Venting my fish room.

[BrettDS]

Venting my fish room.

Well, I'm feeling reasonably encouraged. After running for about 30 minutes the temp has dropped to 81.3 and the humidity to 72%. I'd love to see the temp in the high 70's and the humidity down to like 50 or 60%, but I dunno if we can get there, especially the humidity. I imagine it'll take some time before it stabilizes, though as the water and everything is going to be retaining heat and the wood and concrete floor are probably retaining moisture, but hopefully after a day or two things will look better.

 

[BrettDS]

Still looking pretty good. The temp has dropped to 80.0 and humidity to 68% and it still seems to be dropping. I'll be interested to see how it does by morning.

 

[salty joe]

It seems like things should clear up quicker than that. I wonder if the air from your house is mostly making a straight run to the exhaust. It might be worthwhile to create a bit of smoke at the house inlet and watch the air stream through the fishroom.

If that's happening, you could hook up a small oscillating fan as well as the bath fan to a control.

 

[BrettDS]

This morning it was down to 79.6 and 62%. I wouldn't mind a couple points more, but it's not bad. I can live with this. It dropped the temp of the water in my system by a good degree and a half or two degrees. Not enough that the heater had to come on, but enough that my evaporative cooling fans were able to cycle on and off instead of running constantly.

The vent is above my sump in the corner of the room farthest from the vent fan, so it should force the air to travel through the room. Plus the cool non humid air comes in just under the sump fan, so that should help with evaporative cooling too.

 

[BrettDS]

Man, my tank temp has stayed rock solid. Before I'd always see an upswing of a degree or degree and a half in the afternoons when the tank lights are on. You can see where the vent was first turned on yesterday afternoon and the temp dropped. The fluctuation you see is just between 80.0 and 80.1 as the evaporative cooling fan cycles on and off.

 

[salty joe]

Nice! Are you going to let the bath fan run 24/7?

 

[BrettDS]

Nice! Are you going to let the bath fan run 24/7?

That's my plan right now... I put a plug on it so I could plug it into my EB8 and let the apex control it if I want to at some point, but even in the winter when the temp is cooler I'll probably still need it for humidify control.

 

[salty joe]

I just wonder how long that fan will run going non stop. Really can't expect quality bearings in a $15 fan. Humidistat might work well in summer and winter. In the summer you could set it a little lower to come on quicker....Can you rig the apex to control for humidity? I've seen the electronic part that senses relative humidity and IIRC, they were only a couple dollars.

 

[BrettDS]

Lol... Yeah... If I only get a year or even just a few months out of it I probably can't complain for $14. When it dies maybe I'll put in a higher quality fan... I was trying to stay cheap in case it didn't work.

The apex definitely doesn't have any humidity controls built in, but it can detect contact closure type switches with the breakout box and I might be able to rig something up with a humidistat.