My 200 Gal Garden Reef Costs $73/mo to Run

Brian Prestwood

Brian Prestwood

Premium Member
I did like Anthony suggested and calculated how much my tank costs to run. At $73/mo it was cheaper than I thought. Our total electricty bill is around $200/mo so it is a big chunk of our electricity.

Electrcity costs Between $0.07 and $0.14 per kilowatt hr. I assumed my tank was consuming mostly expensive kilowatt hrs and used $0.12.
 
3X 250W Icecap MH Ballasts, 8 hrs/day, $21.60/mo
2X 100W PC Ballasts, 12 hrs/day, $8.65/mo
2X 150W Poseidon PS4 Pump, 24 hrs/day, $25.92/mo
2X 75W Mag 7 Pump, 24 hrs/day, $12.96/mo
2X 500W Heater, 1 hr/day, $3.60/mo
 
my wo cube with halides rins me about 7 dollars a month. not too bad but we have flat rat 07 cents kwh here in roseville
 
OK, I'm starting to count up now. Maybe now I can prove to my spouse that one big tank is cheaper than a bunch of smaller ones. :)
It would be nice to get a comparison started for our equipment and see if we can sort the Hummers from the Scooters.
 
Here's what I posted in the BAR group.

If anyone here local wants to borrow my kill a watt device for a week or so to find out really how much their stuff costs drop me a PM.

I found out adding up what the "sticker" on the devices said was WAY off what it actually draws.

Onto the quote....

"I got a Kill-a-watt device on ebay for 25 bucks
It will tell you exactly how much each device costs to run.
Plug it into the wall then plug your equip into it and let it run for 24 hours.
Press the KWH button on it and it tells you how many Killowatts you used and then multiply by your electricity rate mine is 0.08 per Killowatt hour

My nano tank costs 0.10 per day to run. ($3.00 a month)
Including heater, lights, return pump, and ATO
Now granted I don't have big huge pumps, big heaters and 5 powerheads, MH lighting etc...

But hey get that device, and you can tell why your bill is so high.

My old fridge I found out was costing $45 a month, got a new fridge and now it's $13.00 a month!!

Neat little device that's cheap and easy to use..
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=kill+a+watt

~Steve~"
 
PM sent
MandM has first dibbs on the unit at the next meeting on Friday, but it's currently availible after that.
 
CA electric prices SUCK ! We are moving to WA next month, and were talking to the people currently in the house we are moving into...apparently the average electric bill is under $100 each month. Not much ac in the summer, but lots of heater in the winter and still not much of an increase.
 
In order to figure out price differences you need to know the cost of the KWH.
The apt next to me spends 30 a month on electric, but because I have servers, like to keep the place at 70F, etc, mine is over $200

Where in WA are you moving to?
We own a place up there we can't seem to find renters for, know anyone interested?
 
Hopefully the bill won't be too much different, since after comparing notes, we do things pretty much the same, except that I have a tank. :)

We're headed to Tacoma (McChord AFB.)
Where is the house you have ? Maybe pm me some details, I'll ask around.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7359472#post7359472 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by funman1
The apt next to me spends 30 a month on electric, but because I have servers, like to keep the place at 70F, etc, mine is over $200
Click to expand...

Or your neighbor is getting free electricity from you. :lol: Didn't you recently move?

I have one of those kill-a-watt devices, and it works great. One year, I replaced our OLD pool pump/filter with a new pump/filter. Even though I ran the new pump for a longer period of time each day, our electricity bill went down. Same thing with the fridge. Replaced it, and the bill went down. Replacing our sliding glass doors and windows with dual panes vinyl doors/windows also helped reduced our electricity.

For the past couple of years, I noticed that in the evening, my house was hotter inside (with the AC on all day) than it was outside. I just spent last weekend installing a whole house fan. Should help with the energy bill. Next year - it's going to be a new AC condenser.

Sad part is - even though we have done all these energy efficient stuff, our electricity is still higher than 5 years ago because of the increase in electricity costs. :( And unlike you lucky people, I am with PG&E.
 
I have a whole house fan and those things are awesome! Cools the entire house, upstars and downstairs about 5-10 degrees in a matter of minutes. They are pretty loud though but not too bad.
 
Yes if my house does not come with a whole house fan I'm installing one!!! Those things are awesome.

What do you pay per KWH Mihn?
 
Steve,

The breakdown for PG&E is :

base line is $0.114 /Kwh
101-130% above baseline $0.13/Kwh
131 - 200% above baseline $0.22

PG&E really knows how to screw their customers over!

Pico - I only installed a 24" version, so it's not too noisy. However, I have seen 36" versions and those things sound like a jet taking off!

Minh
 
Whole house fans are a great way to save on AC costs in the valley. You bring in cool outside air early morning or in evening once it has cooled down. Our summers are well known to be in the 100's but yet cool back down to the 70's -80's at night. Your attic space is what really gets hot (140F or even hotter). Ttrying to get your house cool with that hanging around in the attic is shall we say very inefficent.

So the house fan takes the inside house air and blasts it into the attic to blow that hot air out.

Only really need to run them at most twice a day early morning and late evening about 30 min at the most (as long as your attic vents well). Then shut windows & doors and then keep AC at whatever level you like.

You'll see a distinct savings in the AC portion of your bill. Should even pay for the fan after one summer if used properly.

Wishing I had one in my rental house here. I loved it when I had one.

Good luck all.

Chris
 
Brian - Just bought one of those Kill A Watt and will perform similar calculations for my tank. I'm interested in how much some of the pumps on my tank that are on 24x7 are costing me.

Scott
 
Scott

I didn't measure any of my equipment. I used the rated wattages. I was surprised at how little it costs. From the way my wife was complaining about the electricty bill I figured it must be pretty bad.

Turns out our bill was running around $120 while my tank was down. It went up to $200 after I brought my tank back up. I am surprised at some of the KWH costs being reported. We're on SMUD. Our cheap KWHs are $0.07. Our expensive ones are $0.14. Minh reported his PG&E expensive KWHs $0.20.

I see the Enron trials are on the final phases. They're lucky we don't get a vote.
 
We keep our AC set at 78. We have a whole house fan too. Our house is ten years old and has good insulation.

As for the tank, I don't use a chiller. My tank is a giant swamp cooler...

42422SwampCoolerDucts.JPG


The top of the tank is sealed except for the holes those tubes plug into. There are fans on top of those tubes. They force air across the top of the water. There are two more tubes on the other side of the tank. The fans on them suck the air out.

The nice thing is this usually starts cycling about the same time our AC does so it keeps the humidity in the house nice.
 
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