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Re: BIG tank heating cables -- efficiency vs tube heaters



 Ivo Busko noted that:

> There might be another factor that compounds with the one you
> described: 
> contact area. A tube heater has a few square inches of very hot glass
> in 
> contact with water. A cable heater provides a large mass of mildly 
> warm gravel in simultanous contact with a large mass of water. The
> water in
> contact with the tube heater may get very warm, but as you said, a
> good
> part of this heat is going to escape at the surface. Setting a
> powerhead 
> or filter output jet to blow right over a tube heater should increase
> 
> its effectiveness by a lot, I think.
> 
I think you are right.  The powerhead/filter output helps to increase
the disitribution of heat from the tube, getting it closer to what a
substrate cable achieves.  How close is close enough.  Hard to say
without objective measurements that can be applied to a specific
situation -- but when heating 1,000 gallons (which started this thread)
small efficiencies can add up to big savings, maybe even enough to pay
for the heating cables if you by ready made cables.

Ivo, you make your own cables do you not?  About what do you think it
would it cost you to make up a heater for a 1,000 gallon tank?

Scott H.

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