Water Temp Goes Up - Lights Go Out - How?

[Eve]

I want to make sure that my lights will go out if the water temp rises above let's say 83 degrees.  How would I (actually my husband who is the "electrtician" part of this hobby) do that?

[Tang-away]

lots of powerheads in the tank.  what happens is the fans come on when the lights come on and that causes evaporation if you are directing the fans at the top of the water, which lowers the tank temp.  The fans are on a timer and when the lights go out and the fans go off, then powerheads give off enough heat to slowly make your tank temp rise.  was that confusing  ooh .  Well this is one senario that can happen.  

 

Sam

[Eve]

No - I do understand that Sam :-)

 

I use a chiller but I've had the experience of a power spike after a 3-day outage.  The lights came on, the heater came on and naturally the chiller would not come on :-( I would like to have a hook-up that will detect the water temperature and turn off the lights.  It's better to come home to a dark tank than come home to an overheated tank with lots of dead stuff  sd

 

Bear in mind that I know nothing about electronics - but I'm just trying to problem solve a way that a thermostat detecting water temperature can be be somehow attached to my lights (or the terminal strip that they are plugged in to), so that when the tank gets to 83 degrees something will switch off the lights/terminal strip that they are on?  

 

Maybe I'm asking for too much?

[Eve]

I did a search and I'm going to check this out.  It's called a Thermal Shield described as "an invention to shut off your lights and heaters if your water becomes too hot ..."

 

I'll see where this leads!

[michaelg]

Any sort of temp controller should work if it can be set to shut off at a given temp.

 

Found the link for what you are referring

http://www.seabay.org/articles/HTH/building.htm

 

Any of our house electricians looking to make a few $ this would be a great project to offer us electrically challenged.  Or maybe we could make a building party out of it?

[Caribbean Jake]

It's basically a simple circuit interface.  The thermostat must have a relay (2 dry contacts) were we will hook the lights on too.  When the thermostat goes over the desired temp (let's say 83) the realy will break connection and the lights will go OFF, now be carefull and don't go out running and by any relay.  You need an isolation relay since the thermostat will provide you with low voltage AC/DC power and the lights work at 120 VAC.  I can put a diagram together so you or your hobby (electrician) can hook it up, but we need the thermostat first and I don't know of any from the top of my head.

Jacob

[Eve]

CJ,

 

Does this seem dosable or do you see problems with it?  They say that there are only about $40-50 in parts used with this design.  

 

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/domitron2/shield/shield.html

[krish]

It is very easy.

You very well need a dual stage temperature controller to turn on the heater

or the chiller.

 

All you need to do is, add a relay to the chiller side of the controller.

and power the lights via the relay.

 

If the chiller kicks in, the relay will turn off the lights. Its cheap. One can

find a 30Amp 110V contact relay for say 10 bucks or so.

 

Of course, the lights will be on timers, even thought they are powered thru

the relay.

 

There is one problem that i see. In case your chiller runs for less than 15 minutes,

the lights will come back on and for Metal hallide lights, that is not a good thing.

Between turn off and turn on, one needs to wait for atleast 15 minutes.

 

-krish

[chideloh]

I think Eve is talking about having a separate system to turn off the lights in case the chiller does not kick in. If the chiller is running I am sure the tank temp is fine.

[Guest tgallo]

good link mike.

[Guest tgallo]

I know eve, when am i coming over to hook up youre generator, lol. soon.  Eve, call custom aquatic and tell them what you have in mind, i think they sell a controller to sense water temp , and controll lighting.

[Eve]

David - you are right - I want something totally separate.  In theory if the chiller is working properly, I should not have a problem.  I want something that will turn the lights off if the temp rises and not have to worry about them coming back on until I get home, figure out what problem caused the temperature rise and then turn the lights back on myself.  I don't want to have the problem Krish described - temp goes up - lights go off - temp goes down - lights come back on.  I want them to go off and stay off until I figure out what's wrong.  

 

Hey Tony - you are off the hook for that :-)  I was able to find someone to do that plus we have a lot of other stuff that needs to be done and that would take up too much of your time.  

 

I'll check Custom Aquatics and see how much a ready-made system will cost.

 

Thanks all for the replies.

[Caribbean Jake]

Eve

That's about right.  You are looking at $50 estimated.

Jacob

[xeon]

The Hofer Reef Shield looks like a nice solution.  IMO, the hardest part would be the soldering.  That is a relative statement though, it does require some experience.  I may build one in the near future since I have all the parts on hand minus the relay and Ebo-Jager.  The high dollar item in the design is the heater, everything else is pretty cheap.  I would not need the GFCI since my two circuits to the tank already have this.  I would hope that everyone already has GFCI/s, if not... you should.  That is another safety device which may save you some trauma.

[Eve]

I e-mailed Custom Aquatics and they suggested their digital temperature controller (part #CH-ALTR115SNB) that costs $89.99. CA said "when set on the heater mode at 83 degrees for example, it would turn off the lights once the water temperature reached 82 degrees (with a 1 degree differential set)."  

 

I'll just see if my husband would rather build the Hofer Shield and save me about $40 or just tell me to go ahead and buy the controller.  He's the king of soldering :-)so that part is no problem (he works in electronics and he also fixes VCRs/TVs/Stereos - reading and working on circuit boards all of the time).

 

I didn't think to see if the cost of the heater is included in the parts estimate but it should be - otherwise building the Hofer may not save that much.

[xeon]

Eve,

By "high dollar" I meant the majority of the cost in the build.  If you build the non-GFCI version you have about 50% of the total cost in the heater.  If you have everything on hand except the relay and heater... it's about the only cost.  The non-GFCI model w/ heater should set you back about $35, the GFCI one will be the price difference between a regular outlet and a GFCI.