Conserve Your Energy (and Your Home's) with Bathroom Fan Timers & DewStop Condensation Sensor

Earlier this summer, I finally noticed a pattern in my evening routine. At the end of a long day, after climbing into bed and settling my head on the pillow, a mechanical growling would emerge from the house's nighttime quiet.

Someone left a bathroom fan running and, for all I wanted to ignore it, our climate-controlled air was being siphoned off into the night (and had been for hours). I could either try to ignore the situation (though it felt as wasteful as leaving the fridge door open all night) or get out of bed and turn it off.

A separate trip to the hardware store brought me to the solution: a bathroom fan timer (Pass & Seymour's 7 Button Timer, ~$30). With an engineer dad and a teacher mom, I have been involved in home maintenance and improvements from an early age. The timer switch installation didn't seem much different than replacing a regular light switch, so I bought a model with automatic shut-off after 1, 5, 10, 15, 30, or 60 minutes.

With the kids napping and Dad on the phone, I installed the timer in our highest traffic bathroom.

Almost immediately, I noticed far fewer trips into the bathroom to turn the fan on or off. The kids liked using this switch, so they were happy to deploy it as needed (which had not been the case before), and the fan reliably turned itself off. Jim liked it so much that he asked that I put one in the downstairs bathroom.

The next day, GTR Technologies Inc. contacted us about reviewing their DewStop condensation-sensing fan switch with automatic shut-off. I had never heard of such a switch, but it seemed quite appropriate for a basement bathroom where the shower is used regularly.

DewStop (in center,with blue light) installed between
existing light switch and outlet. Top panel has sensor and LED,
middle button is manual on, and lowest button is manual off.

They sent me the DewStop FS-100 (presently selling for about $48 on Amazon). The installation was almost identical to the timer switch I had already installed. It took me less than half an hour from start to finish (the switch is in a multi-switch junction box, so it took me a little longer to arrange all the wiring and the switch controls into the box and level the switch so it fit under the face plate.

Now, if someone starts showering without the fan on, the switch activates the fan when the humidity reaches it. Our bathroom is long and narrow with the shower and fan at opposite ends of the room and the shower has doors rather than a curtain. This architecture means some humidity accumulates in the shower stall before the fan activates.The humidity is minimal, and dissipates soon after the fan is triggered. Also, the occupant can manually switch the fan on before taking a shower. As when the fan is triggered by the sensor, the timer will turn the fan off after 30 minutes. Both the DewStop and the variable timer have manual off buttons.

The condensation sensor seems most valuable in a bathroom where teens or adults regularly shower. Foggy mirrors and damp walls could be mostly avoided (distance between the switch and the shower may mean a little fog on the mirror right after showering). Jim observes that the switch is great for a guest bathroom because guests won't have to remember to start the fan.

We really like both timed switches. I'm always a little surprised when I realize that the run-time interval has already passed (whether it's 5 minutes upstairs or 30 downstairs). I hate to think how long the fans were previously left running before we turned them off. I can't speak to energy savings as I installed them at the beginning of this heat wave, but I'm sure the fans are running less with the timed switches (even with a 30 minute duration).

And, best of all, when I climb in bed at night, if I hear a ventilation fan running, I know it will turn itself off without my assistance. I love automation.

***Baby Toolkit is the collected reflections and independent opinions of some geek parents in the middle Midwest. Though we know one end of a screwdriver from the other, we're not electricians. While we received a free DewStop from GTR, we're under no obligation to mention it on the blog (much less say anything nice). We have no financial relationship with GTR or Pass & Seymour. We are Amazon affiliates, so a portion of purchases through our links helps cover the blog's overhead. We also podcast about board games at GreatBigTable.com.

Power Lines: Indoor Clotheslines Cut Consumption

Jim and I heard an awesome segment on NPR about Juneau, Alaska's amazing power conservation efforts after an avalanche destroyed their connection to hydro-electric power. The resulting dependence on gas-powered generators caused their electricity rates to raise 400 to 500%.

In a month, the citizens of Juneau have made amazing personal and community conservation efforts and now use less than 70% of their prior consumption.

Since hearing their story we've been looking for more ways to cut our own power use.

One obvious point of energy waste in our house is the dryer. Dryers are innately inefficient (they're just big boxes of hot), especially in an air conditioned home; they are so equally inefficient that they aren't ever Energy Star certified. But our dryer is even worse than usual: When we experienced basement flooding after the tornado, one of our many solutions was to replace the cracked and tilted back patio in hopes of diverting water away from the foundation and basement walls. The new patio sits 14 inches higher than our previous one which comes right up to the bottom flapper of our dryer vent. Now our dryer vent door has a hard time opening consistently or fully. Laundry loads can take twice as long some days. This extended drying time is pretty annoying. It results in a lot of forgotten damp clothes and rewashing.

