I have an 8kw ecosmart tankless water heater that whenever I turn it on, my sense monitor freezes until I shut the tankless water heater back off. After a couple minutes of the tankless water heater being off, the sense monitor will read normal again. Both sense and the tankless water heater are on different breakers. I have 2-ecosmart 6kw and 1-ecosmart 18kw tankless water heaters that work good and do not cause any interference with the sense monitor. What would cause the sense monitor to mess up with the 8kw water heater but not the other water heaters?
Interesting - I can’t say I’ve heard of this on the forums before.
When you say freezes - what do you mean? If you check the app, you just get the connecting 3 dots? Or monitor offline? Or something else
Do you have to power cycle the Sense to get it back, or does it come back on its own? You mention reboot in the title. Do you know if it is actually rebooting?
When it does come back, eventually do you have data during the time the tankless was on, or is that period blank on the power meter?
Two thoughts
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One - massive voltage drop when the tankless turns on causes the Sense to reboot. but one would think that you would see the effects of a big dip in other area’s of your home.
-
Two - possible 2.4 GHz interference from that unit. Proximity wise, where is that water heater in relation to your Sense and the Access Point it connects. This also seems unlikely, but it is a possibility.
The question about data gaps may help narrow it down. If there are no data gaps, that means that the Sense is still on and collecting information, but its not able to connect to the internet at the moment you open the app.
If there are data gaps, then it would indicate that the unit itself is rebooting / having issues.
If testing this - keep in mind that when the Sense loses internet connectivity, and regains it without a power interruption in the middle, it can take some time for the data to back fill. So if you turn on tankless at 12:05, leave it on for 5 minutes, and then go check your app at 12:10, you may see a gap. But If you check at 2, I would think it would have filled in by then.
If you want to test the wifi connectivity, you can try downloading a basic wifi analyzer to your phone or laptop. Go stand near the Sense and take a look at what it says signal strengths are to any networks your device can see. Then turn on the tankless and check again.
If on a Mac laptop, you can even just option click on the wifi status icon in the menu bar and look at the RSSI and Noise levels.
Note you are specifically looking for 2.4 GHz readings. If your Phone/Laptop are connected at 5Ghz, you’ll want to ignore any readings you get for channels higher than 14.
It may sound dumb, but when taking these readings, make sure you are standing in the same spot and holding your device in the same orientation, and with your hand in the same place. Yes, your had can make a difference on wifi reception on a phone depending on your grip. And if your device is rotated differently, this can also impact readings.
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In addition to @ben initial response, I would definitely recommend reaching out to support (support@sense.com) to see what’s happening on our end of things.
Hello Justin,
i have discussed this issue with Jason (case # 187670) and we did not find any solution or course of action.
thanks
martin
| JustinAtSense Community Manager
November 9 |
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In addition to @ben initial response, I would definitely recommend reaching out to support (support@sense.com) to see what’s happening on our end of things.
Hello Ben,
I have attached a screenshot video showing what the app does when it freezes. I also attached a picture showing the gaps in the graph history when it freezes.
When this happens, I wait a couple minutes and the sense monitor goes back to normal and I do not have to power cycle the sense monitor in order to get it to work again. Once it goes back to normal, the data from the “freezing” never uploads and is blank, it shows as a flat line and no power being used.
I don’t think that voltage drop is the issue because nothing else seems to be effected like you mentioned.
As far as the 2.4ghz interference, the sense monitor is about 20 feet from the tankless water heater (2 walls in between them) and about 15’ from the access point (no walls in between the access point and the tankless water heater). I have an 18kw tankless water heater and a 6kw tankless water heater within 10’ of the sense monitor (1 wall in between them) but neither one causes issues with the sense.
thanks
martin
| ben
November 8 |
- | - |
Interesting - I can’t say I’ve heard of this on the forums before.
When you say freezes - what do you mean? If you check the app, you just get the connecting 3 dots? Or monitor offline? Or something else
Do you have to power cycle the Sense to get it back, or does it come back on its own? You mention reboot in the title. Do you know if it is actually rebooting?
When it does come back, eventually do you have data during the time the tankless was on, or is that period blank on the power meter?
Two thoughts
-
One - massive voltage drop when the tankless turns on causes the Sense to reboot. but one would think that you would see the effects of a big dip in other area’s of your home.
-
Two - possible 2.4 GHz interference from that unit. Proximity wise, where is that water heater in relation to your Sense and the Access Point it connects. This also seems unlikely, but it is a possibility.
The question about data gaps may help narrow it down. If there are no data gaps, that means that the Sense is still on and collecting information, but its not able to connect to the internet at the moment you open the app.
