Heater vs heating element

[sylvius]

So I finally have my heaters on the profilux. One of them (Finnex titanium HMH) beeps every time the power comes on so that’s got to go. Curious what people think on using a heater with an integrated thermostat set modestly above the profilux set point versus a dumb heating element only. Obviously the integrated thermostat adds a backup but given how flaky the integrated thermostats are it seems like supplementing your car seatbelt with a bungee cord.

I do have a second temp probe on profilux so I’d like to figure out a way to use that to disable the heaters if the main probe gets funky but that doesn’t protect me if profilux itself crashes. In that case, powerbar would default to off and there would be no heat until fixed which is probably better than cooked fish. A myGHL alarm when profilux fails to report in would be hugely helpful in this regard.

Anyway, please let me know if you think heater with integrated thermostat is a significant advantage/disadvantage over a dumb heating element.

Thanks!

 

[Lasse]

About heaters with inbuild thermostate. The question is not IF it Will breakdown - The right question is when IMO. And in my experinces - its always on when it brokes.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[sylvius]

Yup, that is my impression as well, so not much of a fail safe. In that case, is there any reason to get one instead of a dumb heating element?

 

[Lucas815]

It's best to use a temperature controller, like a Ranco or an Inkbird, as the main heater controller.

Then, you can have the profilux's outlet set slightly higher as backup, and the heater's thermostat as a 2nd backup.

If you use the profilux's powerbar as the main heater on-off switch, you risk wearing out the powerbar's outlet faster, and it sucks having a broken outlet when you only have 6 available on a 230$ powerbar.

 

[sylvius]

How much wear and tear is there having an outlet power cycle? I wouldn't have thought it's a major issue.

 

[Lucas815]

How much wear and tear is there having an outlet power cycle? I wouldn't have thought it's a major issue.

I dont know how much cycles GHL power bars are rated for, but it's usually something to consider as several people had outlets getting stuck on with different brands of controllers.

It's a recommended practice to put the wear on a "disposable" temperature controller instead of the power bar.

You can alleviate this with a GHL controller by having a higher hysteresis value, which will reduce the number of power cycles on the outlet, but it'll still cycle over a hundred times per day.

 

[ingchr1]

I dont know how much cycles GHL power bars are rated for, but it's usually something to consider as several people had outlets getting stuck on with different brands of controllers.

It's a recommended practice to put the wear on a "disposable" temperature controller instead of the power bar.

You can alleviate this with a GHL controller by having a higher hysteresis value, which will reduce the number of power cycles on the outlet, but it'll still cycle over a hundred times per day.

I'm not sure I've come across any posts on GHL Powerbar outlets getting stuck on. But this doesn't mean you shouldn't have a failsafe, just incase. Not sure I've seen any failing off either.

I came across it in one of the manuals that the 5.1 Powerbar was rated for either 100,000 or 1,000,000 cycles. Don't recall which and I can no longer find where that was stated. Haven't seen anything on the 6E Powerbars though.

I have my Powerbar cycle my heaters, with the heater thermostat as the back up. I'm using Eheim Jager heaters so I'm not concerned with power coming off and on to them. If they were heaters with their own electronic controllers then I would be, since I'm not sure it's good to constantly cycle input power to one of those.

I have a primary heater (125W) and a backup heater (50W). Most of the time the primary is enough, but sometimes the backup does come on. It's a 40 gallon AIO and at times our house thermostat is set for 64F, normally 68F.

I have the Powerbar outlet for the primary heater set to OFF if it looses comms with the P4. The backup heater I have its outlet set to ON if it looses comms with the P4. This way I still have heat to the tank with little chance of the tank overheating should the heaters thermostat also fail. Each heater is on separate Powerbars.

I also have the primary heater go off if the temperature probe reads too low (set around 76F). This protects from a failed probe, or the more likely scenario the probe is out of the water for some reason. I do this with a virtual probe and programmable logic.

With the sizing of my heaters, they only come on about once an hour for about a 20 minute time period. My hysteresis is set for 0.4F.

Temperature Probe Settings

Virtual Temperature Probe

Alarm setting used to turn off primary heater on low temperature.

Programmable Logic For Primary Heater

Note that I have it set as a "Substrate Heater".

Switch Outlets

Primary Heater S1
Backup Heater S6

Note that the Backup Heater is set as a "Heater".

The way the different heater settings work is that the "Heater" will come if the "Substrate Heater" is not enough. Basically "Heater" has a wider hysteresis than the "Substrate Heater" setting.

 

[sylvius]

Wow, that’s entirely what I want to do, thank you! Hopefully I can figure out how to recreate all that. Only difference is I have a second temp probe so I may try to set that as an additional backup that could deactivate the heaters.