Are there drawbacks to installing a Ting (not phone carrier) sensor?
November 21, 2024 11:35 AM
We've received an insurance company offer for free installation of a Ting sensor to monitor potential arcing or electrical hazard issues on our home wiring. Are there any downsides to accepting this offer?
Previously our insurance offered a plug-in car tracker to potentially save us money on our car insurance. The downside was the service was provided free for a year, but then cost $40 per year - and they were data mining all of our driving habits, etc. For the first year we saved about $5. So we did not consider that paying them to monitor our driving was a good option.
The Ting sensor does not appear to have downsides except for giving out clues about our electrical consumption.
Does anyone have experience with the Ting sensor?
Previously our insurance offered a plug-in car tracker to potentially save us money on our car insurance. The downside was the service was provided free for a year, but then cost $40 per year - and they were data mining all of our driving habits, etc. For the first year we saved about $5. So we did not consider that paying them to monitor our driving was a good option.
The Ting sensor does not appear to have downsides except for giving out clues about our electrical consumption.
Does anyone have experience with the Ting sensor?
Suppose the Ting sensor goes off a few times, but you don’t immediately figure out what caused it and you’re very busy and let it slide for a few months . . . and then your house burns down.
Your insurance company may then claim that you are not fully covered — or not covered at all — because of your own negligence.
I would be slightly concerned that they may resort to a similar tactic if you turn down their offer and then have a fire if they can reasonably attribute the fire to an electrical fault, however.
posted by jamjam at 12:32 PM on November 21
Your insurance company may then claim that you are not fully covered — or not covered at all — because of your own negligence.
I would be slightly concerned that they may resort to a similar tactic if you turn down their offer and then have a fire if they can reasonably attribute the fire to an electrical fault, however.
posted by jamjam at 12:32 PM on November 21
"In 1999, AFCIs became a requirement in the National Electrical Code .."
If your house was built before 1999, it likely does not have Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters.
If it is built afterwards, it might.
You don't have to bring your house up to the latest code: once inspected, you get to keep it that way until you try to make changes to it again, but telling an Insurance Company that you have detected arc faults seems like a short path to getting dropped unless you upgrade your circuit protection to include AFCI.
If you go out and buy one yourself, make sure that Ting is not selling your information to insurance companies, which I opine it surely is.
posted by the Real Dan at 12:54 PM on November 21
If your house was built before 1999, it likely does not have Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters.
If it is built afterwards, it might.
You don't have to bring your house up to the latest code: once inspected, you get to keep it that way until you try to make changes to it again, but telling an Insurance Company that you have detected arc faults seems like a short path to getting dropped unless you upgrade your circuit protection to include AFCI.
If you go out and buy one yourself, make sure that Ting is not selling your information to insurance companies, which I opine it surely is.
posted by the Real Dan at 12:54 PM on November 21
Your insurance company will, as a general rule, only offer things for free/cheap if they know it will benefit them, and have less interest in benefiting you in any way. I would read the privacy policy fine print on this extra carefully if you do want to accept it, but if arc faults are something you're worried about I'd talk to an electrician instead of your insurance company.
posted by Aleyn at 12:56 PM on November 21
posted by Aleyn at 12:56 PM on November 21
I have an electrical engineering background, I was curious and I decided to take StateFarm up on their offer and had one delivered. A few observations:
1) You plug it into any typical 120V outlet. So it's attached to one of the "hot" legs in your house but most houses have two legs for 240V applications. The Ting doesn't observe anything on that other leg. Technical support couldn't tell me what magic they use to detect problems on the other side unless it's watching current leakage to neutral or something else.
2) This thing runs HOT. For something that's supposed to just quietly observe the electrical system in your house, something is generating a ton of heat. I took a FLIR and measured 95F on the device in a 72F ambient room after 48 hours of operation. It might be the wifi radio, who knows.
3) More of a subjective thing but this thing smells BAD out of the box, and worse when it's warm. I have a keen sniffer for burning transformers and smoking integrated circuits and I really don't want to smell that when I get home.
I told StateFarm they could have it back, they said just throw it out. So I naturally disassembled it, nothing very special inside.
(To answer one of your other concerns, it can't measure electrical consumption. It would have to have something else plugged into it that is being measured, or it would have to be attached to your breaker box at the utility connection. A city water meter is a good analogy. So it can't do that.)
I agree with Aleyn, arc-fault breakers will be a better protection here instead of something that runs off to your insurance company to tell them about it. AFCIs aren't cheap either but they're becoming more and more common.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:20 PM on November 21
1) You plug it into any typical 120V outlet. So it's attached to one of the "hot" legs in your house but most houses have two legs for 240V applications. The Ting doesn't observe anything on that other leg. Technical support couldn't tell me what magic they use to detect problems on the other side unless it's watching current leakage to neutral or something else.
2) This thing runs HOT. For something that's supposed to just quietly observe the electrical system in your house, something is generating a ton of heat. I took a FLIR and measured 95F on the device in a 72F ambient room after 48 hours of operation. It might be the wifi radio, who knows.
3) More of a subjective thing but this thing smells BAD out of the box, and worse when it's warm. I have a keen sniffer for burning transformers and smoking integrated circuits and I really don't want to smell that when I get home.
