MH Bill for those who live in SF ?

[houser]

Mike,
Never turn in a perfect first draft - duh.
Got to give the teacher something to do!

 

[Gonzo]

250 W x 2 = 500 W
500 W x 7 hours/day = 3.5 kWh/day
3.5 kWh/day x $0.40 /kWh = $1.4 /day
$1.4 /day x 30 days/month = $42 /month

You were a little sloppy with the units so I corrected you. Sorry it's the teacher in me.

You were a little sloppy in not leaving a space between numbers and units, so I corrected you. I also corrected your punctuation and capitalization.

You both forgot an apostrophe and a period, so I corrected you both. It's the jerk in me.

But seriously, thanks for including all the numbers & total amount. It helps out a lot.

 

[Coral reefer]

"Now with that said, the other side of the coin is you'll also use less electricity heating your tank, yes halides do transfer more thermal energy to the tank than LEDs but with LEDs you'll find your heaters are turning on a lot more so you may not gain terribly much in power savings if you make a switch to LEDs.

That said, I run my halides for about 5.5 hours each day. During the day time hours, although if I did switch to a more night time schedule (i.e. when many come home from work) then probably could save a little more as that's prime heating time. The reality of the situation is with my tank about 50% of my total energy usage comes from heating it, and I figure that's something that can be cut down fairly easily if you make an insulating room with the tank, or throw up some foam panels on the back or something." -sfsuphysics mike (I messed up the quoting feature, not good with computers)

So here's an idea solar power man: run a tank on the roof, link to a controller, and have it pump water from sump to roof tank, which overflows down into your sump and heats the tank? I imagine this is impractical and/or a bad idea on at least some level, but I thought it up and wanted to share. Also, why not run the tank a little cooler? How cold does it get without the heater? I live near you and my tank goes from 75-77 most days, and I don't think my heater runs at all really. 81 today tho, turned off halides early

 

[rygh]

Some issues with the whole MH being good for heating the tank:
1) A LOT of heat goes in the air, not the tank. Where electric heating elements are truly 100% efficient.
2) The lights are on during the day, when it is warm, not at night, when it is cold. So are you sure the heating
reduction is from the MH lights, or just the fact that it is daytime and warmer in general.

For a really big heating expenses, consider solar heating, or tie VERY-indirectly into gas hot water heater.

 

[tuberider]

250 W x 2 = 500 W
500 W x 7 hours/day = 3.5 kWh/day
3.5 kWh/day x $0.40 /kWh = $1.4 /day
$1.4 /day x 30 days/month = $42 /month

You were a little sloppy with the units so I corrected you. Sorry its the teacher in me

You were a little sloppy in not leaving a space between numbers and units, so I corrected you. I also corrected your punctuation and capitalization.

Thank goodness you still hang out here Tony

 

[sfsuphysics]

So here's an idea solar power man: run a tank on the roof, link to a controller, and have it pump water from sump to roof tank, which overflows down into your sump and heats the tank? I imagine this is impractical and/or a bad idea on at least some level, but I thought it up and wanted to share. Also, why not run the tank a little cooler? How cold does it get without the heater? I live near you and my tank goes from 75-77 most days, and I don't think my heater runs at all really. 81 today tho, turned off halides early

Actually I have thought of something along these lines, not so much a tank on the roof, but basically one of those solar power water heater setups, black copper pipes inside a box on the roof/sunny area, copper spliced to PEX and run into the sump, use a pump to move water. Except use it as a heat exchanger not actually have tank water go through the copper pipes . There was a DIY where someone hooked up his water heater to his tank in a similar fashion. And yeah my tank does run cool normally

Some issues with the whole MH being good for heating the tank:
1) A LOT of heat goes in the air, not the tank. Where electric heating elements are truly 100% efficient.
2) The lights are on during the day, when it is warm, not at night, when it is cold. So are you sure the heating
reduction is from the MH lights, or just the fact that it is daytime and warmer in general.

True on both points, however
1) You actually get light out of it as well, its not meant to be efficient, just a nice bonus from having some bad mammer jammer lighting that nothing can touch as far as cool factor
2) Possibly, however unless the room itself is your tank temperature or more (mine isn't) heat will flow out of the tank, so heaters would go on.

 

[rygh]

So here's an idea solar power man: run a tank on the roof, link to a controller, and have it pump water from sump to roof tank, which overflows down into your sump and heats the tank? I imagine this is impractical and/or a bad idea on at least some level, but I thought it up and wanted to share. Also, why not run the tank a little cooler? How cold does it get without the heater? I live near you and my tank goes from 75-77 most days, and I don't think my heater runs at all really. 81 today tho, turned off halides early

I think the trick is to run solar heating in two stages, with an accumulator. Some house systems do this as well.
Basically, you have a LARGE external stand-alone hot water tank, and you get that VERY hot during the day from the black pipes on the roof.
Since it is large and insulated, it will stay hot through the night.
From that, you run a separate controllable line with water from the hot water tank, looping in a pipe through the sump.
The pump to that line is controlled by tank temperature.
Basically:
Line 1 = Hot Tank -> Roof -> Hot Tank, on when sun is up.
Line 2 = Hot Tank -> Loop in Sump -> Hot Tank, on when aquarium tank is too cold & Hot Tank is still hot.
With the Hot Tank being as large and as insulated as possible. Probably with simple fresh water. Antifreeze would be too risky.

Note that you could build a Chiller just the opposite.
Have a large Cold Tank, with outside tubes that run only at night.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Yeah, the chiller idea is something I remember seeing way back when I started, except doing more of a geothermal loop idea, since you're trying to bring temps down no need for a heat exchanger as the ground will be a lower temperature.

 

[euod]

3x 250W @ 6hrs/day cost 54/mo (fixed). Switch to LED at no cost, sure.