The Evil Light Switch
March 21st, 2006
Update: the light switch is not at bad as originally though. Click here to see why.
A few months ago there was some maintainance performed in all of the apartments in our complex. Our normal, up is on, down is off, human-style light switch was “upgraded” to the monstrosity pictured at the right. Now, I’m a technical kind of guy, and I was intrigued at this new hi-tech switch. There is a motion sensor on the top and a button on the bottom. When you click the button it always returns back to the same position. The green LED flashes intermittently, and sometimes seems to flash when it detects movement. All of this is fine, so far. But there is one really annoying “feature” of this light switch: it shuts off after 5 minutes of no motion detected.
I am assuming this was installed to save electricity. The first time I took a shower with this thing, the light turned off while I was rinsing soap off of my face. My eyes were closed at the time, and when I opened them, it was pitch black. I got to finish the shower in the dark. Thank you crappy light switch.
Every time I take a shower now, I’m always paranoid that this thing is going to shut off on me, so I wave a towel over the top of the shower curtain every one to two minutes. Sometimes I am really relaxed and forget about waving the towel, and just when you least expect it: “Click!”
I came up with what I thought would be a solution. There should be a mechanism to detect if the shower is on, and if it is on then the light won’t shut off unless the light switch is manually turned off. The problem with this comes when someone wants to take a long relaxing bath. The water won’t be running, and the light will still turn off!
I could see where this type of switch might be useful. If it had been me, I would have installed this thing in my closet. That’s the light I tend to forget is on when I walk out of the bedroom. I can’t recall forgetting to turn off the bathroom light. Anyway, I had some ideas for fixing the problem. I unscrewed this switch to see if it might have an adjustable timer. Unfortunately it was just a black box and I didn’t want to risk breaking it because I don’t own it. My next idea was to actually switch it with the normal light switch in the closet, but I didn’t know what the maintenance people would say to the landlord if they came in and noticed it.
Finally, there are the paranoid theories I keep thinking about. How do I know that this thing doesn’t have a hidden camera in it instead of just a motion sensor? This thing reminds me of HAL, a little bit too much. It’s just a switch with a light in it, but it still creeps me out sometimes.
I hate this stupid, evil light switch.
March 21st, 2006 at 7:52 pm
I say switch it. who cares. Like they’re going to come up with an order to kick you out for that.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:03 pm
The root of your problem comes from the 2005 California Title 24 Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential buildings. In section 6.4 – Bathrooms, Garages, Laundry Rooms and Utility Rooms it states:
“Lighting in bathrooms, garages, laundry rooms and/or utility rooms must be high efficacy, or must be controlled by a manual-on occupant sensor.”
However it would appear that your apartment complex isn’t following the guidelines set forth by this document accurately because it goies on to state:
“More than one circuit of luminaires may be attached to the same manual-on occupant sensor. At least one high-efficacy luminaire should be installed so that it can be left off the occupant sensor circuit to ensure that all of the luminaires don’t switch off while someone is in the bath. Even dual technology sensors may not detect a motionless and silent occupant.”
Well, well, it looks like your apartment complex maintainence people are a bunch of FOOLS! If only they would follow the clear guidelines set forth by this highly anticipated and absolutely neccessary government document; maybe then, the citizens of this state won’t have to be afraid of the lighting conditions that await us after we are done washing our faces! Power to the people.
But don’t take my word for it read it for yourself.
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Wow, Tommy! How did you just hapen to know that? Are those currently in effect or just scheduled to be in effect? I plan on mailing an excerpt of this to our manager and one to the company that owns our apartments. I am trying to figure out what the best way of going about this would be.
We have two seperate lights and a ventilation fan all run off the motion-sensing switch. It just doesn’t seem right. I wish sometimes that I could just turn on the light and not the fan. If I were in the shower, I wouldn’t want the light or the fan to switch off, though.
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:00 pm
So it looks like they really aren’t even required to do any of these things. In that case, maybe it would be okay to do like I said before and pull a switcheroo with the bathroom and closet light switches.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:17 am
Yeah, i have too much time on my hands sometimes. I would probably just switch the stupid thing. At least now you have legal back up for your actions. In your case it was probably just the energy efficient (cheap) thing to do in management’s minds, but just not practical.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:52 am
I could understand the cheap angle, if only we weren’t paying for our own electric. Now water, water is another thing altogether. We don’t pay for water, but there are no restrictions imposed on its usage. Maybe they don’t want to have to replace the fans in the bathrooms as often and that’s why they did this.
I’m switching them out. The worst thing that could happen is that they tell me to put it back. Like you said, I will have the documentation to show that it’s no good the way they have set things up. Although it would be difficult for them to change it now considering that every light and the fan are all on the same circuit.
June 9th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Were they supposed to do this to all the units? We still have human controlled switches. I read that you changed the timing on it so that’s good, but it seems kind of weird to me.
June 9th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
@Jamie J
Well, there was no announcement made that everyone would be getting these timed sensor switches, but I just assumed that everyone got one since we did. Maybe there was a noticable spike in our energy usage and they were ounishing us. I don’t know. What I do know is that since adjusting the sensor I’ve never had it shut of on me unexpectedly. That’s what counts, I suppose.
Be thankful they didn’t burdon you with this hobbled excuse for a light switch.