seminolecpa
Past President
Let me get back to you Phong and check it out. I need to figure out what it is I actually have laying around once I get this friggin tank set up. I am likely to have all kinds of spare parts.
What do you use to heat your tank?
- Thread starter seminolecpa
- Start date
chicken
Guest
My large system uses a 1000w and a 500w as my primary heaters on a redundant ranco controller and then I have a second identical setup as a backup on a separate GFCI circuit. Tomorrow I am going to go pickup a tankless water heater so I can build a setup to heat my tank with natural gas. At the highest tier of power usage its about 10x cheaper to heat a tank with natural gas compared to electricity.
Still the best thing to keep your tank warm is to limit the amount of evaporation at all costs. If you are evaporating 2.5 gallons of water a day you need about 6 kW of power to keep the tank at the same temperature. At the highest PG&E tier right now of about 41 cents, that's almost $75 a month due to just evaporation. When I first setup my large system I did not have my sump covered, a 300g rubbermaid stock tank. After a crazy PG&E bill the first cold month, I put my Watts-up meter on my heaters and found out I was spending $325 a month to keep that tank at 78 degrees. I was shocked. I immediately put 2" of foam under the stock tank and 2" of foam on top of the stock tank where I could, as I have a huge in tank skimmer. I then watched the usage for a few days (which were actually colder) and my usage dropped down to $125 a month. Its amazing what evaporation can do.
Still the best thing to keep your tank warm is to limit the amount of evaporation at all costs. If you are evaporating 2.5 gallons of water a day you need about 6 kW of power to keep the tank at the same temperature. At the highest PG&E tier right now of about 41 cents, that's almost $75 a month due to just evaporation. When I first setup my large system I did not have my sump covered, a 300g rubbermaid stock tank. After a crazy PG&E bill the first cold month, I put my Watts-up meter on my heaters and found out I was spending $325 a month to keep that tank at 78 degrees. I was shocked. I immediately put 2" of foam under the stock tank and 2" of foam on top of the stock tank where I could, as I have a huge in tank skimmer. I then watched the usage for a few days (which were actually colder) and my usage dropped down to $125 a month. Its amazing what evaporation can do.