We're working on a better solution for the outside vent, but in the meantime Jim hung an indoor clothesline that is making our lives a lot simpler. If the clothes in the dryer are damp, they go right to the line and laundry progress marches on. This save us on dryer time and rewashing. Plus, it means far fewer trips up and down the Alpinist-designed stairs (more on stairs).

Now, most people would advocate an outdoor clothesline for the sunshine, but I'm allergic to most of Southern Indiana's greenery. Hanging my clothes out for the fresh air smell is a recipe for ongoing respiratory misery and seepage. The outdoor pollens on the clothes rapidly make me a weepy-eyed sneezer whenever I wear them.

We chose a retractable clothesline (so we can move it when we're working in the utility room) and used a couple of extra wallhooks to use its full 30' length.

The clothesline is great for dryer-unfriendly gear like swimsuits. As an added bonus, it lessens the amount of embarrassing laundry hanging to dry in household showers.

How do you cut power consumption in your home?

I, Bag Lady: Plastic Bags

Some years ago Jim and I volunteered for a river cleanup on the White River where it meanders through suburban and rural Indiana. It sounded like a fun way to spend a day canoing through the countryside. The White River is known locally for some very severe industrial fishkills, so no one really ever plans on going into it above the knee.

Needless to say, our group ended up filling all the canoes as well as a large flat raft with everything from washing machines to spare tires to every kind of plastic implement ever made so everyone was walking their canoes down the river- and then the river got deeper and deeper (before we were near our final destination), so we all ended up swimming and pushing our barely-above-water garbage skiffs. If Ranger ever develops a third eye it won't be a real mystery.

When we got on the school bus to head to a picnic, the conversation turned to one thing- plastic bags. How had so many of them ended up in the river? Was there a community-wide initiative to dam the river using only Wal-Mart bags? Every volunteer had spent just a little too much time disentangling their own share of thousands of plastic bags from our local flora and fauna.

I've never looked at disposable plastic bags the same way since that river trip.

We became dedicated users of cloth bags overnight. Sure, we still end up with a plastic bag every now and then, but we've substantially reduced our plastic bags consumed. We also try to reuse any plastic bags that make their way into our home.

So here are some of our household's favorite plastic bag tips:

• KNOT THE BAGS: For bags being stored bunch the bag at the base in one hand and pull it with your other hand toward the handles to push out all the air and make a rope. Then tie it once in the middle. This makes the bag less of an entrapment and choking hazard. It also keeps them more compact in storage. It's good to tie a knot even in bags you're throwing away because it keeps them from blowing into the local landscape.
  
• USE A BAG HOLDER: We used to use a cheap plastic one from IKEA that looked pretty bad when the bags eeked their way out the holes. My friend's mom saw fit to make us a very cute cloth one out of a tea towel and some ribbons similar to this. Lifehacker even has an extraordinarily utilitarian one made from a used plastic bottle. Amazon has some sleek steel and plastic ones.
  
• MANAGE TRASH STINK: We're notorious for letting take-out move into our fridge on a semi-permanent basis. It gets past the safe consumption zone and I forget to put it out on trash day. So we'll double bag it before putting it in the trash. If you don't live in a hot climate this can buy you a few stink free days. If it's hot here I double bag the hazardous waste and put it in back in the fridge until trash day. That way Ranger's cottage cheese doesn't have to smell like lo mein.
  
• MANAGE DIAPER PAIL STINK: Ghastly diapers double bagged do less olfactory damage in even a floundering Diaper Champ.
• Stow a few in your car for wet clothes, dirty shoes, emergency barf bags, or use as vehicle trash bags.
• Shopping bags make great liners for small trash cans.
• Clean plastic shopping bags are usually welcome donations at thrift stores and food banks.

I strongly recommend cloth bags or durable, reusable plastic bags (IKEA and Trader Joes both sell great ones) for every family. Yes, it takes a little bit of time to get used to taking them to the store, but it's well worth the effort. For each ton of plastic bags not used 11 barrels of oil are conserved.

That doesn't sound like much but each plastic bag used ALSO consumes fossil fuels in transportation, storage costs for manufacturers and retailers, more fossil fuels in transportation to landfills, and landfill space. Often these bags are only used once.

Plastic bag recycling is problematic. The EPA estimates that only 1% of America's plastic bags were recycled in 2000. I learned from someone in the recycling industry that a lot of the store shopping bag bins end up contaminated and can't be recycled. It turns out that there are subtle differences in the plastics (including dyes) that make it impossible to recycle say a Target (white with red), a Wal-Mart (blue with multi-color), and a Best Buy bag (yellow with black) in the same lot. Long story short- most of those grocery store plastic recycling barrels are there to ease consumers' consciouses rather than actually recycle. The contents of those plastic bag collection barrels frequently end up in landfills.

To make your own cloth bags (and some friends), see the tutorials at morsbag.com (social guerrilla bagging) or craftster.org.