PD poll - do you leave it on 24/7 or not

Maybe I did something wrong, but at 6.7 cents per kW mine is Energy Use

Day Week Month Year Five Years
$0.01 $0.08 $0.35 $4.23 $21.13

I;m gonna try that again $0.067 cents per kW and the PD uses 7.2W

Yep, the other calculator says $4.40 a year. Not sure how much power a timer draws but I am pretty sure I can't buy one for that.

Oh and to answer the poll... Pammy runs at least 2 (or three) in the house and I run one (the durability unit) in the shop, all 24/7.

Hennesey, shame, shame, shame.

I leave mine on 24/7. Only turn it off when the cleaning lady comes once every other week. That so happens to be today, so as I sit here I'm waiting patiently for the PD to warm up and the weekend can begin proper.

Mike_Stone said:

I leave mine on 24/7. Only turn it off when the cleaning lady comes once every other week. That so happens to be today, so as I sit here I'm waiting patiently for the PD to warm up and the weekend can begin proper.

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A cleaning lady and a PD - those are great things in life.
I've been loyal to my cleaning lady for about four years; I can always count on her to make sure my place doesn't fall apart.
Once in a while she bring me meals and odds and ends for the apartment. Nice lady.
Been on vaporizing sabbatical for about 30 days now - the hobby will resume within two weeks and I'm looking forward to it.

I unplug my PD but I feel it's probably a neurotic and unnecessary practice, even though I personally only vape at night when I'm done with everything.

I think the two reasons I unplug it is
1) - concern over fire hazard
but more so:
2) - concern for longevity of the unit. we want our PDs to last as long as possible and in my mind it stands to reason that heaters have a life span.

A PD temperature demonstration for any concerned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxMBEHJkB0Y

Purple-Days said:

A PD temperature demonstration for any concerned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxMBEHJkB0Y

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Hey Tom how is it going?
I have a few new items of interest to you and Pammy - when I get back in a week and a half I'll send it out... Jeff

jeffp said:

I think the two reasons I unplug it is
1) - concern over fire hazard
but more so:
2) - concern for longevity of the unit. we want our PDs to last as long as possible and in my mind it stands to reason that heaters have a life span.

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I turn mine off for the same two reasons. Probably overly neurotic and paranoid, but it makes me feel better hehe.

My Father's boyhood home (farmhouse) burned down (1930's).He always had a great fear of fire and instilled it in me from an early age. It is not something I would ever play with.

24/7 (with a few exceptions, see below)

I always feared that turning the unit off and on would be worse then leaving it on 24/7. I guess that is inaccurate?

A couple of days a week I run deliveries, and I always bring my PD with me. For the most part it's usually busy enough that I never have to turn the car off but there have been days where it's slow, and/or I'll forget I have the PD plugged in. So there have been times where the unit is on and off a lot. I remember one day in particular where I totally forgot I had it with me, and must have started/stopped the car at least 4 times in an hour.

I'd love to see a comparative test for life expectancy/degradation of the heating element. Not sure if Tom would be willing, or if it's even possible, but perhaps somehow you could have a unit on a timer that constantly turns itself on and off every hour or so. I doubt anybody ever actually uses their PD in that fashion, but if in a few months down the road a unit which has been turned on & off a few thousand times is still running just as strong as the unit which has been on 24/7, then I would no longer have any concerns regarding the life expectancy of my PD.

...or possibly a test like that shows the life expectancy of the heater after being plugged in 24/7

I guess we need many more years to find out

I have one that stays on 24/7 and another that gets turned on/off a couple of times a day during the week.

I find it interesting that the 30 min. warm up time still seems to be a sticking point for a lot of vape shoppers. It does present a problem if you intend to use it as a portable and need to start it up cold, but other than that everyone seems fine with leaving it on or using a timer. I think some just don't realize how little power a 12V vape requires. Last year, before PD sales took off or Vapenow was selling it, I was talking to Vaporstore and suggested they may want to look at the PD as an addition to their vape line. They're always willing to take on a new vape model if the quality is good and it offers something unique. The response to my suggestion was that their customers wouldn't go for a vape with a 30 min. warm up requirement. I guarantee that they'd like to go back in time and take a 'do over' on that decision. As PD popularity increased, quite a few dealers approached Tom about selling the PD, but obviously his business plan doesn't allow for multiple distributors when PDs sell faster than they can be built.

