A Bored Electrician to Answer Your Questions

Total,

In response to your last post:

I wouldnt be too concerned honestly, you'd be surprised how efficient AC power is. I have had issues with my LED light firing up all the LEDs at 1 time (which is DC) until I added a current controlled "soft start" to the controllers.

Fluoros have a relatively soft start in the way they use power.

seen your led grow thread slix, quite impressive

when you asked the two questions

1. yes i might when the weather is cooler drop the intake/exhaust/fan to just come on twice an hour lets say

2. i dont think so but i could check if i was just to use 1 timer

Hey there. I gotta question. I'm running 2 - 1000w and 1 - 400w HID's and I run on 120 now. About how much could I save a month by switching to 240 ? I'm guessing the lights are costing me $250 a month . Or a percentage of the diff. between 240 and 120 would be fine...thanks.

i am thinking of plans for a future grow room... I want to build a shed and use that as a grow room. I have an idea for the layout. The "blooming room" will be approx 8ftX7ft. i plan on growing a few strains and bassically using a SCROG technique. i plan on having approx 6 plants on each side in a scrog about 2ft wide by 6ft long... and the same on the other side with a 3ft wide walk way in between... i will try to have the right hand side half way through bloom and the left hand side just starting bloom, that way i can harvest about once every month. i will have a second room for vegging and cloning. i want to know if it would be ok and see good results with 2 250watt ceramic metal halide bulbs on each side of my room or if i am going to need 2 400 watt bulbs on each side and how much more will it cost to run 4 400 watt bulbs over 4 250 watt bulbs?

What I have
I have a finished garage heated by a 12 foot long strip heater.
The house is rated for 200 amps.
The main box is in the same room as the heater.
The only load on the circuit is the heater.
The breakers are two 15 amp switches bridged by a piece of metal. If one moves, so does the other.

What I want to do
Disconnect the heater permanently
Use those two slots in the panel for two separate 15 amp breakers
and wire them to an external breaker on the wall along side the
main panel.

Is this enough information work with to explain a solution?

rowlman and wil,

You are both asking the same questions, the short answer is. you are charged based on kW hours used. so... a simple mathematical equation is needed.

Assuming a fixed tariff of 0.13c per kW hour.

lighting: 4 x 400w = 1600w
timer: 16 hours on

first convert the wattage to kw i.e: 1600/1000 = 1.6kW

next divide that figure by hours i.e: 16 / 1.6 = 10kWH

now take our current power consumption and multiply that by 0.13 (Or whatever yout tariff price is per kWH) = $1.30 per day.

Then take the total cost per day and multiply by the number of days into the grow you are. assuming 95 days i.e $1.30 x 95 = $123.5

PLEASE NOTE: This seems low based on the tariff price I have used, you will find out price wont be that low. If you are on a split atariff at certain times i.e for hot water then that must be factored in aswell. the easiest way is to seperate the numbers in blocks based on tariff and then add the totals together at the end.

-
Oh and obviously do the same calculation for your smaller setup and then minus the bigger result from the smaller one and there is your answer.

- Slix

rowlman said:

Hey there. I gotta question. I'm running 2 - 1000w and 1 - 400w HID's and I run on 120 now. About how much could I save a month by switching to 240 ? I'm guessing the lights are costing me $250 a month . Or a percentage of the diff. between 240 and 120 would be fine...thanks.

Click to expand...

you would be lucky if you saved 10$ a bill.
the benefit of 240 is increased lights per circuit, due to decreased amperage...
the power company bills you for wattage, not amperage, and a watt @ 120v cost the same as a watt of 240v.
a 240v ballast is not that much more efficient than a 120v, so you dont notice any significant savings untill your up in the 4-5kw range.

420choochoo said:

What I have
I have a finished garage heated by a 12 foot long strip heater.
The house is rated for 200 amps.
The main box is in the same room as the heater.
The only load on the circuit is the heater.
The breakers are two 15 amp switches bridged by a piece of metal. If one moves, so does the other.

