HS-200+ Failure

[hexland]

3 of my WD200 suddenly failed this week. It's very odd.

The switches respond to touch, and the LED's on the left illuminate up and down to illustrate the dimming levels. The wiring appears correct (I'm showing valid 120v and clean connections on Supply, Neutral, Ground and Load).

When the dimmer is fully illuminated, I'm only showing 1.5v coming out of the switch.

If I short the supply and LOAD (basically bypass the switch) - the lights come ON just fine.

I've tried resetting (3xUP, 3xDOWN) and controlling through the app - but no change.

The whole house has recently been re-wired, and a new whole-house-surge is installed and has not been triggered in any way.
What's very odd that all three switches started malfunctioning at the same time.

I have 1 other WD200 and a WS200 and they're still working just fine.

Is there anything else I can test?

[AllHailJ]

Have you tried pulling the airgap and reinstalling to power cycle the switches or cycling the breaker? Most likely something is fried. I had 2 WS100 die in a similar fashion and of course they were out of warranty. Not fun at 40-50 bucks a whack.

[hexland]

Not yet... of all the things I tested, I completely forgot about that... lol.
I'll do it tomorrow morning - Its getting dark here, and I'm supposed to be working from home right now...

[hexland]

Well, I finally got around to completely disconnecting the switch and reconnecting again.
Unfortunately, it didn't help. Still the same (fully ON (all LED's illuminated) - but only ~1.5v reporting from the LOAD connector).
It looks like the switches are fubar'd.

I just don't understand why I'd have 3 switches all fail within 24hrs.
I have a HomeTroller controlling them - does it automatically do some sort of firmware update on them that may have failed for some reason?
It can't be a surge - the supply has been clean, and the house is installed with a surge protector.

What sucks is that they've only been in operation for about 6 months... but I purchased them as a 5-pack back in Aug 2018 -- so they'll most likely be out of warranty.

[AllHailJ]

The whole house surge protector will generally only protect from surges coming from outside. I have 3 subpanels and have additional surge protection at two. The third is a garage subpanel and has no z-wave installed on it but I am considering adding surge protection as this supplies welders and compressors. The subpanel protection helps with the internal surges. I also use UPS on all servers and media equipment. I also do not have cable TV, satellite TV, or a landline on POTS that can introduce surges and I have still have over 8 switches that died on me. This isn't mil spec hardware unfortunately. The three eatons that died I attributed to cheap hardware. The three Jasco were relay failures and the two HS I have not determined a cause.

Not Fun and I feel your pain.

[AllHailJ]

Had some more thoughts.

Are the switches pulling heavy loads and in a multiple gang box with other switches? I read somewhere that you have to derate the switches in a multi-gang setting. Don't remember by how much but I think it was a 20% derate. (please don't crucify me if I am wrong on the %). This is why GE Enbrighten was redesigned to make smaller and have no tabs. There is also a minimum load rating on the switch. Any chance you are under that amount. I know I am on certain circuits as I have converted all lights to LED's.

[nlandreth]

It probably isn't anything you did as it sounds just like one of my many experiences. I just got on the forums to see if I was the only one experiencing this, and sadly it doesn't look like it. I am a builder and built my current house in late 2018. I have a whole home surge protector at the panel, up to date electrical code as required by the city and almost every switch is a homeseer. I have about 37 WD200+, 5 FC200+, 5 WS200+, and 5 WA100+. Over the past 2.5 years I have had 14-16 dimmers fail... sorry I lost count and had to go back to emails to support to try to add up. Fan switches all good. Regular switches I think 2 of those have been. Not all at once. I will go a few months and sometimes just a week apart. I have been in the room when one has failed... and a flicker of the light and then nothing. Almost all of these have continued to communicate, but fail to provide any amount of load at any dim setting to the load side of the switch.

The loads have all been from variable situations across the house, which is mostly LED lighting. From 1 can that runs dim usually, or 9 cans that are usually off or 100%, to the light switch for the garage lights that are on or off. Everything. No similarities.

Support has replaced with very little resistance up until a few months ago every failure I have had. So that is a plus. But having it be my house is easy... a customers house... and over and over for years to come is a whole different story.

I am about to finish a LARGE 7700 SF custom home that will include 50+ smart dimmers and have been debating if I just got a "bad batch" as sales had told me or if it was just a normal thing. I have talked to others using GE brand and they haven't had a dimmer failure outside of an electrical surge that fried the entire switch.

After finding all these forum posts about failures, it appears it is quite normal for the WD200+ so I will probably be trying out a different brand. I sure did like the status lights though.

I would love to hear if anyone else has experienced this high failure rate and any other experience with other brands.

[Alex_W]

The whole house surge protector will generally only protect from surges coming from outside. I have 3 subpanels and have additional surge protection at two. The third is a garage subpanel and has no z-wave installed on it but I am considering adding surge protection as this supplies welders and compressors. The subpanel protection helps with the internal surges. I also use UPS on all servers and media equipment. I also do not have cable TV, satellite TV, or a landline on POTS that can introduce surges and I have still have over 8 switches that died on me. This isn't mil spec hardware unfortunately. The three eatons that died I attributed to cheap hardware. The three Jasco were relay failures and the two HS I have not determined a cause.

Not Fun and I feel your pain.

Type 1 surge suppressors are designed to protect against external surges and are installed between the secondary of the service transformer and the line side of the service equipment overcurrent device, while Type 2 protect from from internally generated surges and are installed on the load side of the overcurrent device. Many Type 1 devices are dual-rated for Type 2 use.

It probably isn't anything you did as it sounds just like one of my many experiences. I just got on the forums to see if I was the only one experiencing this, and sadly it doesn't look like it. I am a builder and built my current house in late 2018. I have a whole home surge protector at the panel, up to date electrical code as required by the city and almost every switch is a homeseer. I have about 37 WD200+, 5 FC200+, 5 WS200+, and 5 WA100+. Over the past 2.5 years I have had 14-16 dimmers fail... sorry I lost count and had to go back to emails to support to try to add up. Fan switches all good. Regular switches I think 2 of those have been. Not all at once. I will go a few months and sometimes just a week apart. I have been in the room when one has failed... and a flicker of the light and then nothing. Almost all of these have continued to communicate, but fail to provide any amount of load at any dim setting to the load side of the switch.

The loads have all been from variable situations across the house, which is mostly LED lighting. From 1 can that runs dim usually, or 9 cans that are usually off or 100%, to the light switch for the garage lights that are on or off. Everything. No similarities.

Support has replaced with very little resistance up until a few months ago every failure I have had. So that is a plus. But having it be my house is easy... a customers house... and over and over for years to come is a whole different story.

I am about to finish a LARGE 7700 SF custom home that will include 50+ smart dimmers and have been debating if I just got a "bad batch" as sales had told me or if it was just a normal thing. I have talked to others using GE brand and they haven't had a dimmer failure outside of an electrical surge that fried the entire switch.

After finding all these forum posts about failures, it appears it is quite normal for the WD200+ so I will probably be trying out a different brand. I sure did like the status lights though.

I would love to hear if anyone else has experienced this high failure rate and any other experience with other brands.

It could be that you got a bad batch of switches but there is also the possibility that there is a load such as a pump or compressor that is causing an issue. Your surge suppression should help to mitigate that problem, but it never hurts to check. I once had a garbage disposal that tripped the arc-fault breaker on another circuit every time it was activated.