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Old 01-30-17, 08:56 AM   #791
pinballlooking
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I tried covering up the fish tank last two nights. This does help. First night the heater did not have to run until the morning. When the pump turned back on it ran for 5 hours. Last night the heater went on for an hour around 10-11 pm then it did not kick back on until the pump kicked back on. So far the 1K heater has been able to keep up. It take lots longer to get back up to temp but is not an issue. I am able to us solar to heat the water if this heater ever has an issue the closed loop heater can take over.
The lettuce is doing well.

This head was growing to close together so I was going to move it. I found out it is one heat of lettuce.





The outdoor temp. @12am it was 37F it down to 32F the greenhouse 57.5 F @12am then 6:45 to went down to 54.1F.

During this time 1K fish tank heater was on for one hour until 6:13 fish tank heater kicked back on. So pretty much only the barrels and insulation kept it warm.

I thought this was cool. I just picked a couple heads of lettuce here is a picture of the roots.
They look so much better than they did before this is about 2’ long.
I really love picking lettuce in January.



Taco salad for lunch. Taco salad for lunch. Two different kinds of lettuce and four different kinds of tomatoes.

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Last edited by pinballlooking; 01-30-17 at 09:35 PM..
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Old 02-03-17, 08:36 AM   #792
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It has been 12 days since the closed loop NG heater has been on. The 1K heater has been doing a great job even better than I thought it could. I am
very happy to use solar power to keep the fish water warm.

Shutting the pump off at night has helped to keep the heating load lower.

The new fish food is starting to help the lettuce is getting darker green. With the water temp constant the fish are eating better.


This morning it took 3 hours to heat the water back up after the pump turned back on.
Yesterday one hour
Colder nights one hour at 12am then 5-6 hours in the morning
We have not had a streak of cloudy cold weather yet.

I may install the second temp controller and set it a couple degrees colder than the 1K heater.
Then if it went bad or could not keep up the other heater would take over.

My second controller uses 12 V to run but the controller I am using now is 120V controller.
It uses a small transformer to take the 120 volts down to 12V. I might just solder a couple wires to the 12v output from that transformer and have it power both controllers.
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Last edited by pinballlooking; 02-03-17 at 09:41 AM..
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Old 02-08-17, 08:19 AM   #793
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It is time to start cleaning out my front grow bed. I took out about ¼ the tomatoes. After more than a year growing the roots are starting to clog the bed up.
We need to plant more of a variety of plants anyway.

Lettuce is still growing well.





I took some time and setup port forwarding for my greenhouse. Now I can web monitor the greenhouse from my phone anywhere.

1/23/17 I turned off my closed loop natural gas heater.
The 1k fish tank heater has done great and it should be able to finish out the winter.

I just received my power bill.
We still have 1,495 KWH banked and we get zeroed out March 1 so we are good to go.
I will be just using my 1K fish tank heater in the greenhouse all this month.
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Last edited by pinballlooking; 02-08-17 at 09:39 PM..
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Old 02-14-17, 08:51 AM   #794
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I think my lettuce was not getting enough sun. I was away for a few days before I left I had cleaned out some of my tomatoes. This let in so much more light. The lettuce just took off while I was gone.
I think the tomatoes were blocking to much light.







It is time to eat some of this.

5 days growth
The left picture is today the right picture was 5 days ago.
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Old 02-15-17, 07:45 AM   #795
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They don't call them "fast growing annuals" for nothing!
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Old 02-22-17, 09:24 AM   #796
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My electric 1K heater is still doing all the fish tank heating. At this point I think I will be able to just use this heater and use the closed loop heater as emergency backup.
I tested out the closed loop natural gas heater this year and use $15 in gas then I turned it off and have used solar power ever since.

March 1 is our yearly zero out date for our solar power. We are going into Feb with 1,495 KWH banked.
It is Feb 22 and we have only used 160KWH of that banked power so far.

If we keep using power like we have the last few couple years we will have enough solar power to run the 1K heater.

So we are back to solar greenhouse with emergency backup NG fish tank water heater.
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Old 02-22-17, 09:29 AM   #797
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It has been a remarkable warm winter. At least here.

However those are fantastic results.

Any plans on how to use up that excess. At least for next year?
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Old 02-22-17, 09:38 AM   #798
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Next year I will use the 1K heated more and that will use up more of the power. If it is colder winter we will use more of that power heating our house and fish tank heater.
I think if the winter was as cold as we were last year we would be closer to zeroing out this year.

There will be a point in the future where my kids will not need driven to school every day. That is why we charge our car twice a day that will really give some extra power. We have sometime before that happens.

A couple years ago we had a week of very cold weather and it was cloudy. I am not sure how that would work out with just the 1k heater. But with the NG closed loop heater I don’t need to ever worry about it.

We will get paid wholesale for the extra power that is zeroed out this started last year.
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Old 02-22-17, 11:08 AM   #799
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Nice. i didn't realize you got a rebate on the unused portion. not a lot I imagine but better than 0.
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Old 02-22-17, 11:43 AM   #800
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Last year I had 628 KWH banked at zero out date I got a check for 30.33 and meter credit $8.71. add those two together it was .06 not to bad.

This just started last year but my check should be bigger this year.

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