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Hi guys,
Given the current concerns about climate change, we're getting serious in my household about reducing out energy use . We don't own a car, and we're renting our flat (so solar hot water etc is out). We've swapped all our light bulbs for compact fluorescents, and bought a nice, old fashioned fan for the living room so that we don't have to use the airconditioner. We've identified our fish tanks as a large energy sink. We have a 350 litre community tank in the living room, and a pair of 100 litre tanks in our bedroom. I've done a quick and dirty estimate of their power usage, as follows (using http://www.kernsanalysis.com/HeaterCalculator.cgi to calculate heater power): Main tank: Heating - 110W - 964KWh/annum (120x48x60cm tank with 10mm walls heated to 8 degrees C above ambient (discus)) Lighting - ~200W - 876KWh/annum (2 x 55W CF + 2 x 36W T8 on electronic ballasts) Filtration - ~10W - 88KWh/annum (Eheim canister) Small tanks: Heating - 150W -1314KWh/annum (Two 60x35x45cm tanks with 6mm walls heated to 8 degrees C above ambient (discus)) Lighting - ~50W - 219KWh/annum (One 36W T8 on magnetic ballast shared across both tanks) Filtration - ~10W - 88KWh/annum (Two small Eheim canisters) The whole lot adds up to 3.5MWh/annum, or 1.5 tons of CO2 each year, which is pretty scary. Anyway, I've been toying with ideas to reduce energy usage. Firstly, I think I'll remove the T8 fluoros from the big tank, and put AH Supplies reflectors on the 55W compacts. I calculate that the increase in reflected light will pretty-much make up for the decrease in power. I can then knock a few watts off the T8 on the other two tanks by putting it on an electronic ballast. After that though, it gets hard. My next thoughts are to double-glaze the tanks. If I get some 3mm window glass cut, I could space that a few millimetres off the main glass. It's difficult quantifying what sort of power saving I'd get, but I'd guess something like 50% is doable... Has anyone tried double glazing? Any other ideas? Cheers, Suzy |
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