I have two installations of an electric radiant floor heating product called “Warm Tiles”. One in master bath and one in mud room. It is a continuous loop of heating element imbedded below a ceramic tile floor. Both installations run on a single dedicated 20amp/120v circuit. They are different lengths so one draws ~500w and the other draws 700w. The master bath (500w) was detected shortly after installation of Sense and has been reliably monitored and reported since. The second installation got detected a couple weeks ago (more than one year after Sense installation) and was reported for a couple days and then stopped reporting. These are basically on/off constant power draw devices, so I would think they would be easy for Sense to detect. I can’t figure out why one gets detected and the other is AWOL except for two days. Thoughts?
I also have floor heat.
Mine cycles on and off to keep the floor 92-95 all the time. At this setting it runs about 25% of the time at 540 watts.
This is the one detection I thought sense would have no trouble with and one I really want to have. I don’t!!!
I actually had a heat detection that could ha e been the floor but sense decided to get rid of it on its own.
Heating elements are supposed to be easier to detect but here is my theory. As the single length heating cable shrinks as it cools and lengthens as it warms, the resistance changes. Not a lot but the OHM’s must change enough that it’s not detected. With this resistance change, the wattage would change some. I’m thinking there is just enough of a difference for sense not to see it. I could be totally wrong and I’ve asked for answers from support. They haven’t given me a good answer yet. I take it they don’t know why.
Interesting. When I check the one that is detected it is very consistent. Every time it comes on it consumes between 544 and 552 watts. Not much difference. I haven’t submitted anything to support yet. Thanks for the reply.
Just wanted to clarify that when I said I have not got an answer from support, that’s not the end of it. It’s something I’ve communicated about with support and they just haven’t given me an exact reason. It’s something they have and continue to look into.
I was afraid it sounded like support wasn’t doing anything, that’s not the case at all.
Do you mind if I ask what you keep the floor at temperature wise and if it’s constant or scheduled?
My bathroom is the same wattage as your 550 watt floor. I won’t go into the headache I had to determine it runs 25% of the time but know for a fact that’s how much it runs. So at 6 hours a day and $.085 KWH, it costs about $7.65 a month.
I have five floor heaters and Sense has detected four of them in the six weeks I’ve had Sense installed. Since it detected them, I’ve become more aware of them, especially the pop that they make when they turn on and off. All five of them use different amounts of power, and it seems to be roughly proportional to the size of the floor, which makes sense. But two of them have very smooth and steady graphs, and two of them fluctuate within a narrow band for a while, and then shoot up to almost double the power towards the end.
For the one I have that’s closest to 550 watts, it’s set to 74 deg F, and is on about 600x/month for 15 minutes a time. If I’m also assuming $0.085/kWh, it would come to about $9.
Definitely jealous tonight. My little floor heater is the one device I have on the wish list.
I’m glad the two of you have a detection on yours. You both were probably just like me, wondering the overall cost. Even though I found another way to monitor, I’m still hopeful. Maybe when I install my second sense side by side the detection will happen.
I am surprised @warmenhoven that yours cu s that much for so a low temperature. We keep our home 70 at night and 73 by day so 74 would t be much to run I think.
In Connecticut the KWH rate is $0.17 so more expensive. I keep mudroom at 68 and bathroom at 72. I’m guessing you are in a warmer southern area. My bill for the floor heat is about 25% of my total bill in the winter!
Wow! That’s huge compared to mine. I heat with a heat pump, the floor is for the wife. I did install the floor myself and depending how close you choose to install heating wire, changes the wattage per share foot. I have it at 12 watts which is enough to also heat the room. Normally, for room heat, you would want 15 a foot hit where we have the heat pump I didn’t need that much. I also do t ha e the entire floor heater. Anything behind doors or under cabinets is not heated. At the low price of electricity here in eastern Kentucky, we can have some conveniences that would be cost prohibitive elsewhere.
WOW, sure wish we had your electric rates. Up here in NH we’re paying $0.183/KWH…hence my jumping on the Sense bandwagon to try and understand where all those KWS’s are going.
We have hot water radiant throughout the house, including the basement, all fed by our geothermal heat pump. We feed approximately 98 degree (ranges from about 92 to 105…depending on radiant holding tank temperature) water, which returns at 87-95 degrees. That keeps the floor temps at around 78-80 and the room temps at around 72.
We definitely can feel the comfortable floors, particularly in the baths where it’s tile floors.
We are fortunate. It’s because of how our electricity is made. That dirty word “”COAL”. Coal is cheap and like it or not is still the cheapest way to generate power.
If installed a lot of floors like your. Laying marble, tile or other stone for the finish. That’s the best way to heat a home for sure. Being geothermal is the icing on the cake, beats a boiler system.
I’m thinking of switching to time of use next month where I’ll pay .06 off peak and .12 on but first ha e to analyze how we are using electricity to see if it will be worth it.
Sense has great difficulty with resistive loads. I had to put TPLink HS110s on all of mine. Resistive loads have noiseless signatures. In my two years of having Sense it has become evident to me that Sense does not recognize repeating similar step functions. If it doesn’t generate startup noise on the line, Sense will ignore it.
Not sure I completely buy your theory. A resistive load does produce a current step, that is discernible. Sense has found my oven heating element (240V) and my drier heating element (240V), as well as an occasional stray blow drier element (120V). Maybe they all have a slight inductive element as well because at least the blow drier element is a coil. Not sure about the others.
Sense has recognize our baseboard heater, 240 V, 1500 W. Just a series of repeating square waveforms, with varying duty cycle depending how cold it is outside.
My assertion is based upon two years of using multiple 120v heaters all winter. Sense has not detected any of them over thousands of cycles. 240v heaters are a different animal. They span both phases. Thus their signature will show up across both sides of the line. They rightfully should be easier to detect.
The fact is. Every one of my 120v heaters has never been detected over two winters. I assert, based on evidence, that Sense has difficulty with resistive loads with no startup signature. I also deduce that repeating step functions of consistently similar draw are not detected by Sense ML. Sense is welcome to refute that deduction…but when they do they need to tell me why it doesn’t work!
I installed January 15th if this year. My 120v floor heater was the one detection I really wanted and it took until a few days ago, but I finally got it.
Most people find resistance loads are actually the easiest.
My water heater was my first detection and it’s 4650watts. Sense detected only one leg at first but then picked up the other. I also have a 1500w space heater that came quickly followed by a rice cooker and hair dryer. Then there is all 5 stove burners, the oven element and clothing dryer element.
Sense doesn’t detect fan motors for me, not a single one out of at least 9.
It might be helpful to share more specifics on your heaters and their thermostatic controls. Some thermostats use a a triac to do energy control instead of relays/contacts - that could hide the underlying resistive nature of the heating element. Some heating devices also have “easy starts” that ramp up current over time to prevents sharp current steps. It would be interesting to see if either of those factors, or others play a role in your experiences.
These heaters are oil filled radiators with simple bimetal thermostats. Two are 700 watts and identical. I have the other one running 900 watts. No fancy electronics…i can hear the mechanical click when they cycle. I also have several Lasco ceramic heaters woth fans that see intermittent use. Nary a detection in the lot. All are 120v.
@kevin1
I think what you mentioned about the ramping is what prevented mine from being detected sooner. It has a value to set in the thermostat from 1-99 that determines the percentage of heat over time to reach full power. I don’t know the specifics but know set to 1, it’s instant on and set to 50 it ramps up slower and takes a few minutes before fully energized.
