The simplest ideas are the best

Sometimes it really is true that the simplest ideas are the best. I recently installed a Househeat Window sensor on our bedroom window and now I watch the results with great satisfaction.

The problem is that my wife likes warmth and needs the bedroom to be toasty at night. She is also a Nightingale nurse* and probably because of this, has an overpowering desire to fling the windows open to air the bedroom in the morning. This is fine, but she is always too busy with children in the morning to turn off the radiator.

Cue the strangely shaped object in the picture. This four inch long device sits on the sash window frame and detects when the window is opened. It communicates this via a wireless signal to the HouseHeat room thermostat, which in turn promptly tells the motorised valve on the central heating radiator to turn off.

When the window is closed, the window sensor tells the room thermostat. In turn the room thermostat checks to see what temperature the room should be at, and communicates that to the radiator valve motor. All is once again well with the world.

It is such a simple system and it works so well. With oil and gas prices rising fast this HouseHeat window/door sensor will pay for itself in no time.

Sorry for the delay in posting - back to normal now.
Edwin

*Interestingly, while Florence Nightingale did set up the nursing school at St Thomas' hospital in London, she refused to work there because of its proximity to the foul smelling river Thames.