Certified Master Electrician here to help!

[Mrsalt]

hey mrsalt just wondering what color yall use for a bastard leg and what colors for high volt (in phase order)

Lol not heard of that leg?...

For us we have changed in the last ten years to harmonise with our European brothers.

L1 - used to be red, now brown.
L2 - used to be yellow, now black.
L3 - used to be blue, now grey.

Neutral used to be black, now blue.
Earth is green and yellow.

Nowadays I work on cabling from both generations and you have to be a bit switched on as your'll notice black could be neutral if its old or L2. You don't want that getting in a muddle, same goes for the blue.

 

[Newjack]

wow.. we haven't switched much. Ours is black, red, blue for low and brown, orange, yellow for high white is low neutral and grey is high neutral green or bare is always earth (ground) purple is bastard leg and to us thats the high leg for things like 277V. in some states high volt is now brown, purple, yellow and high leg is orange. there trying to do that for everywhere now.

 

[PSU4ME]

Mine never tripped, just set it up that way so it doesn't

 

[Oxylebius]

If it was tripping then its because it was overloaded or got wet or got really hot.

I didn't know this. My tank is on one and trips whenever I start the I-Pod player. Guess I should find another outlet to play music on.

 

[Mrsalt]

Also everything leaks a little just by induction if nothing else. So the more you plug into one GFI the more induced leakage, thus the trip is closer to the edge where it would trip, than if the items where individually protected.
Anything that contains a form of step down transformer will inherently produce a slight loss down to ground.

 

[DaveK]

my response to Davek and PSU4ME

If it was tripping then its because it was overloaded or got wet or got really hot. I still don't know if I would put it on a non GFI unless the tank is far enough away. I would put it on a dedicated GFI and see if that help. Motors are going to draw the most current. Its up to anyone how they wanna do it but like psu4me says.. You don't want it catching on fire. Then everything is gone not just a tank crash.

In short the simple answer is not to create one point of failure which has the potential to ruin everything. If you run the whole tank on one "GFI" then you have one point of failure. Think redundancy, and plan to run at least half a tank on one and the other on the other one. Newjack thinks like I do in this respect. I'd rather lose my tank than my own life or worse anybody in my family's. gfi is a form of live saving equipment which is a small price to pay I think. Also I don't know if its a requirement or not but here in the uk we recommend getting your homes electrically tested in what's known as a electrical condition report. Things like trips get tested with a calibrated meter and we can check to see if your current protection is faulty. I.e trips with far shorter milliamperes than required which is a common cause of false tripping. Also insulation resistance would be checked to see if there are any "leaks" within the cable network.
Go with two and halve your problem.

I should point out that the secone time I lost everything due to the GFI tripping, I had two lines dedicated to the tank, each on on a different leg of the circuit pannel and using GFI breakers. I found the breakers to be less likely to trip compared to a GFI outlet. Since I was away, I don't know what the exact cause was. It could be anything that would cause the GFI to think there was a problem.

So I didn't have a single point of failure, and they both false tripped.

As for something catching fire, a GFI breaker isn't going to trip as long as the current beiong drawn is below the breakers rateing and there is no leajage of current to ground.

Yea, I found that out the hard way too. Had a light fall in the tank. Since the ballasts were external, they didn't have any real problem, but the lighting fixture was really done in.

If I had a submersable pump, then I might plug that into a non-gfi outlet only when I was away. As matters stand thoguh, I'm not changing anything. There are plenty of other motors and such that run in the house when I'm away, and all those can do the same thing. Think refridgerator, heating system, attic exhause fan, and so on.

 

[Newjack]

ok. I understand what your saying. Also yes GFI receptacles do trip easier than a GFI breaker. However a GFI breaker can also trip with other issues that's unrelated to it. Just less common but for instance the power goes out, then back on within seconds, the GFI breaker could trip. Everything has its pros and cons. that's why there's options. If one was obviously better than the other in the same ways it would against code to use the outdated product.

GFIs work in a interesting way. GFI (ground fault interrupter ) trips when the it "senses" there is more current coming in than out. Electricity makes a circle. So what this does is when lets say your getting 10 amps in. Something happens that grounds it, water, you, vacuum sucks up the cord, it detects that its not being sent back around. So in order for a GFI to trip it has to have something grounding it or overloading it. so if this is the case then something is A, getting moisture into the outlet or B something is grounding.

There are other possibilities. 1 being faulty GFI or wiring. 2 most cases it can be interference. This is so common in motors. Motors surge constantly with less or more resistance. there is never a motor that can maintain the same speed with just a steady flow of power. It can be anything between biometric pressure changes to a thinker substance being pumped. Therefor a motor can suddenly pull more or less current. This will cause a GFI to trip. this is also why most refrigerators and microwaves have there own circuit and no GFI like the rest of the kitchen. also when 2 GFIs are next to each other and get interference from one thing plugged into it, the both can trip. Lastly cheaper GFIs or certain brand is more likely to trip than others. I have higher end GFIs in my house. I really wanted to see the difference one day so I put a microwave and a large dewalt hammer drill on the same GFI and started them both up at exact same time. It was 1 amp short of overloading. It didn't trip. Then I took an old extention cord (please don't do this no matter who you are.) strip the ends off and grounded them to certain wet/dry things including myself. The gfi tripped every time instantly. I did the same thing with the $2 cheaper GFI and it tripped with just a microwave running and it took it over a min. Grounded it to something and actually ended up melting it before it tripped. It didn't trip until the cord caught fire. It still tripped and didn't continue to burn but still. It was bad enough.

