Hi folks,

So I currently have heat tape installed on the roof and in the gutters of a rental property. If you're not familiar with heat tape, it's the wiring that you see above peoples' gutters that is used to melt snow and ice, and help prevent ice damming. Before the heat tape, we used to get bad ice damming, and it would cause a lot of damage.

The heat tape has a temperature sensor attached, and it's only supposed to turn on around 35 degrees (give or take). The installer said he used to use a moisture sensor so it would only turn on if it was snowing/icing out. The problem was that the sensor would fail after a year. So now he uses a temperature sensor instead. What I don't like is that it will just stay running as long as it's cold enough, and doesn't even matter if it's snowing or not. Talk about a waste of electricity and I'm going to burn out the tape.

Since it's a rental property, I obviously don't live there. And I can't trust the tenant to be responsible enough to turn it on and off at the breaker depending on the weather.

Can I use one of those WiFi-enabled outlets that I can control from my house and turn it on and off as I please?

Thanks!

 

You could but it would connect thru the tenants network.
That receptacle would probably need to be located inside the house.

 

1. Do you think something like this would work?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

2. When you say it would have to be moved into the garage are you saying that because of security reasons or because of the "weather"

3. The current outlet has two outlets and it's a gfci. Do they make wifi-enabled gfci?