I saw some sold under the "Vent Miser" label at a local hardware store. But I've not been able to find more information or manuals for them online anywhere. Before I go shell out that much for a gizmo I'd like to hear if anyone else has had any luck with them.
Then of course the next question is where can they be had for a good price? It'd be interesting to see if they're hackable to be controlled externally.
And how did these vents come to be named "registers" anyway?
"The use of "register" in the heating sense seems to be related to the pipe organ mechanism, since both involve regulating the flow of air, and first appeared in this sense in the mid-19th century."
I picked one up from a local hardware store (strosniders). It seems to work. It's nothing fancy. The grill is metal (painted white enamel) but the vanes and frame for them is plastic. It's got a control unit that snaps into the front of the register. The control is about the size of a light switch assembly. It has a clock you set in it, along with the current day of the week. There are two cycles in two sets you can program. M-F and S+S each with two on/off cycles. I've got this one setup in the bedroom to close in the morning to shut off while the main thermostat starts warming the rest of the house for wakeup. It remains closed most of the day to reopen around the typical come home from work time, closing again after typical bed time. Seemed to work well enough last night. There is a small bit of motor and gear noise but it's less than a second in duration. I'm guessing it'll be one of those 'get used to it' sort of sounds. It didn't wake me last night but then I sleep like a corpse.
What's interesting is it appears to just use two contacts and reverses DC voltage (from two AA batteries) to toggle the grate. Could be an interesting unit to hack for external control...
The instruction manual is in TINY print. Which wouldn't bother me except for the beginning of "the arm's not long enough" vision issues... Programming it is pretty straightforward, typical digital watch style steps. It even has a backlight to make it easier to read when programming it. It responds to holding down one button for open, another for close to manually trigger the motorized action. There is a typical register slider you can use to do it manually. The manual states when you change the batteries you lose the programming. But for anyone's that has Hawkeye sensors this is nothing new, so make a mental note how you've got it programmed.
It comes in a variety of sizes, the one I installed is 6" x 12". There doesn't seem to be any sort of company website online anywhere. There's an
800 number listed in the instructions it suggests you call if you want to buy more.
At $39 it seems just over the threshold of a being a bit more expensive than it seems like it ought to be. But if it's durable and keeps the wife happy about the state of the heat in the room them it'll probably be worth it.
The one thing I'm keeping in mind is to avoid screwing up the existing HVAC setup. I could well imagine someone doing something stupid like putting one of these on every grate and having it end up putting too much pressure on the main fan. Fiddling with your HVAC system's air handling pattern isn't something to do without really giving it some thinking. When we renovate the lower level next year I plan on having the whole setup redesigned. To regain lost headroom below mainly, but also to improve the circulation patterns. But between now and then this unit should help solve one thing the wife complains about.
That and since it has it's own controller built-in I don't have to worry about any other PC or controller.
1) I read you to write that 3 vdc to the motor opens the vent, and 3 vdc with opposite polarity closes.
2) What's your reckoning as to how long these might last? My application would be primarily to shut rooms ON or OFF for days at a time rather than multiple open-close daily to regulate temperature relative to other rooms (within the constraints of bypass, loading etc.). But I would want it to last for years -- no fuss no muss. So overly thin metal parts like small coil springs that can weaken with corrosion over time and the motor itself owing to thickened lubricants and dirt might be the limiting factors rather than rocker/bearing surfaces.
3) Any obvious reason why they wouldn't be paintable with latex paint?
Thanks, I just stumbled across that at a display in at Strosnider's, a local 'old school' hardware store. Gotta love the folks that keep these places going, and who shop there.
I haven't measured the voltage but given it's based on a pair of AAA batteries that's a reasonable assumption.
I can't speak for their predicted lifespan but, for being plastic, they appear to be reasonably well designed. The gear action when you move them manually seems to move smoothly, better than how a typical plastic 'toy' might feel. I'll have to double check but I don't recall seeing an easy way to crack one open to get a look-see at the innards.
I don't know how you'd deal with closing them for 'days at a time', at least not with the programming modules they come with. The programming is such that you can program them in just one OR two cycles for M-F and Sat-Sun. That is, for each set of days, you can set either a single or a pair of open/close cycles. I don't see a way to not set any cycle at all. I guess you could set it to open one minute and close the next. But then you'd have to re-program them manually to start working on a more regular schedule. I guess it would depend on the application, but you could just pull the module and leave them out for the extended times.
I don't see why not. It might not hurt to give them a light sanding to help the paint bond. But I've painted regular registers with a similar surface and it held up fine. So yeah, paint away. I'd imagine, however, that it would be very important to avoid binding up the manual activation slide on the front. That slider does move when the motor activates. So binding that up with paint would be a 'bad idea'. This is true of regular registers too but obviously a bit more important here.
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