• We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo

1,000 GALLON MULTI TANK SUMP SYSTEM.

Is your pump submersible? Any wasted energy from a submersible pump will turn into heat and heat the water.

Reducing evaporation is the best way I know of to reduce the heating cost of tanks. *Evaporating water pulls a lot of heat out of the tank.

Have you tried to isolate vibrations from your pump to quiet it down? Maybe use some sort of rubber/foam mat for it to rest on? Hard line (PVC pipe) will transmit a lot of vibration from a pump if it is directly coupled to the pump. A short piece of vinyl tubing might help a lot to isolate vibrations of the pump from the PVC pipe?
 
@Ray... Do I ever want those orinos! And a male motoro!

Oughtsix. This pump is submersible but our replacement pump will be inline as those are the most energy efficient. When we make that transfer we will more deliberately consider and address the deafening noise. As the system gets both larger and more stable and it brings the entirety of my house up to temp :P the heaters are chilling out. I expect after the fish room has been walled off and become its own entity things will improve greatly.
 
Gotcha, it almost sounds like you are heating your whole house with four 300 watt aquarium heaters. :)

Just a thought for you and energy efficient pumps. The majority of power consumed by a pump will go into moving the water. Any inefficiency in the pump will go into heat (and in your case a small amount will go into vibrations... i.e. Sound). So in the case of a submersible pump you are getting near 100% efficiency. The power consumed is either going into moving the water or heating the water... with a small parasitic loss into making sound. In contrast an inline (external) pump will convert electrical power into moving water and heating the air.

Of course it is winter currently. In the summer the energy converted into heat by a pump may be very unwanted.

When there is a temperature differential there will be a transfer of heat. Insulation (materials that are poor conductors of heat) will slow down the heat transfer but they will never completely eliminate it. So if your tanks and house air are left isolated and unaffected by any external factors they would eventually reach an equilibrium. How well insulated the tanks (and sump, piping etc...) are will only affect how fast a closed system (tanks + house) reaches equilibrium.

I forgot where you guys live. If you have to cool your house in the summer then controlling heat escaping from your tanks should probably be of concern to you. If you live in a mild climate and do not use an air conditioner in the summer then the transfer of heat from your tanks to the air in your house would probably not be a big concern.

What temperature do you keep your water at? What temperature do you keep your house (air) at?

I am glad to see you guys back online, I look forwards to your pictures when you have a chance. :)
 
Oughtsix,

You speak truth.. We live in the burbs of Chicago. So winter HEAT summer AC haha.

I do feel that what you are speaking of is our major issue, Running on the system is 4 - 6 foot tanks and 4-4 foot tanks, plus the 4"pvc as well as the 2" fill PVC. so basically The heaters are connected to a GIANT radiator.

currently the "fish room" has sorta overflowed (funny) into the rest of the basement. Top priority is to build the walls to enclose that room from the rest of the house. It seem we will be doing a bit more insulating that originally planned.

I wonder how much is actually being transferred from the pipes into the air, would running insulation on the PVC help?

I understand the thought about the pump.. but it unless the Pump's heat is that of a 300 watt heater it cost way too much to operate.
 
The wattage difference is that the current pump is 700 watts give or take with the goal of going to one that is 250 watts give or take. While yes you are correct in saying that the energy bleed in the pump is being captured in the water I don't know that all of the 450 watts unaccounted for is as effectively entering our water system as a 300 watt jager heater would in its place. You might know more than me(I'm trying to recall my elementary school circuit classes with AAA batteries so this is going to be very very very crude...) but if the HP of the pump is low and the head on the pump is high and the motor can't produce the RPM does it burn all that energy (meaning produce heat or RPM) or does some of it pass through (two prongs, one positive one negative right)? Sure its drawing 700 watts right but is it actually using that much or is there pass through? I always figured as motors operate on a current you have energy passing through, and that not all the watts entering something like a pump are expressly used per-say as the current creates electromagnets. Its not as resistor based like a heater where the watts are literally burning off and being expressed at a much much much higher rate. At any rate say there is pass through, no idea if that is really billed or how that works either.
 
