New Addition

[hawkinsrgk]

Friday I got a call from my wife telling me that we had mold on the windows in the fish room. I knew it was muggy, but didn't think it was that muggy.

So I went to Home Depot and got the largest de-humidifier they had. Also made a table for it out of an old pallet.

 

[hawkinsrgk]

After running this for about 8 hours, it pulled about 3 gallons of water out of the air. Just wanted to share this with everybody because I didn't think the evaporation in my setup would cause a problem.

Thanks
Randy

 

[Fieryfrog]

Wow. Randy that is crazy. I have been thinking about buying one. But keep blowing it off. But after you say you got 3 gallon in 8 hours, just in your tank room. That is a lot. I wonder how bad my basement is with that 150 gallon stock tank and another 67 gallon tank.

 

[hawkinsrgk]

Yea, It really didn't seem that bad to me, but I can really see the difference after hooking this up.

I guess I go down there so often that I got use to it.

 

[Chameleon]

Yeah my house can get quite humid when the AC hasn't run in a while. Nice build Randy. Almost looks like you have a chiller. You may want to put the dehumidifier on a timer as they can use a lot of electricity.

 

[hawkinsrgk]

Thanks Tyler. I didn't think about how much power it would use. I can set it to turn on/off by the percentage of humidity.

 

[H@rry]

Where is your drain hose running?

 

[hawkinsrgk]

Where is your drain hose running?

To the sink drain.

I use a branch on the sink drain that I connect the RO water waste line. Basically I put a barbed T on that where one end is the waste line and the other is the drain from the dehumidifier

 

[hawkinsrgk]

You may want to put the dehumidifier on a timer as they can use a lot of electricity.

Yea, Had to eat some crow on this one. So last week we were on vacation and I was explaining to my wife how much less power the fish tank is using now that I have upgraded the lighting from MH/T5 combo to LEDs. Went from 7.6 amps to 1.7 amps, so we should have a much less power bill now and to let me know how much it was.

Power bill came in at $425. It has doubled since I implemented the power saving features. Once I put on my reading glasses I could see the fine print that said this thing uses 7.5 amps. Keeping the room at a sweet 73 degrees and 40% humidity is quite expensive. Now I am trying 75 degrees and 55% humidity so hopefully it works out a little better.

 

[sprinklerdudes]

A small bathroom exhaust fan over the tank, vented outside can help as well, you can wire in a timer to have it run during the high point in you light cycle, will pull a ton of moist air out and vent it to the outside.

 

[hawkinsrgk]

A small bathroom exhaust fan over the tank, vented outside can help as well, you can wire in a timer to have it run during the high point in you light cycle, will pull a ton of moist air out and vent it to the outside.

Thanks AJ. If I did that do you know if it would be possible to tie into the exhaust fan in the bathroom? It would probably be about 20 feet that I would have to run a exhaust, but dont know if that would be too far.

 

[Chameleon]

You have seen my setup Randy, but I use one of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-Inline-Fa...898?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ab144ff22
Its on a timer to come on several times a day in my basement.
If I want more air out I bump up how many times it comes on and try to correlate it with peak lighting in the basement.

 

[sprinklerdudes]

I am not sure, I have seen several very large tanks, that have one or more exhaust fans in the hoods, vented to the outside, I don't know about venting it from one fan to the other.

 

[sprinklerdudes]

chameleon's link with the duct fan is a good ideal as well, anything to pull the evaporation off the tank and to the outside.

 

[hawkinsrgk]

Thanks guys for the tips. I would prefer to avoid cutting a hole in the brick

 

[hawkinsrgk]

With that being said, I may have to look into that if the power bill is through the roof again

 

[sprinklerdudes]

If you do need to cut a hole into the brick, there is a company in Irondale called Penhall, they do concrete cutting, sawing etc, I had them core drill a few holes for me a while back, on a commercial job, they core drilled a 4" hole through brick veneer and 6" solid concrete wall. they did a good job, for couple hundred bucks.