ESB Bill

for those than run large tanks at 30 Degrees,
What has been your ESB bill for the last 2 cold months?

I was shocked at mine when it hit over €400.
But then again im running a large dehumidifier 24x7 until my aquarium lid arrives.
(plus my last bill was an estimate)

I have to run 3 x 300 watt heaters.....

Mine is about the same...i blame the clothes dryer

€350 @ 24 deg on few tanks
tumble dryer and immersion used few mornings this drives the bill shy high.

tetdiscus wrote:

Mine is about the same...i blame the clothes dryer

Snap!! Fecking not a drop of rain this week for me but the wind has never being so slack......Typical !!!!

mine was well over 400. its from leaving the immersion on . . . .

Check the rating of your dehumidifiers.
What are your bills normally ?
Check the rates they charge and how much you use.
Theyre the true values, they control the total.

Bill is normally half that, Havnt checked the wattage of the dehumidifier, oddly I think it's written underneath it. But I can't pick it up to check lol

Get a pre pay meter my bills use to be between 200 and 300 for two months now with the meter it's never over 20 a week. You can see how many kw your using and what your average is a day

Ricky

Many thanks flint, but I'm not a fan of the pre pay meters, I know the consumption of the tank during summer, it's about 300 watts per hour.Havnt checked during the winter but I could if I wanted.

Guess I could plug in the watt meter again....

I wasn't a fan of the meters either but moved house and the new one had one set up. I meant the average cost a day not watt sorry

Ricky.

232 from an official reading thanks to changing all the lights in my house to led 6mts ago

I only have one five foot marine tank and a two foot marine tank with a total of '19' plugs for both

my last bill was 430, we are 6 in the house with 4 kids so the washing machine and dryer are always going plus we have an electric cooker. 2 tanks a four foot and a 9 food with 3 300w heaters, return pump and large air pump. im switching to pre pay metering. ill let ye know how i get on with it.

Your mad going prepay.
How long can your marine tank be down ?
You need to check your standing charge and unit charge and if going prepay you might have another charge by them.
If you take the wattage rating of all your appliances then you can determine where the bill is coming from.
The heaters are the only guess work as they don't run for 24hrs, they go on and off as required.

I'll add my two cents here...

I've been led to believe that running an aquarium is actually pretty cheap, the initial outlay not withstanding. Filters, pumps and air pumps are generally low wattage and should cost so little that, frankly, you could pay for them every month with the change in your pocket. Wattage for lighting is usually a good deal higher, but they don't run constantly like a filter and unless you're running a planted tank, in alot of cases they could be on for less time. As JustinK pointed out, heaters are the only ones that are hard to pin down. How long they're on will depend on not only how hot your setup runs, but also how warm/cold the general environment you have them is. I have three of my four tanks running either without heaters or heaters set so low that they rarely need to come on. And I have two small kids in the house most of the time, so it's usually pretty warm. To be honest, keeping your family warm through the winter is far more costly than the fish. Cookers, ovens, dryers, power showers, emersion heaters etc. are going to cost you far more. Heating stuff isn't cheap, so I'd imagine keeping tanks at what is really just a few degrees above room temperature doesn't add to much to the bill.

The way I was told to work out the cost is this....

Look at the wattage of the device and divide by 1000 to get the kilowattage.
Look at your bill to find out how much you're charged per kilowatt hour.
Multiply that by your kilowattage to get how many cents an hour or costs you.
Divide by 100 to convert that to €.
Now multiply by however many hours it runs to see how much it costs a day, then by 365 for the whole year.

Now, consider yourself fully armed in any dispute with the missus over how much your "hobby" is costing her!

Very good!

LemonJelly wrote:

I'll add my two cents here...

I've been led to believe that running an aquarium is actually pretty cheap, the initial outlay not withstanding. Filters, pumps and air pumps are generally low wattage and should cost so little that, frankly, you could pay for them every month with the change in your pocket. Wattage for lighting is usually a good deal higher, but they don't run constantly like a filter and unless you're running a planted tank, in alot of cases they could be on for less time. As JustinK pointed out, heaters are the only ones that are hard to pin down. How long they're on will depend on not only how hot your setup runs, but also how warm/cold the general environment you have them is. I have three of my four tanks running either without heaters or heaters set so low that they rarely need to come on. And I have two small kids in the house most of the time, so it's usually pretty warm. To be honest, keeping your family warm through the winter is far more costly than the fish. Cookers, ovens, dryers, power showers, emersion heaters etc. are going to cost you far more. Heating stuff isn't cheap, so I'd imagine keeping tanks at what is really just a few degrees above room temperature doesn't add to much to the bill.

The way I was told to work out the cost is this....

Look at the wattage of the device and divide by 1000 to get the kilowattage.
Look at your bill to find out how much you're charged per kilowatt hour.
Multiply that by your kilowattage to get how many cents an hour or costs you.
Divide by 100 to convert that to €.
Now multiply by however many hours it runs to see how much it costs a day, then by 365 for the whole year.

Now, consider yourself fully armed in any dispute with the missus over how much your "hobby" is costing her!

+1