What I want to do
Disconnect the heater permanently
Use those two slots in the panel for two separate 15 amp breakers
and wire them to an external breaker on the wall along side the
main panel.

Is this enough information work with to explain a solution?

Click to expand...

it wont work, unless the cable the two hot wires has 4-wires total... 2 hots(black and red), one neutral(white), and a ground (green or bare copper)

your trying to make 2 120v circuits out of an existing 240v circuit,. a typical 240v circuit has 3 wires, 2 hots and a ground. a typical 120v circuit also has 3 wires, but there different, its 1 hot, 1 neutral and 1 ground. 2 120v circuits on opposite phases (breakers on top of each other) can share a neutral, so if the cable in question has 4 wires, then yes, you can do this. if it only has 3 wires ( 1 blk, 1 white, and one ground) then it wont work.

wil2279 said:

i am thinking of plans for a future grow room... I want to build a shed and use that as a grow room. I have an idea for the layout. The "blooming room" will be approx 8ftX7ft. i plan on growing a few strains and bassically using a SCROG technique. i plan on having approx 6 plants on each side in a scrog about 2ft wide by 6ft long... and the same on the other side with a 3ft wide walk way in between... i will try to have the right hand side half way through bloom and the left hand side just starting bloom, that way i can harvest about once every month. i will have a second room for vegging and cloning. i want to know if it would be ok and see good results with 2 250watt ceramic metal halide bulbs on each side of my room or if i am going to need 2 400 watt bulbs on each side and how much more will it cost to run 4 400 watt bulbs over 4 250 watt bulbs?

Click to expand...

it will cost on average about 40$ more a month to run the 4 400 over the 4 250w.
you would need 2 400w for a 6 x 12, 2 250w wont cut it for that much aera, the plants will stretch like a mofo.

This is exactly what I needed to know. I suspect the circuit will prove to be 240v. This information has helped me alot.

IAm5toned said:

you would be lucky if you saved 10$ a bill.
the benefit of 240 is increased lights per circuit, due to decreased amperage...
the power company bills you for wattage, not amperage, and a watt @ 120v cost the same as a watt of 240v.
a 240v ballast is not that much more efficient than a 120v, so you dont notice any significant savings untill your up in the 4-5kw range.

Click to expand...

Thanks I was going to add 240 outlet, but I'll wait awhile...no hurry for $10..lol. Very cool avatar...peace

anyone know about the emt757 digital timer?

It is a brand new Everflourish emt 757 timer clock will not work out of the box. There is no display even when plugged in. I think at the end of the very vague instructions it says that the device will be fully charged after 2 hours. It doesn't say that it has to be charged in the first place before programming. I plugged it in over night to be sure. There's still no display. I wonder whether you know of something that I am missing not understanding with thanks

also ive checked google and all i can find is the same manual or pay for help sites.

is there a tab you have to pull, to activate the batteries?

i also read the manual, and couldnt find anything usefull.... it might be bad out of the box.
this is also a UK product.... you are in the UK, correct?
if you try to use this timer on north american power it wont work.......

So how do electricity providers catch you stealing power? I've heard it's something like they first discover a discrepancy between power used and power invoiced, they can then narrow the missing power down to a particular block/grid, and then to blocks within that grid and so on and so forth until they get to a particular street or what have you, then they run 'clamp tests' or power leakage tests or somesuch on each house in the street individually. I think the clamp test is where they literally clamp meters onto the electrical mains that feed your house, measure how much juice your house is drawing, then compare it to your meterbox and if there is a difference, they got you.
This is what I was told, and it sounded very convincing, but I thought I'd ask an actual electrician what they think.

Miss MeanWeed said:

So how do electricity providers catch you stealing power? I've heard it's something like they first discover a discrepancy between power used and power invoiced, they can then narrow the missing power down to a particular block/grid, and then to blocks within that grid and so on and so forth until they get to a particular street or what have you, then they run 'clamp tests' or power leakage tests or somesuch on each house in the street individually. I think the clamp test is where they literally clamp meters onto the electrical mains that feed your house, measure how much juice your house is drawing, then compare it to your meterbox and if there is a difference, they got you.
This is what I was told, and it sounded very convincing, but I thought I'd ask an actual electrician what they think.

