- Will the board short if it happens to collect moisture, oil, dust, or lint? What if a bug is attracted to it? Will I even monitor the condition of the board?
- Will the traces and relays heat up if I accidentally draw too much current through them? Will they degrade over time?
- Is there a chance that vibration could loosen the board and make unintentional connections?
I decided I probably could never answer these questions well enough to satisfy an insurance company. It doesn't matter that I have plenty of experience with line voltage; what matters is that I am not a licensed electrician. Therefore, at home, I only experiment with low voltage and low current, delegating all line voltage to UL listed devices.
A toy, in other words. It might be good enough to get a rough idea what eats more or less and when, but it'll never match the utility power meter which is what you're paying by.
cdrc: I rewire my houses myself, because those licensed loons can't be trusted with a 12V light bulb. At least that way _I_ am sure it won't blow up or burn or whatever.
Still, inductive current measurement with the sizes of the clamps they show and typical currents they're measuring isn't accurate at all. Not even considering that voltage measuremens via a wall wart would depend on what load is currently sharing the same wiring.
This might be my bias since I design similar stuff for solar offgrid, where a percent or ten off are that much in capex divided by battery lifetime, then multiplied by battery cost. It bites.
I don't trust inductive clamps at low currents. I would never trust measuring voltage on the same line as a load.
Hall sensors or current shunts; voltage dividers - all driving MCU ADC channels via optoisolated opamps. Everything measured as near to the source as possible. Otherwise you're getting nearly worthless data.
That's actually not correct. Clamps / current transformers are totally fine.
The flip side of that is the risk of a geek installing a power monitor without permits pales in comparison to someone plugging a 1500 Watt wall heater an an ancient wall outlet.
And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy)."
I'm skeptical that an insurance company will be able to determine exactly what part you used and if it was UL listed unless you yourself tell them
If it's an electrical fire and they find modifications to the electrical wiring the chances of getting the insurance money are slim. Unless those modifications are explicitly covered by the insurance.
Given the kind of exposure insurance companies have they are willing to invest a lot in fighting the payout. It's their business model.
Can you cite any firsthand account of this sort of thing happening somewhere in the US? Given the ease with which people can reach millions of people with their tale of woe/outrage the fact that such stories are not readily available on social media makes me think this is mostly urban legend.
There's no need to cite firsthand accounts, you will find this in your own insurance contract. Insurance works pretty much the same everywhere, unauthorized modifications (especially to critical systems) usually invalidate any insurance claim when they can be linked to the incident. [0] Electrical wiring, plumbing, structure of the building, safety or security systems, etc. And it makes perfect sense if you think about it.
[0] http://www.insurancequotes.org/renters/3-major-diy-mistakes-...
Here is a link to a sample Homeowner's policy: https://www.iii.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/HO3_sample....
Exclusion B on page 12 is probably the relevant section. It excludes loss due to "Faulty, inadequate or defective:... workmanship, re- pair, construction, renovation, remodeling,..." but also contains an "ensuing loss" exception.
Here is an article about that: https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/ensuing-loss...
> A classic example [of an ensuing loss exception] is if faulty repair resulted in improper wiring and the improper wiring caused a fire. Almost every insurer would pay for the fire damage, but not for the repair of the improper wiring.
1) The insurance company will more often than not sue the party responsible for the faulty workmanship that triggered the incident to recover the money (I've seen this happen). In this case the owner is that party.
2) One real example is enough to show it's not a legend and you provided it yourself:
> Some courts have upheld this rather cramped reading of the exclusion, while others construe it properly and require insurers to pay for the water damage
Since it's upheld in court I find your statement that it's an urban legend pretty confusing. It's like showing a picture of the night sky to prove the Sun is a myth.
YMMV of course, you should read your own contract to see what's stipulated and how comprehensive it is, and case law in your jurisdiction to see if courts would rule in your favor. But better be safe and start from the assumption that the "urban legend" is real since courts support it. It's the kind of legend that might cost you money.
Another? Didn't we clear this one already above when your link showed courts upheld the "legend"? Are you contradicting me or the courts? Feels like you're no longer looking for any evidence, just grasping at straws.
Plenty of resources that tell you that it's perfectly possible to get no payout (depends on your contract of course)[0][1]. Or they will pay out but capped to a low figure [3]. Again, read your contract and decide what applies to you, pray there's no fineprint to screw you over.
[0] https://www.boss.info/us/consumer_warning/
> unauthorized modification of electrical wiring may void your homeowners fire insurance policy
[1] https://www.quora.com/Is-it-illegal-to-do-electrical-tasks-w...
> Most jurisdictions require a permit to be pulled for most electrical work
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/7vwe23/doe...
P.S. No, I do not know any cases where the owner was sued but I do know many cases where the insurance company payed out and then sued the company that did the faulty repairs to recover the entire payout. I also know one case where a faulty repair done by the owner caused a fire that injured the tenant - the owner was found guilty of recklessness/gross negligence (no idea about the insurance in that case).
First-party claims, absolutely. Insurers want to pay when they are liable, and they don't want to pay when they are not. Your contract defines that, and your contract is written in plain English.
Insurers aren't out to get you, and the insurance industry doesn't rely on shafting people to make money. When you purchase insurance your policy is priced according to the exposure it creates, but a lot of people mistakenly assume that the insurer's profit comes from premium payments. It often doesn't. From what I have read, insurers are generally happy to break even on premiums vs. payouts. Their profit comes from investing the float and earning a return on those investments.
Related, I think that most people don't understand how tightly regulated insurance is, and how much it can suck for an insurer to improperly deny a claim. It creates huge legal and regulatory exposure for the insurer.
Indeed they are not. They are out to maximize profit either by not paying out when possible (sometimes only if forced by the court), or by paying out and recovering the money from the party to blame for the damage (in this case also the owner). And as the links provided below show, many courts see it their way and consider that damage cause by faulty workmanship is not covered by insurance.
I've done my part, the court supporting my claim shows it's as real as it gets. If you want to support your claim that it's an urban legend all you have to do is show that this never actually happened.
https://www.robinskaplan.com/~/media/pdfs/uncrackable%20cons...
Can you point me to an instance of this actually happening? I see this warning given all the time but have to date never found an instance where someone's claim was denied for these sorts of reasons.
This isn't to say that I would discourage a hobbyist from building their home automation controls. I would strongly recommend learning about designing electronics for mains voltage (creepage and clearance, grounding strategy, fuses and other circuit protection, types of transformers and how they're built (double insulated?), capacitor voltage rating|derating, ripple current ratings, lifetime vs. temperature, etc.
You can be a hobbyist and design things well, just be thorough when it's something that can set you and everything you love on fire if you do it wrong.
I'm just curious how your homeowner's insurance feels about this? That is, will they still pay out for a claim should something happen, and they determine your modifications were at fault?
Because if the adjuster or whomever does find you have such modifications - they -will- blame those.
And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy).
At least that would likely be your experience if you live in the United States.
I've often thought that having such a system would be fun, but the potential downside should anything go wrong has put a damper on it (even if whatever happened was not related to your modifications - they will blame it on them, just to get out of the claim).
The only "inexpensive" way around it is to use UL listed interfaces made by a third party, then interface with those. But there, you don't usually get everything you want.
Of course at that point, the insurance company might just shift the burden on you to "So, did you have this done by a licensed electrician? Where is your inspection report?"...