Saving Electricity

Wasn't sure where to put this, but...Would a thermostat on a tank save more energy than a dimmer? Ash and I are looking at an apartment in which we would have to pay the utilities and I would LOVE to cut down on an electricity bill. We will be using a 4"x2' strip of Flexwatt that runs at 8 watts/ft. Anyone know?

Best way to save electricity:

Have good insulation.

And both should work out for you, but a thermostat is better for your snake and if the temperature in your apartment goes up then it will reduce the energy used for the flexwatt, while a dimmer would not.

that's what I am asking about, not the whole apartment because I have no control over that. lol. I assume it will be a miniscule amount if any.

Anything that keeps the temperature relatively constant will save electricity over something that lets it fluctuate. That being said a dimmer doesn't consume much power on its own where as a thermostat will consume a little bit of power. All in all you would do better by insulating your enclosure. However with the cost of heating a snake cage you may spend more in the insulation than you would save in electricity.

One way or another it's probably negligible. The amount you spend on a thermostat will probably be 2 years worth of electricity for the flexwatt.

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Originally Posted by AndrewGeibel

Anything that keeps the temperature relatively constant will save electricity over something that lets it fluctuate. That being said a dimmer doesn't consume much power on its own where as a thermostat will consume a little bit of power. All in all you would do better by insulating your enclosure. However with the cost of heating a snake cage you may spend more in the insulation than you would save in electricity.

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Yeah with the cost of just about anything you will probably be spending more than the electricity. The only way the electricity is going to be more than the object that creates that creates the electricity is if you're working with some nice big HPS lights. Look at Ralph Davis's setup he has a 1500 dollar electric bill every month, now imagine how many racks he has. That 1500 dollars doesn't seem so high.

And when you can have one snake that can run that much, a bill that high isn't too bad.

So, you are running 16 watts. Aren’t a most light bulbs around 60 watts? It probably isn't affecting your electric bill much.

Completely unrelated but also related. :P

If you use a washer/dryer unit in your apartment you can save electricity by adding a dry towel to every dryer load. My sister told me about this and it really cuts down on the length of time it takes to dry up the clothes.

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Originally Posted by anatess

Completely unrelated but also related. :P

If you use a washer/dryer unit in your apartment you can save electricity by adding a dry towel to every dryer load. My sister told me about this and it really cuts down on the length of time it takes to dry up the clothes.

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Never thought of that but it makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Wh00h0069

So, you are running 16 watts. Aren’t a most light bulbs around 60 watts? It probably isn't affecting your electric bill much.

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He's running more than 16w, 16w maybe the consumption of the wattage the flexwatt needs but then you have to figure in the amount of power the thermostat itself needs to operate (yes I know it's not much at all). Either way if you run a washer or a dryer once a day you've already consumed WAY more electric and water than a small setup ever will in a 24 hour period. Thats just running these machines on one load not the whole day. You only really need to worry if you have alot of racks running 200-500w flexwatt stripes, then you may want to invest in some GOOD insulation.

If you have 2’ of 4” flex watt that is rated for 8 Watts per foot that means at most it can use 16 W per hour (Yes, Watts as far as power consumption are measured in Watt/Hours)

At 100% capacity all the time 16 W X 24 Hours = 384 Watt hours per day

Lets say that average month is 30 days. 384 Watt hours per day X 30 Days = 11520 Watt hours per month.

You pay by the Kilowatt hours on your electric bill so we have to dive the watt hours by 1000 to determine the number of kW hours this heating element is using. 11520 / 1000 = 11.52 kW hours per month.

High end charges for electricity is $0.12 per kW so we multiply 11.52 kW Hours by the $0.12 and arrive with a monthly cost to run this heating element of $1.39. We rounded up just to say the power company is really greedy.

Now my Herpstat Pro actually shows the amount of full power it is putting out in a percentage form from 0% to 100%. The highest I ever see mine get while powering (10) 1 foot sections of 11” flex watt that uses 12 Watts per foot is 30%. Lets use this as a rough guess of where yours will run. 30% changed to a numeric number for calculation is 0.3. For a short cut here lets just multiply the final cost by the actual percent it is actually using, so $1.39 X 0.3 = $0.42 per month.

