Chris Lewis wrote:
According to mm :

On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 14:48:45 GMT, Bennett Price
wrote:


What sort of heating do you have? If its electrical baseboard there may
be 120V at the thermostat.



I should have thought about that. Do they make programmable
thermostats for such systems?


Many of those are battery-powered devices that fit _over_ the T-stat and
mechanically move the knob with a small motor. Particularly common for
round-type T-stats.


Back in the halycyon days of my yoot I jury rigged "nite setback" on my
apartment's heating system thermostat by using one of those little
plug-in 24 hour timers, an extension cord and a 6 watt incandescent
night light.

I hung the night light on the wall below the thermostat and adjusted the
distance between them so that when the bulb lit during sleeping hours it
tricked the thermostat into dropping the room temperature about 10
degrees. (Same as making the mistake of putting one of the big old
vacuum tube TVs against a wall under the thermostat.)

It wasn't an original idea BTW, there may even have been some
commercially available gadgets back then which did the same thing. And,
in the September 2005 issue of "MAKE" magazine a similar suggestion was
made, but eliminated the timer I used by a photocell controlled night
light, so a setback occurred when the room got dark. Described thusly:

"Make a Thermostat Fooler to update your old home thermostat rather than
buying a programmable one for over $100. Spend $3 for an incandescent
night light and hang it on a string under your thermostat. At night,
heat from the light makes the thermostat think the house is warmer than
it really is. When daylight comes the light goes off and the temperature
controller goes back to normal operation."

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.8*10^12 furlongs per fortnight.