 

[reefle]

This is awesome! I will need some help sir. couple questions....

If my electricity is say an average of 12 cents per kw

how much do you think the average electric bill is to run a 180 gallon tank? or how much is your electric bill for your tank?

also....any suggestions on a backup power source to run a heater and 2 pumps for a max of 2 days?....UPS seems too expensive for a nice one, I can't run a generator indoors or outside where I am, and I'm not much of a DIY guy...

Thanks a lot!

 

[Newjack]

hey there! for calculating your power its a hell of an equation and without specific details it will be so inaccurate. I can give you the simple equation though. all the info you need are on your devices or on the specs they came with.

first you need to calculate how many watts your using. Do this by multiplying amps and volts so 120 times the total amps your devices add up too. assuming your in the US.

The you divide your watts by 1000 and then multiply cost and that will be how much it is per hour. then you can multiply by 24 for a day then 365 for year then divide by 12 for month. here is the actual equation.

AC single phase= P(kW) = PF × I(A) × V(V) / 1000

AC three phase= P(kW) = √3 × PF × I(A) × VL-L (V) / 1000

DC= P(kW) = I(A) × V(V) / 1000

as for back up that does not leave much choice lol. If you didn't need the heaters I would say get a back up DC water pump and use a car battery then when battery is dead you can charge in a car. But since you need heaters you will have to get an inverter. Now with this you can run an extension cord from the vehicle to inside the house and the car will keep it running as long as you have gas as long as you want. orrr you can take the car battery and connect the inverter inside the house however I don't like this cause it can be very hard to ground and cool. It can also kill the car battery without an alternator charging it as you use it.

 

[Newjack]

oh and for my tank I don't know at the moment but I can tell ya after work tomorrow.

 

[Newjack]

ok this is not exact because I rounded up a lot but my tank pulls 1.06 amps witch is .1272 kW/h so at your average .12cents per kW/h I am spending 1.5264 cents an hour, 36.6336 cents a day, $11.14 a month, and $133.71 a year just in power.

Note though mine is only an 8 gallon tank. Your will be a lot more. If you add up the wattage for every device plugged in from pump, lights, to controller.. everything. I can do a more accurate conversion for you.

 

[Newjack]

also to add witch im doing when I bring my tools home tomorrow for the weekend. you can take a multimeter with an amp clamp on it and just put the wire going from the receptacle to the power strip in the clamp and take an amp reading with everything on. That would be 100 times more accurate. If you have more than one power strip on separate plugs then just add them together. If you more than one plugged into another then just do the one actually plugged into the wall.

 

[Mrsalt]

Do they sell plug in smart meters in the states?

Since I got my tank which runs just shy of a kilowatt at peak, I have reduced so much energy elsewhere at home, ie just dropping half a kilowatt of my living room lighting alone. Along with other areas of the house I'm actually using less energy now than i was before I got the tank.

Everything I replace/upgrade within the tank has to meet a strict energy save over the previous item and be better at the job too. So part from the lighting I'm pretty good with the tank too now. Just gotta get led on the beast and I'm quids in.

 

[Newjack]

I never heard of a plug in smart meter. Ill have to look into that. Our administrations can be a little more strict on things like that then in the UK, so there may not be something we like about it or its just new to us idk yet.

 

[Newjack]

I just looked it up It seems we have a few high end ones but not many. Most are not plug in. The big one we got is for smart houses.

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/P3-KILL-A-WATT-POWER-USAGE-VOLTAGE-METER-MONITOR-NEW-/320677761026

The Kill A Watt will allow users to calculate electrical expenses by day, week, month, or year. It will count the consumption of the device by Killowatt-hour and display it on an easy to read LCD. You can also check the quality of your power by voltage, line frequency, and power factor. It has a .2% accuracy and also displays Volts, Amps, Watts, Hz, VA on its LCD.

fun to play with... all for around $25

 

[Newjack]

looks and sounds cool. great find! however I would rely more on my multi meter than one of these. for non electricians its a good thing to have.

 

[Mrsalt]

looks and sounds cool. great find! however I would rely more on my multi meter than one of these. for non electricians its a good thing to have.

It is a multimeter / ammeter combined with a clock. Works very simply and they do actually pull pretty accurate results. We work a lot with intelligent metering here now, with integration into building services bms systems to do intelligent lighting and climate control. Big thing for businesses to know where they can shave costs.

 

[reefle]

Thanks for the info!!!

I actually found an electrical calculator thing somewhere and it said I'd be pulling about $50-60 a month which sounds about right...I'll just have to find some cost cutting measures if I wanna be at like $30-40

 

[DaveK]

Thanks for the info!!!

I actually found an electrical calculator thing somewhere and it said I'd be pulling about $50-60 a month which sounds about right...I'll just have to find some cost cutting measures if I wanna be at like $30-40

It's usually hard to cut your demand that much. That works out to about a 30% reduction. Now think about what you can cut out or otherwise change.

Lighting - You might be able to reduce your photo period and still have the tank run well. This could help.

FIltration and pumps - Your not going to do much here unless you replace pumps with ones that consume less power. It may pay to shop around here. Sometimes you do find bargains.

Heater and skimmer - Can't do much abou them.

UV - you could run that on a timer and only run it about 6 hours a day.

As you can see there just aren't too many places you can cut on a reef system. Even so, you should be able to get consumption done somewhat.