In a year you will pay that times 12 for a whopping total of $5.04 for heating your snake for the whole year.

Now the big question is the power savings between the rheostat and a proportional T-stat. Can’t say without knowing what proportional T-stat we are comparing with what rheostat and having the specs from each, but I can say a proportional T-stat is a lot safer for your herp than a rheostat.

In general this is not an area you are going to save money on power use. You are better off making sure the computer is off when not in use, lights are off when not needed, swapping from incandescent bulbs to the spiral types on lights that get turned on and stay on for 10 minutes or more at a time, (Start up power on those spiral bulbs are huge, but they don’t advertise that.), Turning your AC up 1 degree in the summer and your heat down 1 degree in the winter even if you use gas heat as the blower motors in forced air systems use lots of power...

I think you get the point.

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Originally Posted by Gloryhound

If you have 2’ of 4” flex watt that is rated for 8 Watts per foot that means at most it can use 16 W per hour (Yes, Watts as far as power consumption are measured in Watt/Hours)

At 100% capacity all the time 16 W X 24 Hours = 384 Watt hours per day

Lets say that average month is 30 days. 384 Watt hours per day X 30 Days = 11520 Watt hours per month.

You pay by the Kilowatt hours on your electric bill so we have to dive the watt hours by 1000 to determine the number of kW hours this heating element is using. 11520 / 1000 = 11.52 kW hours per month.

High end charges for electricity is $0.12 per kW so we multiply 11.52 kW Hours by the $0.12 and arrive with a monthly cost to run this heating element of $1.39. We rounded up just to say the power company is really greedy.

Now my Herpstat Pro actually shows the amount of full power it is putting out in a percentage form from 0% to 100%. The highest I ever see mine get while powering (10) 1 foot sections of 11” flex watt that uses 12 Watts per foot is 30%. Lets use this as a rough guess of where yours will run. 30% changed to a numeric number for calculation is 0.3. For a short cut here lets just multiply the final cost by the actual percent it is actually using, so $1.39 X 0.3 = $0.42 per month.

In a year you will pay that times 12 for a whopping total of $5.04 for heating your snake for the whole year.

Now the big question is the power savings between the rheostat and a proportional T-stat. Can’t say without knowing what proportional T-stat we are comparing with what rheostat and having the specs from each, but I can say a proportional T-stat is a lot safer for your herp than a rheostat.

In general this is not an area you are going to save money on power use. You are better off making sure the computer is off when not in use, lights are off when not needed, swapping from incandescent bulbs to the spiral types on lights that get turned on and stay on for 10 minutes or more at a time, (Start up power on those spiral bulbs are huge, but they don’t advertise that.), Turning your AC up 1 degree in the summer and your heat down 1 degree in the winter even if you use gas heat as the blower motors in forced air systems use lots of power...

I think you get the point.

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Thanks for the info! I have two belly heat RBI racks and herpstat II coming and I was worried about how much the bill will go up. --Josh

Thanks for that. That way when Ash's mom complains that the snakes are adding electricity to the bill I can show her this and laugh at her. lol.

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Originally Posted by Little B-Py

Thanks for that. That way when Ash's mom complains that the snakes are adding electricity to the bill I can show her this and laugh at her. lol.

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you could just get an electric usage meter like this one http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=65731

I had thought about that actually. Saw one in one of my dad's workman or whatever magazines one time. They were talking about conserving electricity and some cheap ways to save a load.

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Originally Posted by Jsh

Thanks for the info! I have two belly heat RBI racks and herpstat II coming and I was worried about how much the bill will go up. --Josh

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I never actually looked into the power usage of the thermostat. I started looking at the Herpstat and Helix thermostats and can not find any rated power usage on just the electronics portion. Another thing I did not see was a UL listing. I might have to get out my little watt reader and start doing some testing to see if I can figure out how much some of these use.

Well get to it so we can get some numbers. lol. Like I said, it's not like it is more than miniscule amounts for small setups, but if someone with a larger setup wanted to figure it out they could always look here and find out some/all of the info they need.