Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Vent Timer

Certainly baked, but I've never seen it.
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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.

absterge, Oct 17 2015

http://ecx.images-a...v5d9yL._SL1500_.jpg [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 18 2015]


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Annotation:







       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.
blissmiss, Oct 17 2015
  

       tres baked. try "bathroom fan timer" as a keyphrase.
FlyingToaster, Oct 17 2015
  

       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.
MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 17 2015
  

       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?"
MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 17 2015
  

       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.
not_morrison_rm, Oct 17 2015
  

       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.
FlyingToaster, Oct 18 2015
  

       You can get them with humidity sensors to switch them on and off.   

       Now a scent sensor controlling an aperture iris would be genuinely new and useful.
pocmloc, Oct 18 2015
  

       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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