I leave my pd on 24/7 unless i know im leaving the house for a long period of time. sometimes you gotta stay high.

The "big bucks" comment was a joke-- thought the calculators I linked would enforce that.

It's true there's really not much to break in the PD. I've never heard of a ceramic heating element dieing in any vape. That said, one could assume that running something 12 hours/day as opposed to 24 should roughly double the lifespan. 100 years instead of 50? Surely the power adapter is the weakest link here. Giving it a rest now and then would probably prolong its lifespan, no? My purple LED is still going strong.

I guess it's just easy and strangely satisfying to press the on/off button on the digital timer my PD is plugged into. As far as fire hazards are concerned I'd be more worried about fridges, etc.

I realize the unit has a low power consumption, but I would personally use a timer as some of the other members have done as opposed to leaving it on all day and night. Should we really be adding any more to our carbon footprints just for the hell of it? I would say no, but to each his own.

Outkasted said:

I realize the unit has a low power consumption, but I would personally use a timer as some of the other members have done as opposed to leaving it on all day and night. Should we really be adding any more to our carbon footprints just for the hell of it? I would say no, but to each his own.

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2 night lights, 8 watts. I guess if one is inclined to never have anything on standby, like computers and tv's and/or stereo/hometheater receivers, and the only clocks they have in the house are solar, and suffer through the summer without any a/c whatsoever, then yeah....... they'd be concerned about a carbon footprint which is about the size of a centipede's shoe.

I kid. Just joking a bit, but it really does pull so little.

But on a bit more of a serious note, when you say, "just for the hell of it", that's not necessarily the case. There are many here who use the PD for medical reasons, and they medicate every few hours throughout the day. Hell, there are some recreational users who do the same, so for them, they don't leave it on "just for the hell of it". They leave it on because it makes logical sense to do so.

For me, I only toke after 7:00pm in the evenings, so a timer would make perfect sense, but I'm in the minority.

These days quite a few appliances consume more power than the PD even when they're turned off. And some chargers for things like cell phones and camcorders continuously draw power whenever they're connected to AC.

Iwein - You're right, the actual "carbon footprint" of this would be quite small, and I would never try to generalize that everyone was being wastefull, I'm sorry if it seemed like that. Max, your right phantom loads are everywhere, most things that have the big box type plugs will draw 24.7. Sometimes it's nice to have these plugged into a power strip you can turn off when these apps aren't in use. (I'll quit with the power saving talk, I bet everyone is like )

0.17 kWh is about how much the PD would use in 24 hours, which is about the amount of energy you'd use to toast 6 slices of bread.

so to reiterate what Qbit said^....PLEASE FC...dont toast more than 6 slices of bread per day if you own a ...we need to consume energy guys! Oh and lets not mention baking a cake or frying up some bacon! all the wasted power

I joke of course...in light of the people that say leaving the pd on 24/7 is 'wasteful'

I've had my PD 5 nights, since then it's been in 24/5,

IAmKrazy2 said:

I've had my PD 5 nights, since then it's been in 24/5,

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mine's set with a timer; says "runch" and goes on at 25 o'clock.

Most computers are in the 200W range without the monitor on. Its a fairly common household item to leave on because of convenience, and actually a bit of an energy hog. But from an electricity cost its not that much, so an 8W gobber is certainly not gonna get noticed.

I like to think of it that way. In reference to something I do leave on all the time, because I like having remote access to my files at all times.

About turning it off half the time making it last twice as long. That's only true if being on and heated up takes the largest toll on the PD's lifespan. I could easily see that maybe the process of heating up or cooling down could maybe be more damaging to the system. If its those 30 min of warm-up that actually most affect its lifespan then someone who turns it off and on every day has 30min times however many days of something that's bad for the unit while someone who's left it on since they got it only has 30 min of that bad time total.
The truth is likely somewhere in between those two. There's probably some hit for leaving it on all the time and some from the process of heating up. Unfortunately, you're gonna have to wait for a few more years until enough people have had PDs for long enough to really get a good sampling of what behaviors extend or contract the lifespan of the unit.

Not a PD user yet, waiting. Will be my second vape to use, the Aeromed was the first (a friend's). Very cool set up, but not what I need for my first vape, of course.