Day: January 27, 2020

My outdoor kitchen has a 6 gallon under sink hot water heater. It normally consumes 1.3kW at 1:30 duty cycle, so 1.04kWh/day. Yesterday morning it started to cycle on much more frequently…maybe a 4:10 duty cycle, thus 12.48kWh/day. I investigated and found the water heater leaking maybe half a gallon of hot water a minute into the drain under the outdoor sink. At an average of $0.25/kWh, this increase in electricity usage is $86/month. The water leak itself is 21600 gallons/month. Thank you Sense for helping me find this problem quickly; I may not have noticed otherwise until mid-Spring.

I noticed a 1200W spike in the Sense energy monitor that would cycle on for 2 minutes and off for 10. They cycle repeated for about 24 hours before I noticed it. I looked around the house for any appliances that someone may have left on like a space heater or coffee maker. I couldn’t find anything so started turning of breakers one at a time until I saw the cycle disappear. It was the circuit for our drying center. It’s a natural gas dryer on the bottom and an electric dryer rack on top for drying delicate items like sweaters. I turned the breaker back on and the cycle continued. The dryer control panel was dark indicating that the dryer was off but the upper cabinet was warm. The blower fan was not running. The found that heating element was on all the time and it was cycling off when the temperature reached the high limit. I traced the problem back to a relay that was stuck on.