Hi Jacob, Do not be embarrassed. You need to install a battery powered(9v) controller that is installed with a vacuum breaker valve assembly. A irrigation supply store can explain this to you. Install it after the house shut off faucet/valve. It cost about 35-45 dollars. It will handle all your needs for a one-valve system. The battery is easy to replace and last a little over a year. There are all the major brands so ask you store which they believe is best. They all are good. The VB assembly is a backflow prevention device that stops back siphoning to the main water supply when pressure is lost in the system. Good luck and aloha.

Jani18, the Fantech ones I bought (one installed in our guest bath, one in the box awaiting installation in our master bath in about two weeks) are the ones with the halogen light. Fantech makes one with a compact fluorescent light which isn't big like the Panasonic, but I actually prefer the warmer (yellower) color of a regular light to the cooler (bluer) color of a fluorescent for the shower. And I like being able to dim the halogen light, which you can't do with the fluorescent, even though most times we'll probably just leave in on high. (I have rope light above and below our vanity and cabinets to use as a "night light", but if you don't otherwise have a built-in nightlight, then turning on the Fantech halogen light at a low setting on a dimmer would work well.) I'm quite happy with the model with the halogen light. Which model of Fantech fan? That depends on how large your bathroom is. Their smallest fan, the one I have, moves 110 cubic feet or air per minute (CFM) and is good for bathrooms up to roughly 100 square feet. Our guest bath is 7'x7', so the small fan is sufficient. The master bath we're redoing now is larger, but it's divided into two separate rooms for the shower & toilet and the sink & dressing table; we decided we only needed ventilation for the shower/toilet room, so the small fan is again the proper size for us. I therefore got the Fantech PB110H, which includes the fan, grille housing, and grille with halogen light. If your bathroom is bigger, Fantch offers a larger 190 CFM model, and 270 CFM model with two grilles, and even a 370 CFM model. The Fantech web page shows the options and model numbers, and explains how to calculate how big a fan you need. Fantech sells a timer switch, but I couldn't find out much information about it; it may be custom made for them. I decided to use Lutron, because it did exactly what I wanted and I could match it to the other light switches in the rooms. I'm using the one mentioned higher up in this thread, the Lutron MA-L3T251, which contains a light dimmer in the top half and a fan timer in the bottom half of a single size switch. I'm a big fan of Lutron's Maestro dimmers, which we have in a bunch of places in our house. They turn lights on and off with a gentle fade on and fade off over about a second, and once you set the lighting level you prefer, the light comes on to that level whenever you tap it. For the fan, you can preset it for just on/off, or 60, 45, 30 or 15 minute countdown. We have it on 60 minutes. Enter the bathroom, tap the button, take your shower and do your bathroom business, and it shuts off the fan an hour after you started. The fan is so quiet that unless you listen closely for it, you don't know its on; without a timer, I'm sure we'd be accidentally leaving it on all day with some regularity! The Lutron switch comes in a bunch of colors, with matching Claro wallplates; you won't find most of the colors in a box store or even most lighting stores, but lighting stores or online retailers can order any of the colors Lutron offers. We went to a lighting store which had sample chips of all the Lutron colors, so we could see which looked best with our tile. Hope that helps! -- Eric

Thanks weedmeister and asolo - I did a google search and found the Watts Intelliflow device which uses a detector on the floor and I like the idea of a single handle to turn off both the hot and cold water. Like most folks, I never turn the water off to the washer when I'm not using it, but given I now have a wood floor in that area, I wiill start doing this. Right under the washer and dryer, my GC used a rubber product used in shower pans that he painted on and then we tiled over that with a 2 inch lip all the way around to create actual pans that the machines will sit in. After all these precautions, hopefully there will be no floods. Thanks again.

You will save, but how much? Try this: with heater on a fully up to temperature until it clicks off, measure the temperature at the closest hot water tap after it runs long enough to get hot. Let it heat up fully again, shut it off, wait 10 hours, and measure the temperature at the tap again. I'm going to guess about 10 degrees lower. The energy lost, in kilowatt-hours, is E = dropT(f) * Gallons * 8 / 3412 where dropT(f) is the difference in water temperature in degrees F, and Gallons is the capacity of the water heater. "8" is the number of pounds per gallon for water. Dividing by 3412 converts from BTU to kwhr. Multiply by (30 days * 24 hrs /10 hrs) to find kwhr per month, and see how that would affect your bill. If the drop in temperature is a lot (say 30 degrees), you should repeat the test with less time -- problem being that the tank loses heat slower as it cools, which makes the error in the simple calculation get worse. I can provide an exponential equation that is accurate if you are interested, but you'd need to know the ambient temperature. Anyway, that gives you the rate of heat loss from the tank when it is close to hot. That is approximately the amount you could save by turning off the heat totally while gone for months vs. just leaving in on, and represents an upper limit on how much you could save. In your case, you are going to have to heat that water again after only a few hours, and the tank will stay pretty hot, so you will not save as much. Come back with the test results, including the ambient temperature around the tank, and we can estimate that pretty well.