Sometime on Friday (10/20/2017) evening, my kitchen fridge tripped the GFCI breaker it is on. I’d flip the breaker on, and it would trip immediately. Unplugged the fridge, and the breaker stayed on - so I knew the issue was with the fridge, and not anything else on that circuit (keurig coffee maker and a toaster oven).
For two weeks before that, I noticed an abnormality in how the fridge was detected as drawing power in the Sense app. I put this down to a Sense problem rather than a fridge issue - after all, the milk was still cold and it still made ice. I pulled the fridge out on Saturday, removed all the dust balls, pulled the fan, cleaned it thoroughly and reassembled the whole thing. Plugged it back in, and the fridge has gone back to working normally.
Moral of the story - I should have payed heed to Sense.
The attached picture does a better job of explaining the observation that my post …
Hmm, my senses is missing fridge events. 1.5 years of very regular on/off cycles, but now the sense misses on cycles (and then the off) or misses an off (and then the on). I am blaming the app, too. I think I need to look what the fridge is actually doing in these times.
Edit: Looking back at available data, it seems this has been going on for a while, i just never noticed it
I saw this on TV yesterday and it was vaguely familiar. Net Sense and Ask This Old House got together for another commercial on how great their product is. They wrap a story around a fathers day gift and use the above story on the refrigerator detection and likely other stories from this forum to push the benefits of the product.
Maybe was naive but I thought the This Old House Stuff was more upfront and honest about how the represent products.
For Sense… its just very sad they have none of their own case studies to use. This entire product feels it will never reach its potential.
Skip to 10:50 for the start of the segment and 12:50 for the specifics on the fridge right down to the Wattage Level
Hey John. Ask This Old House approached us with the refrigerator story. It is not an uncommon issue and is definitely not unique to the single instance in this thread.
To be clear, the fridge story on ATOH is different than mine. Their fridge had a constant draw of 1300W due to a clogged filter, while my compressor wouldn’t kick on - so the overall usage became a fraction of the normal daily usage, until everything was cleaned out.
