I hadn’t bothered calling Braemac about an install date for our rooftop PV system because I suspected that they would be crazy busy with the run up to the September 30 FIT cut-off deadline. I emailed them this morning at 9 asking about an install date and got an answer back within 10 minutes offering me three different dates that were just two weeks away! So it’s booked in for installation on the 18th of October. Kudo’s to Braemac for being on the ball and answering my email so quickly.
Monthly Archives: October 2011
The Sliding Gate is Alive!
So the good folks at Gate-A-Mation (catchy name) came and automated the front sliding gate on the house a couple of weeks back. It rained pretty much the whole time which meant they were doing the job for a bit longer than expected, around about 3.5 hours. The actual installation of the hardware didn’t take too long, about an hour and a half. Then it was 2 hours spent adjusting various electronic settings in the motor and fiddling with the plastic rack on the gate to get the gate operating nicely.
The Deimos Gate Actuator
The motor is a Deimos BT 24V unit that runs off of the 240VAC supply that is available at the gate. You can see the motor above which is attached via dyna-bolts to a concrete foundation. The blue component is the manual clutch release that is unlocked via a key.
Close up of Gate Motor
A view of the motor showing pinion that drives a nylon rack that the installers screwed to the bottom of the sliding gate. The spring in the middle is a spring switch that is activated by limit stops at each end of the gate.
Limit Stop and Rack
A close up of one of the limits at the end of the gate and showing a section of the plastic rack on the bottom of the gate.
Keypad
And my favourite part, the keypad for opening and closing the gate when you don’t have a remote. I wasn’t going to get this but one look at the nicely made stainless steel enclosure and tactile keys made me want it. It’s programmable to do all sorts of neat stuff (still have to read through the manual) and is backlit at night time! Anything with blue LED illumination MUST be good 🙂 The keypad is fixed securely to the outside post of the gate and has proved to be very useful to get in and out of our yard when we’re walking to the park.
Eliminating Standby Power Waste with the EcoSwitch
The Ecoswitch
As I mentioned in this entry about the Belkin Power Usage Meter I bought I’ve been monitoring the amount of power being used by the devices in this house when they are in standby mode. Eliminating the power used is simple, just turn the power off at the wall when it’s not getting used. Trouble is that the power points are hard to reach, and in one case here, impossible to reach without having double jointed shoulders.
The answer is some sort of remote switching. I’ve seen some power boards that sense the current draw by one device (say your TV) and when these drops below a certain limit they power down (via relays I imagine) the other devices on the power board. Trouble with this is that the master device is still in standby mode. The other idea I had was to put an inline switch into an extension cord and stick the extension cord somewhere that could easily be reached. Trouble with this is that it would be ugly and one of my friends would have to come and do the actual work for me because playing with 240V makes me nervous.
While reading the Whirlpool Forums last week I came across a mention of a product called the EcoSwitch. Basically it’s an extension cord with a T junction with an illuminated rocker switch at the end the leg of the T. You plug one end of the EcoSwitch into the power, the other into whatever powerboard/devices you want to control and stick the switch somewhere easily accessible. The rocker switch is illuminated when the power is on, and dark when not. Just turn off the switch at night when you’re finished with TV, Computer, or whatever. You can see a picture of one of the EcoSwitches above with the rocker switch visible at centre bottom of the image.
The EcoSwitches cost about $20 plus shipping so I ponied up for 4 (3 I needed and one spare) of them direct from the supplier. They arrived 5 days later. The EcoSwitches work exactly as advertised and even come with double sided tape to stick the switch end down somewhere that is easily reached. However, the tape is useless and in all three spots that I am using them the switch kept coming unstuck and dropping back behind whatever I was trying to switch off. Very annoying. However, it was easily fixed by using some proper 3M double sided tape we had laying around.
My three EcoSwitches are plugged into two TV/Media centers that were drawing 40W in standby mode for 20 hours day and into a PC/Laptop setup that was drawing 10W in standby mode for 8 hours a day. The EcoSwitches will prevent 321kWh of standby power being wasted annually which is about $80.25 saved on our power bill each year. Not a bad return on investment for $60 worth of EcoSwitches.