Good News

[Brad Villeggiante]

Tonight I pulled out my lights for my old tank, plugged them in, and tested to see if my house could handle the electricity draw. Remember that my 1920's house is still on screw in fuses and so this was a real concern of mine. I put about 380 watts of electricity draw on the house from the lights, ran the microwave and the fridge at once for about 10 min. and the fuse was fine. Hopefully this was indeed enough of a test to see if my house can take it. The nano I'll be purchasing will put out roughly 300 watts total, so I view this as a good test.

Also, the lights I am speaking of are up for grabs at the next meeting so long as I can make it. I'll bring them and if you have a use for them, you'll be the proud new owner.

 

[Reef Bass]

Nice! The wiring didn't burst into flames! Sweet.

I don't mean to sound sarcastic. Your caution is warranted and commendable.

While I'm not an electrician, I'm guessing there are probably still multiple circuits in your house, each of which probably has a fuse "protecting" it. Your test might have spread the load around multiple circuits and may not have loaded up one circuit to / past capacity. My guess would be that your electrical service can handle your cummulative load but an individual circuit may not be able to.

You can always unscrew one fuse and see what electric items go dead to determine the items on a given cicuit.

Hairdryers are good portable high wattage circuit loaders. A 1200 watt blow dryer on high heat draws 10 amps all by itself, more than my 2 400w halides and 100+w of actinics put together.

 

[Bamm Bamm]

Congratulations.. I've been having problems popping the gfci in my apt with my 180...Still haven't quite figured it out..

 

[Reef Bass]

Code requires GFCIs on outlets near water sources. My house, while having multiple electrical circuits, has only one gfci protected circuit that covers all 3 bathrooms, laundry and kitchen sink areas. Of course my reef tank sits on what used to be a wet bar and hence the only outlet there is on the one gfci protected circuit.

It used to be the case that with my halides on and my washing machine going, if one of my daughters used a hair dryer in their bathroom, the circuit would pop.

I ran an extension cord around a corner and plug the halides into a different circuit and that has greatly reduced the frequency with which my gfci circuit shuts off.

 

[Bamm Bamm]

Yeah I tried to do that yesterday and I think it was the circuit my computer room is on as soon as I turned on both halides it tripped=)LOL.. I think I have it figured out now though