Electric heater

mela

mela

AC Members
May 9, 2011
174
0
16
orange park fl
Real Name
Melvin Avery
Well since the sun won`t shine enough to do any heating figgered I`d try something else. Soo now I figgered that an electric heater would work. Went and got a waterheater element 4700Wats at 220vac. Then laid out the necessary plumbing and put it all together. So smart. Jurry rigged some wireing to the element, turned on the water pump. And feeling smugg energizzed the power expecting nice hot or atleast warm water flowing from the discharge. WRONG.


Ampmeter showed 15a power is 230vac. Set there looking dumb and confuzzed. Well undid everything and went inside?????????? WTD woh how bout if hooked up everything and applied power to the element with out water flow. Well I did just that amd did it get hot. Turned on pump and got a bubble of air (steam) and the water cooled to cold. OH boy if I rigged up 4 heaters with the same flow or throttled it some might make some good heat for the pond. Power co prolly like me too.

pond heater.jpg pond heater 1.jpg pond heater 2.jpg pond heater 3.jpg
 
eyeballing your pond at 4 feet tall by 24 feet in diameter, you have about 50 million cubic centimeters of water.

4700 W is about a 1,000 calories per second, so that heater is going to heat the pond at a rate of about 1,000/50,000,000 = 0.00002 degrees centigrade per second, or 0.1 degrees F per hour. it will probably lose that much to the air around it.

you're not going to feel a perceptible heating at the outlet if the pump is sized to turn the pond once an hour.

you need a MUCH bigger heater, like a big house water heater, to get enough heat into the pond to be useful. if you try that, make sure your livestock and especially the plants can deal with the little bit of copper that the heater is going to add to the water
 
Considering the species you've mentioned that you're putting in the pond, why bother heating it at all?
 
Yup kinda figgered. Tks for the math. It has been fun doing this tho. I have a couple of water to air heat pumps, may put toghter a big heater out of the two using auto a/
 
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