Re: [Killietalk] question air pump electric usage

[morgrid at comcast_net (Robert Toland)]

I personally don't think most of the pumps use much electricty. I have a linear piston pump that runs about 25 tanks or so and I think it is 26 watts. This is 1/4 the energy used on a 100 watt bulb. I am not familiar with the actual pump you have but I am thinking it probably uses 10 watts or less (probably much less). $150 dollars a month increase for an airpump is excessive. I don't know what electricty costs where you live but $150 will pretty much cover my total electric bill for 2 months or more (heating is with gas). 
You should be able to get the specifications on any pump you have, if it is not listed on the pump or the box - contact the manufactuer. To figure out the cost of you pump to operate multiply the number of watts it uses by the number of hours in a month. In my case it would be 26 watts X 30 days X 24 hours = 18720 Watt/hours. Since electricty is charged for in Kilowatt hours divide the result by 1000. 18720/1000 = 18.72 Kilowatt/hours. Around here electricty is pretty cheap - I pay 5.5 cents a Killowatt/hour so it costs me 18.72 Kw/H x $0.05 = $1.03 a month to run the pump. Even if you pay 4 times as much as I do for electricty and had the same pump as me you would only be using about $4 worth a month.
I checked my bill for last month and my household used about 1037 KW/H of electricity so although the pump added to the cost it wasn't a major part of the bill. Large appliances use the most - especially dryers.
Of course with these things I think it always pays to buy a quality well engineered product - the savings in electricty can be significant when you consider the lifetime of the pump.
Good luck,
Robert 

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: ministerkelley at webtv_net (Gregory Kelley) 

> Hi all 
> I have what is the equivelent to a whisper 900 curently running in my 
> fish room taking care of nine small tanks. 
> Me and the wife are having a slightly heated discusion on electric usage 
> I say it uses less electric than let say a 100 watt light bulb a month 
> my mother in law aka landlord thinks it justified in raising are rent 
> 150 more a month because of electric usage. I have a linear pump I will 
> be hooking up in a couple weeks. 
> Thanks 
> Minister Greg 
> 
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