DIYbanter - View Single Post - light switch also controlling baseboard heaters

Jeff Wisnia

wrote:
Greetings,

I pay for heat in an apartment and want to encourage the tenants to
turn off the electric baseboard heat whenever possible. In the dining
room, kitchen, living room, hallways, and bathrooms (but not bedrooms)
can I install a 120V light on one pole of the 240V baseboard circuit
such that a single switch controls the light and the baseboard heat?
This way if they want to turn off the light when they leave the room
they MUST also turn off the baseboard. They can, of course, always
leave the room with the light on if they still want the heat to run.

Thanks,
William

While not an answer to your question, this thread reminded me that back
during the first "energy crisis" in the early '70s, this road warrier
encountered more than one motel room where the management had installed
a push switch operated by the bolt of the room's entrance door's "dead
bolt" security lock.

That switch controlled power to the usual "through the wall" A/C unit
and the lights and outlets in the room except for one small overhead
light just inside the doorway. All the other things wouldn't work until
you locked the deadbolt.

It made sense to me, though it was a bit of a PIA when you opened the
door to let someone in. I suppose they could have made it a bit more
sophisticated with a time delay circuit which didn't kill the power to
things until the deadbolt had been unlocked for a few minutes.

That was also an time when hotel managements saved power by putting
ridiculously low wattage lightbulbs in the rooms, making it
uncomfortably difficult to read at night. I know I was not the only guy
whose travel kit included a 75 watt bulb packed in a rubber banded
hollowed out pair of styrofoam blocks.

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff
--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
"What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?"