Electric costs

twentyeight.threefive said:

Laziness is like a disease.

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I have heart problems and my last grow really took it out on me, I was looking after 11 sativa plants in a 4x4 space and they were all massive, I had to take them out everyday just to feed them until run off, it took me over an hour every day just to feed them. It's not that I'm lazy, I just want to make things more simple and less time consuming, in my new grow I only have 6 plants this time so it should be a lot easier to deal with. And from what I understand, with LED lights you can get more yield with less plants

harrychilds said:

I switched it out for a 500 watt heater and now it's only using 5 dollars a day in electric. Compared to 10 - 15 dollars a day. I think they have heating elements inside them, similar to a kettle, so even if the 1,500watt heater is only heating the room up slightly, it's still pulling over 1kw from the mains, similar to a kettle.

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Interesting analysis
You must have the exact same weather every day

harrychilds said:

I have heart problems and my last grow really took it out on me, I was looking after 11 sativa plants in a 4x4 space and they were all massive, I had to take them out everyday just to feed them until run off, it took me over an hour every day just to feed them. It's not that I'm lazy, I just want to make things more simple and less time consuming, in my new grow I only have 6 plants this time so it should be a lot easier to deal with. And from what I understand, with LED lights you can get more yield with less plants

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Sorry I take my health for granted. I just see healthy lazy people all the time and assumed, sorry. LED lights should run much cheaper than HID. With rising energy costs and the need to run a heater 24/7 it's eating up your money. What temperature are the plants at without the heater? Obviously warmer is better but you don't look like you have a lot of options. Either switch back to the HID light or try running the LED without extra heat. GL

Herb & Suds said:

Interesting analysis
You must have the exact same weather every day

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Right now we are getting really sunny weather here in the UK. It's about 20c every day, which is pretty hot for spring time

twentyeight.threefive said:

Sorry I take my health for granted. I just see healthy lazy people all the time and assumed, sorry. LED lights should run much cheaper than HID. With rising energy costs and the need to run a heater 24/7 it's eating up your money. What temperature are the plants at without the heater? Obviously warmer is better but you don't look like you have a lot of options. Either switch back to the HID light or try running the LED without extra heat. GL

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without the heater it's sitting around 20c/68f and with the heater it's around 24c/75f

New weed grower said:

Electric heaters are extremely hard on Electricity

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I have electric heat and my bill was $500 last month and $400 this month. My house is small.

*My heating cost. Not including my grow.

lusidghost said:

I have electric heat and my bill was $500 last month and $400 this month. My house is small.

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I have a gas fire left running approx 18/20 hours a day (not for growing), my weekly spend on gas is max 30e a week and that includes my cooker. I have used electric heaters in the past and with a prepay electric meter you can literally see it fly up. With everything now, gas is going up but will still be cheaper than electric heaters.

My first indoor grow, been running a 600w de hid with a 6inch exhaust fan and a small oscillating fan running constantly. My electric bill went up about 120 bucks per month from previous average, a bit more than I thought it would. This next bill should be the first full month of 12/12 so we'll see if it goes down any noticeable amount. Rethinking running indoors year round and will likely take more advantage of outdoor and then do one indoor run a year during the winter.

@harrychilds how are you getting on with this now?

lusidghost said:

I have electric heat and my bill was $500 last month and $400 this month. My house is small.

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You're making me feel good. We have a 2300 square foot house and our bills without the tent tend to be ~250$ per month for gas/electric in the winter. With growing they're 300-360$ depending on how cold it's been (down into the sub-zero F range around here). I've been chipping in an extra 100$ from my personal account along with the rest of the bill that comes out of our joint account. I only need to add additional heat for the tent during lights out though...it was dropping into the mid-low 60's and now it stays 76-80 during lights out. And that's a do-able 6 hours a day.

harrychilds said:

United kingdom dude, it's a pay as you go tariff

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Mate I'm in the uk have a 600w hps running in the shed and it doesn't cost me no where near that no heater either even though I've got two in the shed for the birds if needed through winter my plants are still smallish clones but that's because they were started on 250wcfl and there not bad for where they are at the minute with the hps plus the hps puts out a hell of a lot of heat so no need for the heater I run through the night so lights off at 8am back on at 2pm

Growingitalone said:

Mate I'm in the uk have a 600w hps running in the shed and it doesn't cost me no where near that no heater either even though I've got two in the shed for the birds if needed through winter my plants are still smallish clones but that's because they were started on 250wcfl and there not bad for where they are at the minute with the hps plus the hps puts out a hell of a lot of heat so no need for the heater I run through the night so lights off at 8am back on at 2pm

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Maybe someone is stealing his power for an illegal grow.

