Heat room vs water with a twist.

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nfored

nfored

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Apr 4, 2008
2,597
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Missouri
So we all agree its cheaper and better to heat the room don't we?

Lets say a person for what ever reason can't heat the whole house.

Now lets say they have a large tank several hundred gallons.

That would take 1500 to 2000 watts of water heaters to keep it warm in the winter.

But what if they built a room around the tank, meaning walls on both sides and the back and a ceiling. These walls and ceiling would be insulated like normal outside walls there would be about 2" clearance between the tank and all 3 walls. Now you would put a lets say 800 watt space heater hooked up to a Temperature Controller that is inside of the tank room.

The front of the tank would be built into the wall so essentially the whole tank is in a very very small room. That small room is heated with the space heater, and the only place air gets out is the small area in the front where the tank meets the wall. This could be fixed with great stuff from the back side.
 
i think it could work would take a while for the water to heat up but once it does i don't see why i would not work the same.
 
Not as much as 2000 watts of water heaters. In the past winters I have heated a normal size room with a 800watt space heater, so I figured that it would keep a room with the same square footage as an office cubical warm easy.

I honestly think the trick will be getting the walls insulated well enough to keep the cold air out.

As far as feeding the fish or other wise accessing the tank. I was thinking about having one of the sidewalls being a door. that over laps the wall so there is no area without insulation.
 
In the winter I need all 3 of my 300 watt submersible heaters to keep my 220 at 80, this tank is in the basement. The 500 gallon tank will be built into the wall of the living room but be sitting in a garage. So the garage would likely be colder then the basement. The previous owner told me he used 2 1000watt heaters.

While in general I worry about the overall watt usage as it relates to money, but my main worry is the electrical circuit size. In theory a 20AMP breaker will handle 2200 watts, but then I would have nothing left to power pumps or lights, and I believe the safe constant load on them is only 1800 watts.
 
I would think you would potentially have a humidity/mold issue. Space heaters are also notorious for causing house fires. Seems a little scary to me personally.
 
stephcps;5139169; said:
I would think you would potentially have a humidity/mold issue. Space heaters are also notorious for causing house fires. Seems a little scary to me personally.
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Yes the fire risk is something I thought about and have no good answer for other then Pray my family gets out so I can celebrate the insurance money.


Mold I think could be controlled by paint.
 
Can you tap into a hot water line ? if so I was just thinking what if you taped the hot water line and cold then hooked up a chlorine / cloramine filter and had to set to drip X amount of gallons of water into the tank ? naturally you'd have to hook up an over flow but that is part of what I am going be doing on my 360 gallon tank ...
and By doing that no water changes .. you'd just have to vacum the substrate every now and then ... much more time to Enjoy the hobby .. ( I should also note that I am going to have some heaters in the tank also)

I have already ran new hot and cold lines and I have a Garden hose Y that will take the hot and cold lines and make them into a single line ( on the Garden hose Y on each side it has an adjustable flow that in turn will allow me to adjust the temp of the water :-) then I found a fitting reducer that will take the garden hose and turn it into 1/4 inch ( the size needed for my chlorine/ chloramine filters ) and I ran a sewer line that will be on the opposite side of the tank ...
 
Cakilla;5139210; said:
Can you tap into a hot water line ? if so I was just thinking what if you taped the hot water line and cold then hooked up a chlorine / cloramine filter and had to set to drip X amount of gallons of water into the tank ? naturally you'd have to hook up an over flow but that is part of what I am going be doing on my 360 gallon tank ...
and By doing that no water changes .. you'd just have to vacum the substrate every now and then ... much more time to Enjoy the hobby .. ( I should also note that I am going to have some heaters in the tank also)

I have already ran new hot and cold lines and I have a Garden hose Y that will take the hot and cold lines and make them into a single line ( on the Garden hose Y on each side it has an adjustable flow that in turn will allow me to adjust the temp of the water :-) then I found a fitting reducer that will take the garden hose and turn it into 1/4 inch ( the size needed for my chlorine/ chloramine filters ) and I ran a sewer line that will be on the opposite side of the tank ...
Click to expand...

I have a drip system setup on my 220 gallon as well as what your talking about here with having hot and cold lines ran to the tank and connected with a T, but my hot cold is for large water changes. I have read that chloramine filters work better with hot water.

I don't mind running heaters even if it was 1000watts, I just want something to supplemental it to help keep the tank warm. So I could drip hot water and run a heater and keep in a insulated room.


PLEASE READ>>>>>>

One word of advise, unless I am miss reading your setup it sounds like you have your hot water and cold water lines connected together and have them always on and running through the chlorimine filter.

IF THAT IS TRUE you are doing great damage to your hot water heater and costing your self money. What happens is it now connects the cold water directly to the hot water and makes your hot water tank work alot harder. You can ask any plumber about this. If you want to do something like that where the water is always on and running you MUST use a thermostatic mixing valve.
 
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