Fish House Electrics.

[hudson of sleat]

I have never yet read an artical which tells you how many tanks you can run of the electricity supply. For instance, your electic supply is 240 volts and lets say you are using 300w heaters. How many tanks do you think you can run. Dont forget you have lights and air pumps and any other appliance. How many of you have just got the bog standard 13amp cable running to your fish houses. Pity you if you have, the wire could melt. If you value your fish. I would get it checked, I have and I am actully using 4mm s.w.a.cable. I'm no expert, and I would not like to give you the figures, as I'm not qulified, but I'm sure there must be a qulified electrician out there that can give a bit of input, it may help to put peoples mind at rest. It makes you wonder how many peolpe have lost there fish in this way. Any feed back on this. It might be espesially helpful for anybody thinking of setting up a fish house. Hope someone joins in on this topic. If not - thank you all that read it.

 

[Piltdownpaul]

A simple way to work out your current consumption- Divide 240 into the wattage(say 300w) and you get just over 1 amp. Thats why you should only run a 7.5kw shower on a 30amp circuit-any more and it'll trip the fuse. 7500w/250v equals 30amp

 

[BigC]

Proper insulation and thermostatic space heating is much prefered by myself.

 

[hudson of sleat]

Thanks for that Piltdownpaul, lets see if you have started the ball rolling. I know the answer but I would like a qulified person to tell our frends the ins and outs of DIY electics in fish houses.

 

[Rooster]

Electricity CAN be dangerous... thats why the powers that be have made it law that you get a qualified person, yada yada yah !

Electricity is perfectly safe, if you have an understanding - I think its probably a BAD idea to discuss this on forum... either you know what you are doing, or you dont - and if you dont then DONT DO IT !!!!!!!!!!!



Just to iron out a few creases, bog standard 13A "twin and earth" CAN carry more than 13Amps... quite a bit more without bursting into flames !

Basic maths shows us:

WATTS = Volts multiplied by Amps
Which is the same as:
Amps = Watts divided by Volts

Given that UK mains is 220 Volts AC, 13A is equals 2860 Watts

Now you simply add up all your appliances Wattages right ? WRONG - some appliances (such as lighting control gear) takes a LOT of current at "startup" so having a lot of flourescent lamps all coming on at the same time would draw more than calculated. (same with air pumps - especially types with motors)

Some things have a high rating, but are not on all the time - such as heater/thermostats .... even when they DO switch on, its highly unlikey that they all will come on at the same time.

All in all, I doubt very much that the average user will "overload" the electrical circuit - provided that its been installed properly ... again we are back to "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" This is why I think further discussion on this topic is a BAD idea.


Even folk with some knowledge might like to think twice.... the maths quoted above are for DC - AC is a LOT more complicated.... but the formulae are very good to know as a "rule of thumb"

Electricity and water are bad bed fellows, so please - if you value your life, get help from someone who KNOWS what they are doing.

 

[tangokitty]

Confused by the whole topic.........

 

[Tolak]

Learning to do your own electric work online sounds similar to learning to swim online.

One fishroom piece of equipment I strongly recommend is GFI outlets or breakers. Learn to do electrical work hands on, from a qualified electrician. We can't see bad connections or nicked insulation online. Bad grounds imitate dead circuits, these can get ugly.

 

[hudson of sleat]

Rooster many thanks for that imput. If the right people are reading this I'm sure they will understand where you are coming from. I have seen some pictures of peoples fish houses and to me they have hell of a lot of tanks, but that's not the point. I'm not into mentioning names but I hope they read your reply and it sinks in. The morel of this saga is - if asked a question you can not answer, try and get someone eles to answer it for you, in a round about way. Amist the responses is the answer required. Thanks again, and thanks for all the other input members are giving.

 

[Piltdownpaul]

All my tanks in the room are protected by rcds. These are a useful device to cut the electricity before you get a shock enough to kill you. Unfortunately when i had a power cut the other afternoon the rcds wont switch back on after the power comes back on so bear this in mind if you go down that route.

 

[geo7x]

I think for cost reasons more than anything once people start having a large number of tanks they make measures to cut down energy cost.

Take CFC, for example, he has a fish house. AFAIK he uses an oil filled heater to heat the room which is connected to a thermosthat. Thanks to superb insulation I think he said that the heater has barely needed to turn itself on since April. As long as you can heat the room that the tanks are in then there is no need for in-tank heaters.
Additionally for filtration instead of having lots of filters you can run many tanks an air powered system powered by a single hi blow air pump.