Generally we keep the house at or near 70, letting it go up in the summer and below in the winter. We actually adjust the fish tanks seasonally, setting them to 72 or 75 in the summer and 79 or 82 in the winter. That way they aren't fighting the central heating system. And yes I was implying that the super sump tangibly effects all 3 floors of the house, being that the tanks are glass they radiate heat like crazy.
 
I hope I am not being too long winded here (too late)... the Law of Conservation of Energy says that energy is neither created or destroyed it just changes form. This gives us a few things:

1) All the energy going into a pump will be used by the pump in some matter. It will be used to move the water, heat the pump or make noise. The energy required to make noise is generally very negligible so we are just going to ignore that.

2) 1 watt = 3.4 BTU/hr. It doesn't matter if a heater converts the watts to BTU's or if a pump converts the Watts to BTU's. Every watt that is converted into heat makes 3.4 BTU/hr.

(BTU's/hr and Watts are actually the same thing. BTU's/hr are just the English measurement system and Watts are the Metric measurement system but it is usually easier for for people to think of BTU's/hr as heat and Watts as electricity.)

4) The wattage rating on a pump is the maximum amount of work the pump will do, it is not the amount of electricity that the pump will always continuously use.

5) The amount of electricity used to pump the water is directly proportional to the amount of water being pumped minus the energy converted to heat. So when the flow of water through a pump is slowed the pump is actually doing less work and uses less electricity. You can actually see this with one of those kill-o-watt devices. If a pump is pumping water to your tank it will use a certain amount of watts to do so, lets say 100 watts. If you put a valve on the pump output so the gallons/minute are lower the pump will be using less electricity, maybe 75 watts. If you shut off the valve and stop the flow of water completely the pump will use much less electricity, maybe 25 watts, because it is not moving water and not doing work. All of the 25 watts of electricity the pump is using will then be going into heating the water (assuming a submerged pump).

I have external pumps and submerged pumps, my preference is for the submerged pumps... mainly because any extra heat will go into the water instead of the air like an external pump. But external pumps can usually be found in larger sizes than submerged pumps which is a definite consideration for your application.



PVC is a pretty poor conductor of heat. I doubt you are loosing a lot of heat through the PVC pipes. Especially since the temperature differential (the temperature of the water vs the temperature of the air) is minimal. Even the heat lost through the glass (A better heat conductor than PVC) is probably only a small percentage of the heat lost from the water in your system. My guess is the vast majority of the heat being lost from your water is through evaporation. It takes a lot of energy to change liquid water into gaseous water. Here in Central Oregon during the winter it is VERY dry. I loose a lot of water from my tank and sump due to evaporation. I don't mind during the winter because I figure it is just supplementing the humidifier I run to keep my home comfortable. In the summer though I cover everything and try very hard to minimize the amount of evaporation from my tank and sump because the extra humidity makes my house very uncomfortable when it is hot outside. If you can cover your big sump and tanks I think you will be very grateful when the summer heat comes. Building the wall you talked about will also help confine the humidity and heat to your fish room.
 
Thanks for the detailed response. Based n the facts you've provided I would like to go with an external pump. As the tanks are in an isolated room I will be able to capture any radiated heat and it will warm the tanks regardless. Additionally when heat is not needed like in summer months when I basically turn off all the heaters I will be saving dramatically. I the neighborhood of 100-200 dollars. That will pay for the new pump in 2 summers. Additionally the use of an external pump will make plumbing in the DE filters dramatically easier.


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Considering the size of your system I understand why an external pump makes a lot of sense. How big of a pump are you going to upgrade to?

Have you had any issues balancing the flow to your lower tanks vs the flow to your upper tanks?

I am looking forwards to seeing your DE implementation! I think you will really appreciate the DE... but it is easy to get spoiled quickly and forget what cloudy water looks like. :) I still haven't changed the original DE powder on mine and it is still going strong!
 
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