The drips will be for a 125 gallon and 75 gallon growouts. I have no doubt my aquarium heaters can keep up. Just a little concerned on them being overworked with the drip and increasing thr electric bill. I anticipate roughly 20-30gpd in each aquarium.
Heating Drip System
- Thread starter Dovii kid
- Start date
The drips will be for a 125 gallon and 75 gallon growouts. I have no doubt my aquarium heaters can keep up. Just a little concerned on them being overworked with the drip and increasing thr electric bill. I anticipate roughly 20-30gpd in each aquarium.
I’d think a lot of that might depend on the ambient temperature of the room and how much water you have in the room. Assuming the room isn’t cold, the more water you have, the less it’s going to want to change. Personally, if I were not worried about the temp changing enough to change the health of the fish I’d go straight unheated water and see if and how much my bill changes, and if it’s worth adding some heat at that point. You’d be adding all of 2-2.5 ounces of cold water a minute to 75-125 gallons of warm water that wants to stay the same temperature.
I’ve heated the living area of a house with aquariums (that’s not what I set out to do, I just wanted a lot of aquariums at the time) and the electric bill went up way way less what our gas heating bill went down. Wasn’t expecting that. It wasn’t a drip system though. I’ve got an unheated basement and I’m tempted to do an experiment this winter with a drip system and a kilowatt meter. My suspicion is the drip system won’t change things dramatically.
I’ve heated the living area of a house with aquariums (that’s not what I set out to do, I just wanted a lot of aquariums at the time) and the electric bill went up way way less what our gas heating bill went down. Wasn’t expecting that. It wasn’t a drip system though. I’ve got an unheated basement and I’m tempted to do an experiment this winter with a drip system and a kilowatt meter. My suspicion is the drip system won’t change things dramatically.
Thanks. You bring up a good point may as well try it and see the effects. Just trying to keep the wife happy! Can't get her worried prior to the 8 x 4 build.
The worst case you have here is 1.25GPH into the 75G tank. That 1.25 gallons is only 1.6% of that tank. So you are changing out minuscule amounts of water. Definitely not worth taking the time to heat the drip line. If you were doing water changes each day when it's time open valve then close the valve I'd say sure. But a drip at that rate and such a small volume per hour won't effect your tank.
The math is for heat load is easy
Q (energy) = m (mass flow) Cp (heat capacity) dT (change in temp)
For 8 gallons an hour of 40F water (as per someones guess above) that you are heating to 76 F (my guess) that becomes
m = 8 gallons / hour = 8.4 grams / second
Cp water = 4.18 J / g K
dT = 76 F - 40 F => 20 K (unit conversion in there too...)
Q = 8.4 * 4.18 * 20 = 702 Watts
So you need to add 702 watts of heat load to the aquarium to compensate for the drip (adjust as necessary for your actual final temperature and water flow rate). Personally I don't see any need to have an external heater, as long as primary aquarium heater is strong enough it will mix fast enough to not be an issue.
If you wanted to have a heat recovery system by using the drain water to pre-heat the incoming water you could save a lot of energy, you'd just buy a simple heat exchanger and put the drain on one side and the fresh water on the other.
The advantage of using your water heater (via a mixing valve from your faucet) is natural gas heat is about 1/3 the cost of electricity on a per Watt basis - going through that math is fairly easy as well if you know your natural gas and electricity rates. But if you don't want to use softened water that is fairly off the table, excluding buying a natural gas fired heater which would be way overkill IMO....
Q (energy) = m (mass flow) Cp (heat capacity) dT (change in temp)
For 8 gallons an hour of 40F water (as per someones guess above) that you are heating to 76 F (my guess) that becomes
m = 8 gallons / hour = 8.4 grams / second
Cp water = 4.18 J / g K
dT = 76 F - 40 F => 20 K (unit conversion in there too...)
Q = 8.4 * 4.18 * 20 = 702 Watts
So you need to add 702 watts of heat load to the aquarium to compensate for the drip (adjust as necessary for your actual final temperature and water flow rate). Personally I don't see any need to have an external heater, as long as primary aquarium heater is strong enough it will mix fast enough to not be an issue.
If you wanted to have a heat recovery system by using the drain water to pre-heat the incoming water you could save a lot of energy, you'd just buy a simple heat exchanger and put the drain on one side and the fresh water on the other.
The advantage of using your water heater (via a mixing valve from your faucet) is natural gas heat is about 1/3 the cost of electricity on a per Watt basis - going through that math is fairly easy as well if you know your natural gas and electricity rates. But if you don't want to use softened water that is fairly off the table, excluding buying a natural gas fired heater which would be way overkill IMO....
I've been looking at installing an auto w/c drip system myself. Can said drip system, if delivering water at correct tank temperature or a little warmer, be able to keep the tanks at the proper operating temperatures? I'm creeping up on 70 tanks and individual heaters 100W and up are starting to really take their toll on the bill. I'm trying to figure out a way to eliminate them as this seems to be my biggest bump on the fish room road.
You can but it's really not feasable. If you drip 4 gallons of 85F into a 40 gallon tank at 75F per day(~50% WC per week), the tank will end each day with a .91F increase. If you bump the same 4 gallons to 100F the temp change goes up to 2.27F, keep in mind that niether of these include loss of heat due to the difference in temp between the water and the air and the glass insulating factor. In other words you could probably have your room temp around 73 or 74 for 85F drip and 72 or 73 for the 100F drip if your target tank temp is 75F.
Heating water is energy intensive then you dump the heated water down the drain? Get ye a heat exchanger.
