Re: Water heater eating X-10 signal

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Mr. Land" <graftonfot@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

<stuff snipped>

> All of our front lights are garden-variety outdoor house lamps (metal
> frames with various glass panel arrangements, with arrays of 2 or 3
> 40W "teardrop" shaped incandescent lamps).  We have one pair with each
> mounted on either side of our front door, one pair with each on either
> side of our garage doors, and a single pole lamp at the end of our
> driveway near the street.  Each pair is controlled by a single WS467,
> as is the pole lamp.  Currently, these are set to X-10 C4, C5 and C6
> addresses, although I've tried others out of curiosity and that hasn't
> helped.  They all behave identically: they either all work, or none of
> them work.
>
> The wire to the water heater is 10/2 WG, so there are the two "hot"
> wires and a ground - no neutral wire.  Yes, the ground connection to
> the water heater is sound.  There are no lower-voltage feeds, control
> or otherwise, to the heater.
>
> Here's more troubleshooting info:
>
> Through trial and error I identified the breaker which feeds the
> lights in question.  I re-ran my looping test script and used the ESM1
> to measure the signal at the screw connection to that breaker.  I saw
> a the 5-bar signal level there, along with the green X-10 light on the
> ESM1.  Next I removed one of the troublesome WS467's (the pole lamp)
> from the wall near the front door.  I disconnected it and tested from
> ground to each wire there at the box - on the line side wire I saw the
> same "healthy" 5 bar signal level there.  Really confused at this
> point, I rewired the WS467 into the circuit, and tested again - I
> still saw the 5 bar signal level!  Yet the WS467 does not respond to
> it.
>
> Could this be some sort of minor garbling and/or ringing that the ESM1
> can handle well enough to show a green X-10 indicator, yet be enough
> to foul up the WS467's?  Could two phase wires in the 70-odd feet of
> 10/2 feeding the heater be causing some sort of weird ringing?
>
>
> I'm running out of ideas, thanks to you all for continuing to try to
> assist.

This really is a fascinating problem.  I never expected that you'd get 5
bars at the light switch.  I'm thinking that for whatever reason, the signal
reaching the wall switches is corrupted and that the earlier threads
regarding interaction between the two phases was correct.  If you live
near Wash DC, I'd be happy to bring my Monterey analyzer over to see exactly
what's coming out of the wiring at the switch.  This is one of the few
instances where an analyzer really trumps an LED bargraph meter since it
allows for analysis of the actual bits on the powerline as well as the noise
level in two different parts of the power phase.  My suspicion is that you'd
see the same sort of readout you see when there are collisions on the line
from multiple transmitters.