Ting electrical monitor

bc

Well-known Member
Got an email from State Farm today offering a free Ting electrical monitor for the home. Apparently they help stop electrical fires.

Just wondering if anyone has experience with one and has a recommendation?

They had already offered a discount on car insurance if I put in a driving monitor in a car. Told them I didn't need State Farm spying on me. Thanks.
 
Go for it. i've been using one for a year & like the weekly reports. interesting to see peaks & sags in voltage & text message if large sag, brownout, or power outage.
 
Derecho last year while I was out of town knocked power out. Had to return home to get generator started.
Did not think about that. I have a whole house generator that kicks on automatically when power is lost. So if we are gone losing power is something I never have to worry about.
 
Go for it. i've been using one for a year & like the weekly reports. interesting to see peaks & sags in voltage & text message if large sag, brownout, or power outage.
Thanks. What about the fire risk? Will it tell you if a circuit is overloaded, if a breaker tripped, if you have a loose neutral, or if the power company has a loose neutral in the area?
 
I had never heard of Ting and looked it up on Google. The main advantage of Ting is it can detect arcing in your electrical system. Arcing is the source of many house fires. Most codes require Arc Fault circuit breakers in bedrooms today and some include the whole house. I would certainly take one if my insurance company offered it.
 
I had never heard of Ting and looked it up on Google. The main advantage of Ting is it can detect arcing in your electrical system. Arcing is the source of many house fires. Most codes require Arc Fault circuit breakers in bedrooms today and some include the whole house. I would certainly take one if my insurance company offered it.
Sounds like it may something to try. Technically there is an arc when some things are plugged into an outlet.
 
I would expect there to be some threshold for the length of time the arc is sustained.
If I'm using an arc welder, what would a ting do?
Knock on wood, I don't have a ting and haven't had an electrical fire yet. There is still time, I'm only 75
and plan to live another 75. :love:
Jokes aside, Don't some appliances have a ting(or a thingy) on the power cord? Like window ACs?
 
If I'm using an arc welder, what would a ting do?
Knock on wood, I don't have a ting and haven't had an electrical fire yet. There is still time, I'm only 75
and plan to live another 75. :love:
Jokes aside, Don't some appliances have a ting(or a thingy) on the power cord? Like window ACs?
I believe what you are calling a thingy on the cord is a GFCI, especially hair dryers, because not all bathroom have them. What detects arcs and shorts is called an arc-fault breaker, and required in all bedrooms, because electric blankets can arc and start a fire. Here is the explanation I found,

Since small arcs differ from huge amounts of electrical energy rapidly going to ground (as with a short), a typical circuit breaker will not detect the leak. You can think of arc faults as sparks or small amounts of electrical energy that generate heat but not a large amount of energy flow. Obviously, they can quickly consume nearby wood and plastic to create a fire.
 
Ting monitors your power and does not control or act as a circuit breaker. The Ting is plugged into a standard 3-prong electrical receptacle and is logged into your Wi-Fi network. It is monitored at a remote location. You can also see the state of the monitor with an app on your phone. As I understand it the monitor does not warn you of an immediate problem, but of power fluctuations over some time. The fee for that monitoring is $4 per month or $49 a year. I read one review by a user that said the monitor warned him of a neutral problem and the power company found a problem at the pole side. https://www.tingfire.com/
 
Thanks. Since they are offering it free I assume they are paying the fee. Maybe I can see what the air conditioner is using in electricity and maybe see what the spikes are when using the stove, microwave, and the fridge when it cycles on. Plus the lights and other stuff. Not that I plan on changing anything in what we do around here.
 
Ting monitors your power and does not control or act as a circuit breaker. The Ting is plugged into a standard 3-prong electrical receptacle and is logged into your Wi-Fi network. It is monitored at a remote location. You can also see the state of the monitor with an app on your phone. As I understand it the monitor does not warn you of an immediate problem, but of power fluctuations over some time. The fee for that monitoring is $4 per month or $49 a year. I read one review by a user that said the monitor warned him of a neutral problem and the power company found a problem at the pole side. https://www.tingfire.com/
Remote monitoring... phone app... and you pay them for the "privilege" of having them spy on both your power as well as everything on your phone as all phone apps do and better yet your insurance company is paying for it with your money and spying on you as well. I bet all the gullible folks are lining up in droves for this beauty...
 
Not sure exactly how the unit works, that would be interesting. As far as being paranoid about spying on you I don't see that side of it your home has a meter, pretty easy to see how much electricity you're using. I read that in some cases the provider will pay up to $1k to repair any problems detected, if it works that would be a benefit to the homeowner and the insurance company. The catch I see is if or when the insurance company stops paying the monitor fees and the homeowner is expected to pay or have an increased premium if they don't.

Oh yeah, the free part. The moose at the gate should have told you there is no "free" in America.
 
Not sure exactly how the unit works, that would be interesting. As far as being paranoid about spying on you I don't see that side of it your home has a meter, pretty easy to see how much electricity you're using. I read that in some cases the provider will pay up to $1k to repair any problems detected, if it works that would be a benefit to the homeowner and the insurance company. The catch I see is if or when the insurance company stops paying the monitor fees and the homeowner is expected to pay or have an increased premium if they don't.

Oh yeah, the free part. The moose at the gate should have told you there is no "free" in America.
Your electric meter, even a "smart meter" only monitors the total power demand and more importantly it does not have a spying phone app nor does it share your power usage information with anyone who will pay for it.

As for utility responsibility, they will be responsible for any faults up to the meter in pretty much all cases. I had a case where the neutral connection failed and the resulting voltage imbalance blew a few light bulbs and the controls on a furnace. Fortunately the house was unoccupied in the process of being sold so there was little there that could be damaged. At any rate the utility found the fault at the pole, fixed it and covered the cost of the furnace controls (a couple hundred bucks) without any issues.

The old saying is "there is no such thing as a free lunch", however my experience has shown that lunch is one of the few things you can actually get for free from time to time.
 

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