Energy Saving Gadgets

They must be coded in some way, though possibly not in a particularly secure way, to prevent accidental interference between nearby eggs as well as all the other stuff in the 433 MHz band.

My new workbench will. As well as an isolating transformer for one socket.

Lived in digs a long time ago where the Landlady thought the opposite for the part of the house we Herberts lived in. Fortunately one of the lads had access to cans of freezer spray , a blast on the thermostat every so often ensured the heating cut in for a decent amount of time.

G.Harman

But I don't want to:

turn my PVR off as I will come back tomorrow to find that it has missed my recordings.

turn off my bedside alarm clock as it will lose the setting of when to wake me up

turn off the fridge after I have finished ironing in the kitchen

tim

Well even I can work out the answer to that. Don't put in a huge switch that disables every single socket.

Rod

Time for split circuits then.

Sounds like you need to disconnect that 'stat and install a "master" one in a concealed location. Leave the familiar dummy control for people to fiddle with to their hearts content and just leave the real control set to whatever temp. the concensus feels is right. Our office has a dummy thermostat and those not in the know spend many happy minutes "getting it just right" :)

old bicycle innertube tied between door and wall to automatcially shut doors.

Most of the ones I have compared show the LCD using about one third to half the power of a CRT if you look at equivalent sizes. However it is a bit of a moot point since most people replace a CRT with a significantly larger LCD and lose any gain they may have otherwise made.

Indeed - just did a quick test with some of the kit I have on standby, and made a entry for the number of computer hours per day. It gave me a result roughly equal to my entire annual electricity bill just for half my IT kit!

So, by not having one of these devices, I can switch unnecessary appliances off well before 5 minutes have elapsed. Therefore I save more power by /not/ having one.

And I'll bet they switch off everything when you /are/ in the room like those lighting systems in public loos that plunge you into pitch darkess mid piss.

My home automation generates X10 on/off signals for a couple of the rooms using the burglar alarm PIR sensor signals. I originally did this for Christmas tree lights, which switch off after 15 minutes of no activity in the room. I did this more for fire safety than for energy efficiency. (11 years ago, Christmas tree lights were mostly all series strings of filament lamps, and quite a common source of home fires when draped over real trees.) It was not unknown for the Christmas tree lights to go off if you are sitting watching something on TV by yourself, but virtually never when there's more than one person in the room. Also, they switch off if you fall asleep, which is ideal. I don't currently have anything which is taking any notice of these X10 switching commands (not having any Christmas tree at the moment), but the system generates them all the time.