Daily Home Renovation Tips

Our ECOENERGY page contains all 15 of our articles outlining various details of the Energy Efficiency Evaluation (i.e. energy audit) report we received on our home as part of our participation of in the ecoENERGY Retrofit program.

In the report, one of the recommendations was to include a timer for the switch on the bathroom walls used to turn the bathroom fan on and off. When I read that it was as if I was in one of those “I should have had a V8″ commercials on television. What a great idea. I am always forgetting to turn the bathroom fan off. And, many times it runs for hours on end. What a waste of electricity.

And, as it turned out, when I attended the local energy conservation fair where I won the interior solar blind the big box building supply retailer happened to have a booth with energy conservation products, including a bathroom fan timer. It looked really great, nothing at all what I imagined. It actually looked pretty cool!

So, the next time I went to that retailer’s store in our area I asked a sales associate where I could find them and that I was going to use it for the bathroom fan. I picked up two for $29.99 each.

Notice the product pictures below. In particular notice that, similar to the wireless wall switch product, this product is also like an iceberg in that most of it is hidden behind the wall. This could cause challenges upon installation for sufficient space for the wires and connector caps.

So, a day later I attempted to install the product. After my success with installing the wireless wall switch a few weeks before (as we described in a prior articles) I was confident that I could install these as well. Once I found the switch on the electric panel to turn off the power to the bathroom I proceeded to remove the face plate covering the wall light and fan switches.

Uh-oh. Dorothy, I don’t think we are in Kansas any more. Come back tomorrow when I reveal why I did not install these products. It’s not just what you think.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 2.