing water, just wasn’t making enough pressure to turn the well off, so I doubt we would’ve realized it. Once we fixed the pipe, we were back to full pressure and a huge electric cost savings.

Saved thousands in meat, maybe my house.

Device: Freezer
Make: Montgomery Wards
Model:
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While on vacation I opened the sense app several times to see my solar production and noticed a 1500watt other bubble that on. The bubble kicked on the day after we left and was on all day which puzzled me. The next day, I sent my brother to my house and had him flip breakers off one at a time until the bubble disappeared. Which lead him to my pantry which had an old Montgomery wards standup deep freezer. The deep freezer’s compressor locked up and didn’t have any type thermal overload. It was also full of food. My brother said he couldn’t touch the compressor and even the cord was really hot. He moved the meat (1 cow, 1 pig and random stuff) into several family members freezers. The new freezer I purchased also takes about 15% of the energy to run than the old one. This was also before labs…. My brother also bought a sense meter a few days later.

Sense identifed a wasteful water heater

Device: Water Heater
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moved into my home in 2018. We have a gas water heater with a re-circulation system in our house. I always knew something wasn’t right with the re-circulation system, but I hadn’t been able to quantify it. Even when the re-circulation pump was on a timer or smart plug (I tried both), we had hot water instantly at every tap 24×7.

I tried a little internet research, insulated the hot water lines I could get to (most are in the walls), but largely gave up because I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

When I installed Sense over the summer, I was able to quickly see what was going on. I could see the electric usage from the water heater power vent fan. It was turning on 10 minutes of every hour! I then dug into the math on my gas bill, and figured that this water heater was costing me over $450/yr in gas and electricity. Not to mention premature wear on the equipment.

I dug back into internet research and figured it out it was likely a bad check valve. After being ghosted by two plumbers, I just went to Lowe’s and got $50 worth of tools and parts to fix it.

Now the re-circulation system is set to work on a scheduled smart plug. It runs for 4 hours a day. I’m ordering a few smart buttons as well so I can turn it into a true “on-demand” re-circulation system.

I expect this change will cut my water heater expense by 50-60%.

Notification Triggers Lake Pump Inspection

Device: Pump
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Thought I’d share a quick success story for my Sense device.

Today I got a notification that my lake pump had been abnormally ‘on’ for longer than normal. Since installing Sense a few months back and the device correctly identifying my lake pump, I’d been observing its on/off pattern. I noticed that the pump was usually on for about an hour each time it activated. So I took the opportunity to set a notification that would alert me if the pump ever stayed on for 90 minutes, thinking that would be a sign of something going wrong. Well, today that notification came!

It triggered me to do a visual inspection of our 300’ waterline that runs down our cliff. I thought to myself that there must either be a break somewhere, that the pump wasn’t working correctly (although Sense showed me its power consumption had not changed), or the lower lake levels had plugged or kinked the intake. And sure enough, I found a broken connection in the waterline! Took me about an hour to replace the section and things were back to normal!