...seems to be a regular thing in the UK.

LeastExpectedGrower said:

Maybe someone is stealing his power for an illegal grow.

...seems to be a regular thing in the UK.

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Power stealing in the uk is mainly people rigging a meter that is for that individual property or residence from what I've read not rigging someone else's meter how would they access it lot of uk meters are in the property but some are outside but if they did there would be an extra wire from his meter to the property which is stealing it

ChongMaBong said:

@harrychilds how are you getting on with this now?

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Not good

Growingitalone said:

Power stealing in the uk is mainly people rigging a meter that is for that individual property or residence from what I've read not rigging someone else's meter how would they access it lot of uk meters are in the property but some are outside but if they did there would be an extra wire from his meter to the property which is stealing it

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There's been a handful of recent news stories from the UK about grows that had illegally tapped others' power. Here's an article about one from today:


or this:

LeastExpectedGrower said:

There's been a handful of recent news stories from the UK about grows that had illegally tapped others' power. Here's an article about one from today:

Inside the huge cannabis farm that people could smell from the street

More than 550 plants believed to have a street value of over £416,000 were discovered

www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

or this:

£1.6m cannabis plants seized in Yorkshire town following reports of persistent power cuts

More than £1.6m worth of cannabis plants have been seized by police in Eastwood, Rotherham, following reports of persistent power cuts linked to cannabis cultivation in the area.

www.yorkshirepost.co.uk

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Not saying it doesn't happen I'm saying in a residential property its a very difficult thing to do as they have to either do it inside your property or if the meters are in a shared building or they needed to access it outside of the property there would be power cabling to the person/s place of the grow the second post doesn't mention how they accessed the electrical mains so it would of more than likely of been in house just lots of them in one area

Suggestions:

Put a small desk heater with a thermostat inside the tent.
Keep a small heater outside the tent right at the intake vent.
Get a heat mat if they're still seedlings and shut off the heater for a week or two. Then you can see how the power bill goes.

drsaltzman said:

Suggestions:

Put a small desk heater with a thermostat inside the tent.
Keep a small heater outside the tent right at the intake vent.
Get a heat mat if they're still seedlings and shut off the heater for a week or two. Then you can see how the power bill goes.

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Yep. Later today I'll have one of those flat panel 'radiant' heating units advertised for 'under-desk' in my tent controlled by an Inkbird ITC-308-WIFI. It'll be a smaller one, 424w IIRC.

In the meantime I have one of the smaller Vornado heaters outside the tent pointed at my (active) intake duct that's triggered by the Inkbird inside the tent. The external method net me temps closer to mid-to-upper 70's during lights out; up from 61-67 or so.

Don't know how much warming the flat panel will provide, but given it's a 32"x60"x80" tent, I'm hoping I can at least maintain dark temps in the 70's with it. I have the Inkbird set to trigger at 81 right now so that at lights out the plummet isn't too severe for the small exterior heater to catch up with.

harrychilds said:

Not good

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your biggest problem is you haven’t taken on anyones advice.

from reading your thread from page 8 I’ve counted at least 10 times where you’ve been told what to do.

stop buying more crap.

The answer is simple.

Number 1 you should have slowed your fan down. This could have been achieved by using a basic 15minute segmental timer if you had no way of controlling your fan.

number 2 you could have tried exhausting into the lung room and allowing the recirculating air to keep getting warmer.

electric heaters EAT ££’s.

My boiler broke down before Xmas. I had to run electric space heaters to keep my home warm almost 24/7 for around 10 days. It was costing me around £30 a day for electricity based on my KWH usage/cost.

Now you’ve got the shit storm of 54% energy price rises to contend with while you still haven’t reduced your electricity usage.


Take the advice that almost every single person has given you ffs please!!!!!