Home Water Heater

[John7429]

garage

 

[kallmond]

side by side is fine, even if you did just the backs, tops and ends it would help a good bit, its cheap and easy, which is always my first priority.. Once the cheap and easy solution is done then start looking to the more complex/expensive solutions.

 

[John7429]

I will add styro this weekend, just to the ends, back, and tops. I have acrylic tops at the moment and will see of the styro tops help. Its going to take a bit of effort to work around some of the plumbing... lol

Thanks!

 

[kallmond]

while you're styrofoaming, look into insulating your garage door. An old buddy of mine and I cut 2" pink foam to fit inside the panels of his garage door. Just doing that increased the temp of his garage pretty significantly.. I don't have exact temps, but it went from uncomfortably cold in the Pennsylvania winter to a little chilly. A space heater in there makes it comfortable to hang out.

 

[jschall]

wouldn't heating be more efficient with a hotter heating element? These suckers can bring the temp to over 100 almost instantly... If i tone down the internal thermostat a bit, I think its still going to heat the aquariums faster, than aquarium heaters.... no? I know that its 1500w but isn't all that energy in one element more efficient than having it spread out? I'm not sure... just asking.

No. You'll get a WHOLE LOT more efficiency out of a submersible heater.

All the energy that you put into the heater ends up being converted to heat. Therefore, having a heater sitting inside your tank will be almost perfectly efficient. The only energy you lose is the minuscule heating of the power cable. Having a big inline water heater will just use a bunch more energy to heat up the water going through it to "over 100," as you said, and then that "over 100" water will basically go through a big heatsink (the hoses going back to the aquarium) losing energy into the air as it goes. The unit itself probably gets pretty hot, wasting more energy.

Look into gas if you want to heat your tanks more inexpensively.

 

[SemperFish]

Can you insulate the tubing for your filters AND the filtration as well? I would suspect we lose a fair deal of heat from our filters. My tank is right up against a big south facing window so it gets direct sun all day long which helps keep it warm. During summer I keep the curtain closed to cut down on it.