Finally got the watt meter hooked up! I decided to push the unit today. I have been running my MH 4-5 hours max lately since I was skimmerless. My new skimmer is working well and I ramped it up to seven hours and turned off the small Wal-Mart fan, plus I wanted to see how much wattage the chiller would draw. The most it ever got up to was 268 watts. Pretty impressive, to me at least. The draw goes up and down, its very obvious by what is on. When the MH is on, it goes up to an avg of 250W. When its off, and I just have the T5/660 on, it goes down to well under 100W.
The chiller did, however - increase my temp range to .6 degrees F. With the fan it was .3, and to be honest I could probably keep it to .2 if I tweaked my controller. But .6 is livable for sure, if my fan ever gives out - I'm obviously safe. I will have my controller set to text me in the event that it gets outside of 1 degree range.
Robby - I have to be honest, I don't know if a 90 degree room would affect it. My guess is yes, marginally. I don't notice too much of a difference when I close the doors, and my stand is very poorly vented. But I did notice a slight difference. I think its much warmer than 90, and probably worse is the stagnant air. But that room is 78-80. I just don't know what to tell ya. If you have a doubt and a larger chiller fits into your set-up, stick with it.
One thing that's funny, there are four fans on this thing, and when they are all going, they are less quiet than ONE Icecap variable speed fan at full strength.
I am certain that this is using far less than my last chiller, and I'd make up some of the cost. It might take a while though. But there is definitely some energy savings, plus this thing is just ridiculously easy to operate. The tubing you need is 1/2 ID by the way. The controller is great. It will be interesting when winter comes and it will be switching from chiller to heater. There are red & green LED lights to show what is on.
Gotta run, LMK if you need any more detailed info.
