Media for Water heater eating X-10 signal

Water heater eating X-10 signal

Hello,

I've had a modest X-10 system running in our house for a few years. It took me a while to get it working reliably enough to get the WAF to a level where my wife wasn't cursing "HAL" every other day.

Part of that effort involved installing an active phase coupler in our mains panel. Everything was working pretty well, until we recently added an electric water heater to the panel.

The water heater is wired to a double pole 30 amp breaker in the panel via about 60' of 10/2 w/ground (no neutral connection on the heater, just the two hots). After I installed it I noticed that our X-10 controlled outside lights weren't coming on in the evenings. After a little troubleshooting I discovered that if I switched off the breaker for the heater, the X-10 system went back to normal. Switching the breaker on makes the problem reappear.

I'm guessing that the connection to heater and/or the heater itself is "sinking" the X-10 signal.

Is there a wired, in-line filter available that I can fit in after the breaker to block the X-10 signal from the heater and its wiring? Is that the correct approach in this case?

Thanks.