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Vent Timer
Certainly baked, but I've never seen it. | |
The switch that connects electricity for the exhaust vent in a typical private bathroom is generally some sort of a binary toggle. Flip it on, it stays on, consuming electricity, moving air, and making noise, until some actor flips it back off. For the less attentive, hours may pass until someone realizes
that the fan is still running, while the original reason for the ventilation has long since passed.
I propose a single button control with a series of four small lights. Each successive button press extends the time to run the fan by a fixed 15 minutes, all the way to an hour. At the expiration of the timer, the circuit opens again and the fan powers down.
Maybe I'm just getting older; I find myself feeling a great compulsion to turn off lights and such in uninhabited rooms. This device would at least relieve one like concern for unattended and unnecessary fan use.
http://ecx.images-a...v5d9yL._SL1500_.jpg
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 18 2015]
[link]
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I applaud your greenness. I hate exhaust fans in bathrooms.
The noise they usually make takes away any enjoyment I might
otherwise have, whilst in the potty. But I understand their
importance too, for a short spell, at various times. So good on
you, and a bun too. |
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tres baked. try "bathroom fan timer" as a keyphrase. |
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Yep. Pretty much all bathroom fans are on a timer
linked to the lights, at least in the UK. Admittedly
you can't change the delay period (at least without
using a screwdriver), but I can live without that. |
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The way to look at it, [Ian] is to say to yourself: "If I
had a nice quiet fan with a timer, and somebody
knocked on my door offering me £14.99 if they could
replace it with a noisy timerless one, would I
accept?" |
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Ian can accept the 14.99 and yet keep the
moral high ground by sending the money to
me. NB had one place in Japan with a 30cm X
30 cm fan outlet rigged to the lights. In winter
like showering in wind tunnel. Ergo, bought a
torch. |
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For the price of ductwork and drilling a hole in the side of the building, why not a box with a dehumidifier for the steam, charcoal filter for the stink, and a couple sensors to switch between none, one, the other, or both. |
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You can get them with humidity sensors to switch them on and off. |
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Now a scent sensor controlling an aperture iris would be genuinely new and useful. |
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We have the same manual on/off bathroom fans here. There is a dial-timer on switch you can swap out for this purpose. |
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