Gas Fireplace turns on by it's self. Mystery!

(Frank M. Tate) #1

Hello All,
My setup:
Several Amazon Echos around the house
A Smart things Hub with assorted devices throughout the house.
In particular 1 Remotec ZFM-80US that is used a a relay to integrate my gas fireplace with the Smartthings hub.

Here is what is going on. Twice in the past few months I have woken to find my fireplace on and heating the house in the middle of the night. No person has turned it on. The manual switch is still in the off position.

I check the Amazon Alexa history and there is no entries for the fireplace, I check the history in my Smartthings App and there are no entries showing the fireplace turning on.

If I tell Alexa to turn the fireplace off it does so and there are entries in history within both the Alexa app and the Smartthings app.

If I manually turn the fireplace on and off, entries are created in the Smartthings app that show the switch has been thrown in each case.

When the fireplace comes on by it’s self there is absolutely no record of it doing so. For any other type of application of this switch it would only concern me as a quirk, but as this controls my fireplace and the last time this happened was during a heatwave I have chosen temporarily (at least) remove the switch from the fireplace.

Any ideas, help or direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Frank T.

#2

SmartThings does sometimes have phantom events. (They are referred to in the forums as “poltergeists.”) A door may unlock, a garage door may open, or a fireplace turn on. :scream::ghost::ghost::ghost:

You should definitely report it to support in case they can see anything from their side.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us

Meanwhile, I believe that particular relay does have a built-in timer which you can use to ensure that it doesn’t stay switched on forever if it does come on unexpectedly. @Mike_Maxwell may be able to say more on that.

Personally, I don’t put anything on SmartThings that would be a safety hazard if it ran for 24 hours unattended. But that’s just me.

(Robin) #3

I posted this on a different thread… thought it might be relevant to you:

There are sooo many reasons not to connect a fireplace to ST… its just not worth the risk IMHO!

(Jason Trudell) #4

I use the mimolite relay for gas valve inline with an aeotec switch for the fan. My wall switch is also wired parallel to the mimolite so I am able to switch the fireplace on manually in a single step. This prevents power to the gas relay and subsequently any commands from smartthings unless the fan switch is opened. This also creates an extra step for fireplace automations, which prevents those “phantom” operations. I’ve had this setup for 8 months with no issues.

(Glen King) #5

Yeah, I was gonna say exactly the same thing. There’s no way I would have it have it be anything other than manual functionality; there’s just too much that can go wrong, and when it does the risks are enormous. Fr greater than, for example, an exterior door lock. If that unlocks on its own then yeah your stuff is vulnerable. But if that fireplace gas valve opens up and fails to ignite, then some hours later does ignite…