I told StateFarm they could have it back, they said just throw it out. So I naturally disassembled it, nothing very special inside.
(To answer one of your other concerns, it can't measure electrical consumption. It would have to have something else plugged into it that is being measured, or it would have to be attached to your breaker box at the utility connection. A city water meter is a good analogy. So it can't do that.)
I agree with Aleyn, arc-fault breakers will be a better protection here instead of something that runs off to your insurance company to tell them about it. AFCIs aren't cheap either but they're becoming more and more common.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:20 PM on November 21
No experience with the sensor, but I got that same email today and deleted it. My assumption is that anything offered by an insurance company is ultimately going to be used to deny claims and I'm not interested in letting any company reach deeper into my home or life than they absolutely have to.
posted by wormtales at 1:21 PM on November 21
posted by wormtales at 1:21 PM on November 21
The Ting service will cover having an electrician come out and fix any fault that triggers, up to some dollar amount I don’t have handy. Realtime monitoring function seems more of a “look what we can do” thing rather than a useful feature, but currently (no pun intended) my electrical system is working fine.
posted by funkaspuck at 1:27 PM on November 21
posted by funkaspuck at 1:27 PM on November 21
I live in Texas, which is famous for how bad our electrical delivery systems are. My local system is bad, even by Texas standards. After multiple complaints to the company went nowhere I used the reports from Ting as evidence in a complaint to our regulator on just how bad things are and two weeks later a bunch of trucks showed up in the neighborhood and fixed things.
posted by Runes at 1:36 PM on November 21
posted by Runes at 1:36 PM on November 21
Thanks to all who have answered.
All-electric house was constructed in 1978 and had the 100 amp panel upgraded to 200 amp about 15 years ago. There is no AFCI that I can tell.
The standard Ting contract covers up to $1000 for an electrician to repair triggered faults.
I can privately purchase a Ting sensor for $100 with a $50 per year cost each year thereafter.
When it detects a fault, their "Fire Safety Team" is to notify me and work out next steps.
I think at this point I'd like to investigate more about arc fault circuit detection which would for sure cover both 120V legs and allow me/my electrician to review and respond to any faults detected without my insurance company being in the loop.
I share wormtales sentiment (above) that the more information we willingly surrender, the more there is out there which can be used against us. Many "free" financial offers are positioned to making someone else money.
Runes, I am glad you were able to use your Ting info to get positive changes.
posted by tronec at 2:29 PM on November 21
All-electric house was constructed in 1978 and had the 100 amp panel upgraded to 200 amp about 15 years ago. There is no AFCI that I can tell.
The standard Ting contract covers up to $1000 for an electrician to repair triggered faults.
I can privately purchase a Ting sensor for $100 with a $50 per year cost each year thereafter.
When it detects a fault, their "Fire Safety Team" is to notify me and work out next steps.
I think at this point I'd like to investigate more about arc fault circuit detection which would for sure cover both 120V legs and allow me/my electrician to review and respond to any faults detected without my insurance company being in the loop.
I share wormtales sentiment (above) that the more information we willingly surrender, the more there is out there which can be used against us. Many "free" financial offers are positioned to making someone else money.
Runes, I am glad you were able to use your Ting info to get positive changes.
posted by tronec at 2:29 PM on November 21
Your question sounded a little familiar, so purely FYI there is this question from a couple days ago. It's not identical to yours since no insurance company is involved.
But when I read the other article I looked up AFCI on Wikipedia out of curiosity and found this article.
I know this reply isn't a direct answer to the original question, however it does address the OP's follow-up about wanting to know more about Arc Faults and AFCIs in general.
posted by forthright at 3:02 PM on November 21
But when I read the other article I looked up AFCI on Wikipedia out of curiosity and found this article.
I know this reply isn't a direct answer to the original question, however it does address the OP's follow-up about wanting to know more about Arc Faults and AFCIs in general.
posted by forthright at 3:02 PM on November 21
It looks like a pilot program from State Farm- and it looks like a substantial part of it is grid analysis of your local power system. A rep from State Farm states that "if a Ting device detects a problem with a transformer, it will alert the homeowner, who hopefully will notify the utility." While this implies that the alerts aren't directly shared with the insurance company they later note that "22 alarms have been set off so far.... 10 of those alerts were for problems with transformers". That covers the first couple of years of the program with around 13,000 devices installed.
So if I lived somewhere that a transformer fire could burn down the neighborhood I might consider one of these.
posted by zenon at 8:57 PM on November 21
So if I lived somewhere that a transformer fire could burn down the neighborhood I might consider one of these.
posted by zenon at 8:57 PM on November 21
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I'd be a bit concerned with what you're required to do with it when it alerts. I'm assuming that if it detects what it thinks is an arc fault it's going to raise some type of alert, and that the insurance company is going make you address it at the risk of losing your coverage. If the thing is 99% effective that's fine, but if the false positive rate is meaningful - even 10% - that might be a substantial burden on you. Because this is just connected to an outlet it's going to require a fair bit of troubleshooting money to figure out what if anything is going on.
posted by true at 12:31 PM on November 21