Click to expand...

whoever tiold you, knows there stuff. thats exactly how its done.
large utilities even have dedicated crews called 'sweep and balance teams' that do nothing but verify usage vs. accounting.

scata system smart monitoring will also make running hot taps very risky indeed, as more and more util co's are switching over to scata, illegal taps will become rare if not a thing of the past. in theory, using the scata system, it is possible to track a watt from its generation point, to its end user, which is pretty impressive, considering the power your using might very well have been generated in canada, or perhaps in colorado, or maybe new jersey, even tho, for examples sake, you live in northern miss. your power comes from far away, more often than not. its just the way the grid works... demand factor, has alot to do with it. utility companies are modernizing and going global, and talking to each other(at the system level, the computer systems talk to each other, lol), so tapping wont last very much longer.
in some remote areas, you might be able to pull it off, but for me, paying my bill for 10 years on time is far cheaper than hiring a lawyer for 18 months.

IAm5toned said:

is there a tab you have to pull, to activate the batteries?

i also read the manual, and couldnt find anything usefull.... it might be bad out of the box.
this is also a UK product.... you are in the UK, correct?
if you try to use this timer on north american power it wont work.......

Click to expand...

i couldnt find anything i needed to do to it, but i remembered that when i was looking at them in the shop some of them had their LEDs on and others off - i picked up an off one because i thought it hadnt been tampered with

so i was in the same area today with that shop again and i went and asked for a replacement, they were happy to sort it out

it was just a shame earlier in the day i had tried to replace a store branded fan in a different shop and i was told i needed a receipt!?

anyway i just bought a much better fan in the shop that gave me the replacement for the timer

and miss meanweed, i would say you are better off not stealing power

its just not worth the hassle.

decades ago, it was the thing to do, becase running a few kw's was unheard of for a residential service, so commercial indoor growers didnt have much of a choice, they would stick out like a sore thumb pulling 15kw an hour on a street where the other houses are only pulling 7-900w per hour. the meter reader would have to be an idiot to not notice something fishy.
nowadays, usage has increased significantly across the residential sector, so its pretty easy to get lost in the shuffle if your pulling a large load.
also, generation costs have increased expotentially, and as the power grid ages and maintenance cost rise along with cost of living based salaries, utilities have massive overhead costs, so they dont have the time or patience to be tracking down large anomolies like they did in the past, an anomoly being a meter that is spinning faster than it should be (because your running all those lights) what they care about nowadays, is that they get paid for what power they transmit..... so if there not getting paid for power, bet your sweet ass there going to come looking for whose ripping them off, and prosecute with vengeance.

So I saw the bored electrician thing and I figured I'd fire a ? Off to ya. I have 3 pc fans that are 12v as exaughst in a stealth cab I made. They are spliced into regular 12V adaptors and run as soon as they are plugged in. My question, is is it possible to run the 3 seperate fans off of one power source instead of 3? Any help would be appreciated!

of course it is, as long as the one power source is big enough for the fans.

here's how you find out-

on the fan, somewhere, on the fan, there will be a stamp, label, or embossed lettering that says the voltage, and the power consumption. looks like this-

12vdc 12w or 12vdc 500ma

what you need is the wattage, or milliamps of the fans.

add them all up (the wattage, or mA) , then multiply by 120%....

example-
3 fans, 500mA (6w)
500ma
x 3
1500ma
x 120%
1800mA

or-
6w
x 3
18w
x 120%
21.6 w

or-
.18 amps
x 3
.54
x 120%
.648 amps
your power supply, needs to be big enough for 1800mA, or, .648 amps @ 12vdc, or 21.6w @ 12vdc


just change the mA, or wattage, or amps, to match the power requirements of the fans you have.

daniels... if my apprentices were as sharp as you, my life would be alot easier bro