Water Heaters

Yep Pezulu
Cost will drive innovation/DIY to lower prices
agree insulation is the cheapest option or first choice to make
Evaporation is more heat loss, so put lids/cover on tanks as eventually mould will grow on ceilings and walls

 

I spoilt myself an put in an air conditioner in my fish room. WHAT a difference.
I have set it at 28 and my water remains at that temp ( Discus mostly). I did not insulate my walls. I can happily report, there is NO condensation whatsoever. I have a 300w Jaeger in each tank and 2 in my sump. The 2 in the sump come on quite often, but, the ones in the tanks never come on.
Aircon might not be the cheapest way of maintaining temps in the water but it sure does work.
Lot to be said for ambient heating for fish tanks I can honestly say!

 

eros its like climate change (species cant adapt to quick changes)
its an option if you put in one with an inverter, apparently they dont consume a lot of power. After the initial spike you only use the daily top up
do you know what your increase in electricity was after the aircon was installed

if eskom was run free of corruption, etc, we would not have these huge doubling, tripling of prices in 2/3 years and probably wouldnt be talking about

 

Outside tanks are very cold today ... fish room also has heaters on again - good thing I did not remove the few heaters that are in the tanks. Might need to keep the door closed for a few days again.




Later Ferdie

 

I considered a few options for heating a large amount of water. The panels from xtreme solar was an option but then t will only work during the day. And the temp drop over night is generally where he issue is.

After watching some guys from the states use their hot water system as a heater i wanted to do the same. I had some titanium coils made in china as heat exchangers but never completed the rest. The idea was to connect it to the geyser which is heat pump driven and have a closed loop on the geyser which can be controlled via a solenoid.

I used the coils in emergencies during power outages to keep the tank warm and it worked very well. I dumped them into a large pot of hot water on a gas stove and just pumped tank water through it with a pump connected to the battery backup.