Power strips and timers

Why not just get some timers and plug them into a powerstrip / surge protector?

You'd be better off with mechanical timers. I have 4 of the Coralife timers and these have burned me so many times. Nothing like getting a power hit while on vacation that resets all the programming, the light doesn't come on for 6-8 days and coming home to green soup from melted plants. Even if you have a fresh new battery in it.

I could do that. Timers by themselves are bulky and take too much room on the strips. Are there slimmer timers people use in our hobby often?

I used these Amazon.com: 1-Foot Extension Power Cable, 5-Pack: Electronics

I think you can find a little longer if you needed.

I'd like to keep the setup simple with as few connections as possible. Having multiple GFCI to power strip to extender cable to timer switch to device connections seems dangerous.

$5 @ IKEA


http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80134449/

AGUILAR3 said:

$5 @ IKEA


http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80134449/

Click to expand...

Those won't work if you need a grounded outlet.

I have used a Belkin surge protector in the past (ex. Amazon.com: Belkin 12 Outlet Home/Office Surge Protector with Phone/Ethernet/Coaxial Protection and Extended Cord 4156 Joules: Electronics). You could always go for a Squid surge protector if you wanted: no worry about timers running into each other that way.

I also think it's probably better to go with a separate timer and strip. I haven't heard really good things about the combined ones, and they strike me as expensive enough that getting a good quality (metal, perhaps even GFCI) strip, and 2+ timers would probably be cheaper. Plus, then you just have to replace whatever part fails, as opposed to the whole piece if the combo unit fails.

I've had reasonably good results with some dirt-cheap timers. I'm currently on year two of one of those IKEA timers (and I've still got the second lying around here someplace...), and I think I may occasionally loose some time, but it's probably more due to me shutting off the whole powerstrip when I do a waterchange, and forgetting to readjust the timer. Even if that's not the case, it's a small enough change/day that I don't see it as an issue.