The following shot is of two mains timers that were being used to control some lighting. Admittedly the lights were 350W gas discharge units with inductive ballasts, but just shows you need to check carefully the rating of your timer against what you're controlling! Note most timers have MUCH lower ratings when used on inductive loads e.g. motors, fluorescent lamps (including "compact" ones).
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2008-2/1 ... meless.jpg
I don't want to scare people off using mains timers, the most likely cause of failure for these timers was contact arcing due to the highly inductive load, if you are only switching very small loads (which most release methods will be) there should be no problems, however if you have used timers in the past for other purposes such as turning a washing machine on and off, contact damage may already have been done and arcing may occur at much lower loadings. This is partly the reason my timers are now battery powered and only used for one purpose.
Warning on mains timers.
Just to emphasise that I still think timers (preferably multiple ones) is a much better option to some release systems I've seen but if you do use them, buy them new, TEST THEM BEFORE USE and only use them for one purpose. Also preferably use at least two different makes of timer plugged into each other (before my battery powered timers I used a digital timer plugged into a mechanical timer, mechanical timers don't work with batteries) remember the main design brief for these things is cost not reliability!
