I ordered some sidewalk heating mats from HeatTrak and I want to automate them with HA so that they come on when it makes sense to do so based on the data from my Tempest Weather Station.
According to HeatTrack my mats will have a combined resistive load of 5A which is well within the spec of the Zooz ZEN05 or ZEN14, both rated for 15A resistive loads, but when I asked them about it they did not recommend using either of them with heated mats. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain why and it doesn’t make sense to me why this wouldn’t work.
My next thought was to simply swap the outlet to something smart but this is an outdoor outlet so it needs to be GFCI and there’s essentially no Z-Wave GFCI outlets made.
Do I really need to use something like an Enbrighten Z-Wave Plus 40-Amp contactor for this or am I missing something here?
Speaking from experience, Zooz products have been very poor quality for me and not worth the trouble. I put those switches all throughout my house and now I’m having to replace them, one by one, to due to random failures or unreliable performance. I used a Zooz switch for an outdoor outlet (switch was indoors) and the thing stopped working but support wouldn’t do anything because it’s not a light, it’s going to an outlet. I supported them during their initial product launch, warrantied a lot of switches which helped their R&D, but customer support has 0 sympathy for me now that the warranty is over (they even disregarded the extended warranty they promised me). After all the work I’ve had to do tearing my outlets apart to replace their switches, it’s just not worth it. I wish I would’ve gone with a more expensive brand the first time, I would have saved a lot. If it’s not too late, I recommend looking beyond them.