ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Business Related Discussion Kill-A-Watt

John,

Good topic.

I do quite a few residential wiring evaluations, usually people who have bought older homes and want to know whether the wiring is safe, and which improvements should be done first and which will get them the most for their money.

The evaluations involve visual examination, checking receptacle condition, polarity, and voltage drop, opening up the panel(s), and identifying the circuits. I've set up three levels of detail, each with a different price point: standard, comprehensive, and exhaustive or all-inclusive.

Using an energy comsumption meter is a great addition to the top-tier evaluation. I've found a tester that makes identifying the circuits incredibly fast and easy, the circuit mapper by Tasco. Not cheap, but it allows me to set up in the panel and then positively ID every outlet easily.

Anyway, with my evaluation, the client gets a report that includes the field data sheets, and a narrative writeup on finding and recommendations. I take digital photos of the noteworthy conditions and include them in the report.

I've done enough of these that I have a template and language that covers most of the conditions of concern that I run into, so writing up the report is no big deal.

I price the evaluations so that I make the same amount of money as I do on a service job of the same length.

The evaluations lead to other work about half of the time.

Cliff

A decent portion of my business is completing Load Surveys, Power Quality Sureveys, Grounding Surveys and a few other types. The surveys more that pay their way and the repairs that result from the surveys are added revenue, win win.

If you could use a bunch of CT type probes you could survey a whole panel (or at least as many circuits as you have probes for) at one time.

gfretwell... you've just described the Tasco circuit mapper.

Tesla, what makes the Kill-A-watt different is that it is a kilowatt-hour meter. That is, it keeps a cumulative total over time. This lets you get a real measure for things like fridges, which cycle on and off over time.

Here is the link to that Hobo logger... Hobo Data Loggers

A data logger can do that too. The demand data you collect gives you a curve when it's plotted on a computer. The curve goes up when demand is high and goes down when demand is low.

The curve will show the watts used at any given time. But the area under the curve will be the total accumulation of watts over time. The software can calculate this for you.

It seems that both pieces of information are valuable. With a Kill-A-Watt meter, you only know total watt-hours accumulated. With a data logger you find total watt-hours accumulated and you can see when demand was high and when demand was low.

Any $30 dataloggers out there, that do NOT require anything to be disassembled?