If there are data gaps, then it would indicate that the unit itself is rebooting / having issues.
If testing this - keep in mind that when the Sense loses internet connectivity, and regains it without a power interruption in the middle, it can take some time for the data to back fill. So if you turn on tankless at 12:05, leave it on for 5 minutes, and then go check your app at 12:10, you may see a gap. But If you check at 2, I would think it would have filled in by then.
If you want to test the wifi connectivity, you can try downloading a basic wifi analyzer to your phone or laptop. Go stand near the Sense and take a look at what it says signal strengths are to any networks your device can see. Then turn on the tankless and check again.
If on a Mac laptop, you can even just option click on the wifi status icon in the menu bar and look at the RSSI and Noise levels.
Note you are specifically looking for 2.4 GHz readings. If your Phone/Laptop are connected at 5Ghz, you’ll want to ignore any readings you get for channels higher than 14.
It may sound dumb, but when taking these readings, make sure you are standing in the same spot and holding your device in the same orientation, and with your hand in the same place. Yes, your had can make a difference on wifi reception on a phone depending on your grip. And if your device is rotated differently, this can also impact readings.
(Attachment Video.mov is missing)
I’m having the same problem waiting on tech support now. Sense runs great with any device in house but a few seconds after I turn the hot water on it drops out
Hello,
Do you also have an ecosmart tankless water heater that is causing the problem or is it a different brand? What size of water heater is it?
Also I have a sub panel on opposite side of house that has well pump, outside portion of ac and some barn lights. Line of sight 40ft what can I do? Do you have a number that I can call
The problem only arises on the tankless, any suggestions
I don’t have any ideas. I’ve tried a couple different things and the problem continues. What brand of tankless water heater is causing the problem for you?
I have a couple tankless hot water heaters and ecosmart 27 kW and an iHeat 8 kW. They both have variable output, the load is varied dynamically based on temp setpoint, incoming water temp and flow rate. They have dramatically different approaches to do this.
The iHeat has a single element and uses forward phase control to turn on a triac midway through each cycle. This creates crazy noise on the line, well up into the MHz range. Connect an oscilloscope to a phase anywhere in the house and you can see the distortion to the voltage sine wave. A number of devices in my house didn’t work well with this noise, including my epson projector until I added an inline choke filter between the heater and the breaker. The filter price was 50% the cost of the heater.
The ecosmart has 3 elements. Each element is controlled separately. They are turned on at the zero crossing and stay on for a half cycle. I have observed about 10 different patterns, like 3 half cycles on, 5 half cycles off. Seems like this would only allow 30 different levels of power. Maybe that is enough. Since there is no mid cycle change in load there is basically no distortion induced in the voltage wave. Except for certain LED lights, this causes no issues.
There is a cycle to cycle change in peak voltage, when the elements are on there is slightly lower voltage. This makes for a flickering effect with some of the led lights in the house when dimmed down. The wall dimmer control uses forward phase cut and the LED interprets the angle of turn on as a requested brightness, but when the peak voltage varies from cycle to cycle some bulbs don’t interpret the angle well and end up flickering.
I just installed an EcoSmart 13KW tankless water heater off a 100 amp sub panel and I am experiencing the exact same issue as mstoller54.
I have 200 amp service to the home and a 100 amp sub panel in the barn where the water heater (54 amp draw on 60 amp breaker with 6 AWG) is located. I have independent sense monitors in both locations to monitor the home and farm business separately (this was prior to Sense releasing the separate circuit monitoring clamps). Most of the time when the heater turns on, the sense monitors at BOTH locations will freeze and reboot. Both come back online within a few minutes. The monitor closest to the heater always drops off first. There is a voltage drop from about 246v to 236v (that’s 4%) under load that I can measure both in the house and in the barn panels. All wiring is sized appropriately. Since the voltage drop is minimal and not noticed in any other appliance and there’s a couple hundred feet of distance and multiple walls in between, I don’t believe it’s 2.4 GHz interference. It must be some kind of noise on the line. I’m considering moving the sense monitors outside of the panel to see if that makes a difference.
The problem is with your Ecosmart water heater. Contact Ecosmart and explain the problem to them. They will send you a new control board for the tankless water heater. The new generation of control board that they sent me fixed this same issue for me.
Let me know if you need more info for this.
Thanks
Martin
3 Likes
Thanks for sharing @mstoller54 !
Thanks for letting me know Martin. I’d sincerely appreciate any other info that you think might be helpful. I’ll contact their customer support next week.
-Andrew
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