Vent-Miser 91664 Programmable Energy Saving Vent 4 x 10 -Inches, White

First off, I live in Minnesota. It's cold here in the winter. ;) I just finished a new bathroom in the basement of my century old home but there were a couple of issues with room. It's either REALLY cold due to being in the basement or REALLY hot because the vent basically comes straight out of the furnace into this room. The problem is that the bathroom will mainly just be used in the morning for getting ready and then sit unused the the rest of the day. So I don't want to leave the vent open all the time because that's a waste of energy and I don't want to leave it closed because then the bathroom hovers in the 50 degrees area. (I'm assuming this shouldn't be a problem when summer arrives)Well thank you Vent Miser. Now I can time the vent to open in the morning 30 minutes before I come in and then close after I leave. Without any daily effort on my part. Very helpful indeed.That being said their are a couple things that could be improved upon.1. The fact that your settings can't be remembered when you swap batteries is a LITTLE frustrating. It's not a huge deal but annoying none-the-less.2. It seems a little finicky with the batteries. I put in a brand new set of standard alkalines and it told me they were dead. I tested them with a battery tester and they appeared just fine. I tried another set and these seem to work. Not sure what the issue is, but I hope this doesn't become a quality issue down the road.All in all, if you need to have a timed control of your room's heating and cooling this is a recommended item.

Update, September 22th:We used those vents now for a couple of months and it has definitely reduced our bills in the 10-20% range. They also work very reliable. I'm now dealing with a Atmel MCU solution Arduino style for under $200 to get all those vents in our house controlled by a separate tstat in every room. So I get us a 4 zone HVAC system for every room independently controlled by a tstat which opens a vent on demand and closes it also. I'll also attach a wireless webserver so I can control things like opening angle of the vents via a web browser.I found out there is no shutoff switch and it is all timing controlled. I do the same with our tstat controlled vent misers. I tested it already and it works just fine without shutoff switches. If you want to do the same, you can run an Atmel MCU with 5 uAmps in Power Down Sleep Mode and 2.4 to 3.0 Volts, just sometimes waking them up by the watchdog timer to receive commands from the tstat if there are any. That way the batteries should last a long time: Drawing 5 uAmps would last 10 years and more with just AAA cells. The motor works with 2.4 Volts as fine as with 3.0 Volts. Just the timer module which comes with it likes 3 Volts better.----I got 4 and ordered another 3 now. For the price you get at least a motorized vent. Not to mention the timing function. But those are also good to add a customized thermostat or whatever comes through mind to it. They are simple, but simple works best!If you get them, check that all is correctly installed. In our case two of the vents had one of the wings loose, but this was an easy fix. I just snapped it back into the hole. Be also sure that you get 1.5 V batteries. Rechargeable with 1.2 V will work but in our case activated the battery buzzer right away.With those vents we do not need a HVAC with solenoids or multi system. I have 1 thermostat running in the dining area and another thermostat will be running in one of the bedrooms of the other side of the home. Both connected to the HVAC with a relay to prevent heating and cooling the same time. Vents will be automatically closed in sections when unused. It should bring the bill even lower.If you are familiar with electronics, you can even build your own thermostat solution with those. The motor is connected to two bare contacts below the timer module. The timer module then connects to those contacts. +3V for a second on both contacts closes them. -3V opens opens them. Simple. The shutoff switch seems to be inside of the motor, so you don't have to deal with that if the impulse is more than a second. So you could build a thermostat with a second impulse timer to open and close them based on temperature.I think we here do not need it, as we have then 2 thermostats and the vents are just used to close areas while they are not in use. But if you have just one thermostat and different wiring, just build a thermostat circuit. The pieces for that should be cheap. Or you could just buy a thermostat and add a N555 timer to it for the impulse generation.

For some reason... I was under the impression that these units were temperature based. So that when a room got up to temperature, that it would close the vent and/or open.However the electronic control module in this unit is NOT temp based... It is timer based. Pretty lame... But something that can be tolerated for the price.Construction of the vent itself is nice... Construction of the time module is pretty cheesy.I ordered 8 white ones... The box they arrived in was NOT damaged, but when I was unloading the boxes from it... One display box looked like an accordion but the content was fine. While another box that looked fine rattled when I picked it up... As I removed the vent parts were falling off.In summary:I believe these units can work with the timer unit just fine... But you will need to know the time when the sun hits a portion of your house and such... And since this time changes all year, this will be an administrative fiasco.I would highly recommend that future units use temp and timer.And PS... When shipping a product... If the box is rattling with parts, odds are it may not be what you want to ship to a customer.

Cheap and plastic. This broke in no time. Air flows through without issue since it doesn't deal. I love the concept but the execution is bad