richms

Those inspection lights use a really inefficiant electronic ballast, built for cost, not performance. You will find that they are like the cheap energy saving bulbs - 30 watts in for 20 watts of fluro lighting. Better to get one big tube so there is just one ballast loss to worry about.

You should not need resource concent for a shed usually, just a building concent unless you are starting to exceed your coverage etc.

Safe, but virtually useless. Its only really good at sticking things with a bit of flex, solid things it just seems to peel off.

I find that once I have water in the hoses that I never need the priming thing again, its only when I take the hoses off to clean them that its ever usefull, and on my fluval 404 it doesnt pull the water thru fast enough to get rid of the air at the top so the syphon usually takes about 4-5 goes to get started. Wheras sucking on the hose works every time.

That sounds like the best way to do it. I have 3 in mine for that reason. Well I had 2 and then found it wasnt enough when the loungeroom was a chilly 15° during winter since we are saving power and not heating it since we hardly use it. Ideally I would like to run the power to them thru something so I can monitor the on/off of the heaters and the temperature and alarm on failure of anything heat related, but at the moment I need to sort out my rangied up 1 wire temperature probe since its leaked _again_

http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storef ... duct/M7026 - much cheaper at bunnings if you can. Also the energy savers like that put out a lot less usable light watt for watt then a long linear fluro since a lot of the light hits itself. Thats why the "20w=100w" concept is totally flawed with those things. If you go to the warehouse you can get 23 watt 6500k lights in the elite ones, they are $3.99, just read the packs because most are 2700k which is crusty orange.

They may crap out, Nothing is totally foolproof. It will depend on how overspecced the triac is. There should never be a surge thru it since the element wont blow like a lightbulb, but powerspikes on the input can lead to latchup as well, this is resolved simply by powercycling the device. Just like bimetalic devices, it comes down to quality and design for reliability, but it would be harder to stuff up. You also have the case where the probe gets damaged or goes crazy, a good industrial thermostat will hold its current duty cycle and sound an alarm, a cheaply made circuit will usually end up going full on or off. No idea what those ones will do since budget constraints mean I am stuck with cheap as hell glass ones in my tanks still.

I would call bollux to that statement of never failing on. This is since they use a triac for control, just like a light dimmer. And the most common failure mode for a triac is always on, Anyone that has run cheap GU10 downlights off a dimmer will know this since the bulbs will often take the dimmer with it, and they then just go full brightness.

Heatpumps cool as well so that takes care of the summer issues. Don't be cheap and use extension cords!! Run 25mm conduit with sweep bends (the big ones) and pull a piece of 6mm twin and earth thru it, to reach from the breaker panel in the house to the shed. Ideally it should be 600mm deep, but noone seems to bother. You could use 4mm but it needs a lower breaker at the house (27 vs 32 if I recall correctly) Take it to a location in the shed you will have a breaker panel there, then from there take 2.5mm cable for powerpoints, you will want several circuits so do that, You can also take it to a switch by the door then the outlets so you can switch the lights manually if you choose to, or use plug in timers in the shed. Best talk to your sparky before doing this, but you can usually get the cables cheaper then they will sell them to you for if you go to an electrical wholesaler and have a business card and can get a good discount (dont settle for less then 60%) The expensive bit is RCD protecting it, you can be cheap and put everything on a single RCD, or buy RCD breakers for each circuit which will cost more but will mean all doesnt trip when one light gets a bit of water on it. You can get din enslosures and breakers from several people on trademe for cheaper then your sparky will sell them to you for, but the discounts on those are not as great at the wholesalers since there isnt the cartel of makers holding prices up like there is for cables in NZ. Once again, talk to a sparky before buying anything. Also pull another conduit (easist is a few 100 mm above the power one) and put some cat5e or cat6 in it for networking for temperature monitoring or a computer or whatever, and possibly some coax if you want to put a camera out there to observe the fish from the house. - this is totally optional but neat to show people.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story ... D=10402976 interesting that they would use something so high for office lighting, and they picture t5's so this could spell something good... 5 ukp tubes

Arlec battern holders $3 each (I think) and cheap energy savers are 5 for $9.99. Add some 2 core flex and a plug (or butcher an extension cord to save a few $$

I took the capacitors out of all my fittings here because they eat X10 signals. I dont get any ghosting on turnoff. Also you need to remove them if you want to dim fluros since dimmers can only support a tiny amount of inductive load

One idea I was thinking of is that since we will be going solar sometime soon for hot water was to make a heat exchanger for hot tap water and aquarium water which was thermostatically operated. With the tank only using about $40-50 a month (worst case in winter) in power for heating the payback time would make that largly unviable since in winter the solar hotwater cant keep up and you use the electric boost element anyway.

Got the welding sorted, and the cutting, just need to get the pipe for making a stand now. Anyone know of a cheap source of 25mm steel box on the shore? Bunnings have pathetic small pieces at a typically gouging price, but I need bits that will fit in a car.

Long shiney metal that clips onto the tube, made a big difference for me and my fitting already had some metal on the top of it.

Your moneys better spend on good reflectors if you dont have any at the moment.

Watch out for the T5's, there are some cheaper ones that are normally used for cabinat lights which are lower output. I got some 4 foots and they are only 28 watts, not 54

Also the additional plumbing will make cleaning the filter a lot more involved then simply lifting it out and popping the instake open, will be held in place by the piping moreso

They are called gangnails

How do you tell them apart? I have just dumped all my heaters into the tank.... Gulp... I would have expected problems by now if they werent submirsable however, but would like to know as I will be looking for more soon

Thankfully we dont have the problem of 25 watt 4 footers like they do in the states, so any of the cheap fittings will be fine. To get the cable and plug, buy a cheap extension cord and lop the socket off, its cheaper then buying the plug on its own thanks to the crazyness of pricing. Put a cable gland on the fitting to stop the cable being yanked on and off you go

Not really unless you have an HDV camera, since the pics will be horrid low resolution, even worse if its not a progressive camera since you can only use one of the fields

May as well. I wasnt using aquarium metal halides, they were my lights in the garage, and whenever the arc welder stuck it would cause enough of a sag for the lights to go out frequently.

I dont know. Mine made some awefull clicking and buzzing when it tried. I put that down to it having control gear that was developed at about the time the arc was floated.

Hot restrike is rare on metal halides. Most lights I have seen have still had the old magnetic ballasts, no way those will restike ever. As for the RCD, I got an old one, its called a "lifeguard" - metal box with a twin power outlet in it. That one doesnt shut off when the input power drops. I have since then changed to using them in the breaker panel. I tried a yellow HPM one and it dropped out everytime the input power disconnected (its a saftey thing for powertools)