The end game of this story is a good thing.  But a little background first.

I don’t know if anyone reading this has heard of Whisker Labs and their Ting Fire Safety sensor or not, but I wanted to get some words down about it.  It’s a device (in their own words) that “….helps protect your home from electrical fires by detecting dangerous electrical arcing through continuous analysis of over 30 million electrical signals per second.”  Basically it monitors your electric lines for signs of arcing which can cause a fire.

I first heard about it a couple of years ago when my State Farm agent sent me a message saying that State Farm was going to pay for the service to put one in my house.  The Ting device is not free.  The device costs $100 and comes with a year of service.  The monitoring service costs $49 a year afterwards.  But I always figured State Farm probably figured that paying for the Ting service to monitor people’s houses is way cheaper than paying out for a house fire.  So I put one in a disused outlet in my wall, and just let it sit.  It basically stayed green, and just sat that way.

Until the afternoon of July 31st – I get an email from the Ting people saying this…  “This is {redacted} from the Ting Fire Safety Team. Based on recent data from your Ting sensor, we’ve detected a dangerous electrical fire hazard in your home. We urge you to contact us immediately by replying to this email, calling, or texting our team at {redacted}. Swift action is essential to ensure your home remains safe.”  So needless to say, this scared the shit out of me.  I called them instantly, and we spoke, and they told me they were detecting electrical arcing.  So it began a nearly 90 min search of devices in my house.  Unplugging the Xbox, the TV, various devices in a certain room.   We eventually narrowed it down to an old power outlet and a good old fashioned brown extension cord.  I ordered new ones from Amazon, got there the next day.  So I plugged in the new gear, called them again, and long story short, we found things were reduced, but still a minor reading, so we tried a few other items, and focused on a light fixture on the back porch which was on the same circuit.   So I turned the light off, and the problems went away, so we were confident the light was the problem.

So, a few days passed with no problems and the Ting people reset me back to normal figuring we had solved the problem.   I had an  electrician out to take care of a few minor electrical things that needed done (one bathroom needed an outlet replacement, that kind of thing).  I had him replace the light fixture mentioned above with a completely new one, and then I had him research a problem that I’ve never been able to figure out.

My wife and I have owned our house about 25 years or so, and there’s one power outlet in our den that has never had power.  EVER.  I asked the electrician to fix that.  He dug around in the attic, and eventually figured out the problem.  So check this.   In that room we have a switch plate with three switches.  One controls the previously mentioned light outside, the second one controls the ceiling fan, and the third one controls ????  – It’s never done anything.  This room also has a bookshelf.   I found out from talking to a neighbor who knew the prior owners that there used to be a wet bar in the place.  My working theory is that someone rerouted that switch to work with a light in the wet bar, and when they removed the wet bar they never reconnected the switch to the outlet.  So back to now…   The electrician looked into this and found out that the power outlet HAD power, but not at the outlet.  The line that was feeding that in the attic DID have power.  He thinks that someone in the past was hanging a poster or a mirror or something and spiked the line when they did it, because it had power in the ceiling.

Here’s the reason I went down this big sidetrack.  He said we had a power line just hanging there in the wall with an open live line with power for nearly TWENTY FIVE YEARS.  That’s scary as shit.  Nothing happened, but the idea that my house could have burnt because of that is really freaky.   Anyway, he took care of everything, got power in that line and left.  Our Ting device was green and we thought we were all done.

Until the 15th of September when I was getting a haircut, and I got a phone call (which I ignored as I was in the barber’s chair) saying that the Ting device was going off again.  GREAT.  We thought we had it figured out.  So, more testing of devices and cutting power, and all that.

Bottom line is on the second round of testing, we actually narrowed it to what the real root problem.  Turns out there was a power outlet in the garage that was VERY loose.  It had a device plugged into it, and talking to the folks at the Fire Safety team, they could tell when I did anything with that plug it really was wobbly, and simply plugging in the device and taking it out caused spikes due to a really old outlet in bad condition.  So we called out an electrician a second time, and had them properly replace the outlet in the garage with a new one.

Once that was done, all of the arcing went away, and the problem was solved properly.  It was quite a relief.

I’m writing this blog post to get the story down as I wanted to tell someone about it, so I figured why not and get the word out.  If your insurance company offers you the opportunity to get a Ting device, get it.  Let them pay for it.  It might come in handy for you.  Heck, even if they don’t pay for it, it’s probably worth the money.

One other thing I didn’t mention is that buy buying the device, it comes with $1000 against repairs that were verified to be something the ting detected.  Which this did, so the final repair for the outlet cost me NOTHING to fix.  I’m super glad I said yes to this Ting device being in my house to monitor for this stuff.

I’m grateful to State Farm for covering the cost for this for me, and ESPECIALLY happy with Whisker Labs and the folks I dealt with in their Fire Safety Team.  Every single one of then I spoke with were helpful, patient, and worked with me and through my stress to get the problem dealt with.  When you’re in a mode that is like “my house might burn down” you’re gonna be stressed.  Everyone at Wisker Labs that I dealt with was awesome.  I can have no complaint about any of them.  They were all awesome with me.

Thank God for Ting – it likely kept my house intact, and thanks to State Farm for their idea for paying for this.