Who's shutting down the Tank for Earth Hour Saturday
 

Who's shutting down the Tank for Earth Hour Saturday

Not me!

I was thinking of doing my 3-day lights off ritual during that time...

I would do it if the city was more behind it but I'm turning off my stuff including my aquarium if the city won't turn off the street lights. I just don't see the point of a few random houses shutting off the lights. It would be cool if the whole city just shut down for an hour but I suppose that would cause more problems than anything.

I honestly can't see the point in events like these. So a bunch of peiple save some energy for ONE HOUR and pat themselves on the back. Well woopdeedoo. Instead I encourage people to just be mindful on a daily basis. If you don't need the car, go for a walk or bike. Carpool. Turn off the lights behind you. Etc etc. It really doesn't take huge changes in your daily life to a bit more green.

so will I be doing anything special for earth day like shutting down the tank? No. But i'll take the bus to work, shut off lights behind me and do all the little things I normally do.

i once read a study that had said it takes more power to turn on light then it does to keep it lite. Im interested to see how much is actually saved during earth hour and how much is wasted to turn all the lights on. But of course those numbers wont be shown::neutral:

If all you are going to do is shut off your lights and or your tank for an hour once a year then you are kidding your self into believing that you are on board with the concept.

Oh ya you probably believe that buying carbon credits to offset your SUV are also helping.

Come on folks it is away more acceptable to just change your habits.
Turning off lights when you leave the room.
Put a timer on your bathroom fan to turn it off 15 minutes after you leave the room. Turn your heat down a degree and wear a sweater as a way of life. Walk to the corner store or walk your kids to school. Take a conscious look for those electronic vampires we have in our homes today and shut them off. I read that 10% of your electrical consumption is through electronic vampires.

This is what Earth Day should be. An annual check up as to how you are contributing to the success of reducing your carbon foot print, on reducing your waste of energy and your contribution to a more sustainable future.

Tom R

+1

this is completely untrue, an incandescent light takes no more energy to turn on than is does to run, an inductive light (metal halide or flourescent) takes a little bit of a peak in energy to start but this only comes into play in cycles of a minute or less. The energy saved in having a light off for 10 or more minutes is way more substantial than the energy to restart it.

and here is an article to support this: http://www.lightingdesignlab.com/art...luorescent.htm

I might turn my lights off early that night but other than my fish tank I think I'm pretty energy conscious. I'll probably sit around in the dark on saturday night just cuz its fun. However convincing my husband to turn the tv off for an hour could be monumental :razz:

I'm better than I used to be but my wife is way more energy conscious than me. All her gadgets are battery-operated. :mrgreen:

My lights are off today and likely won't come back on until sometime tomorrow. I need to replace some endcaps because cleaning them did not fix the problem.

thats quite interesting! thanks for straightening the fact for me, learning something everyday haha

Exactly. The very fact that we are discussing it now is the whole point of it: awareness and discourse.

And for the whole light bulb thing, here's more entertaining proof that it does NOT use more energy to turn a bulb back on than leaving it running:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdu4wYu48uw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgM0N7GD5Ic

I don't think so.

I am doing my part for earth day, by keeping my SPS alive... One day they will come to us for help to re-populate the oceans.

Ha Christy

Are you feeding him cold beans as well.

You talkin just lights or everything. For me no. I do my part by turning my lights off for a day once a week. I think the corals appreciate a cloudy day once in a while.

Earth hour is good if it promotes awareness. Can't argue there.

There are people though who think that's all there is to it is shutting the lights off for an hour "helps." And no, it doesn't. What helps is finding a way to change habits so that the energy footprint can be reduced permanently.

So.. um .. no, I can't shut my tanks off for an hour. That's a life support issue.. but I'm always thinking about ways I can achieve the same results using less energy consumption, and when opportunities present themselves, I make the appropriate changes. I hope this counts for something.

I gotta feed him too?? Sheesh!

traditionaly I turn on every light, TV, computer, and oven in the house during this. I think this year I will go out and weld for an hour also. 50amps of 220 for an hour should cancle out a whole town of lights :mrgreen:

concidering that lights for one hour amounts to squat this is a joke of a campain.

A city cannot leagaly turn out the streat lights as was mentiond, just thing what would happen if some one got hit by a car or something in a normaly lighted intersection.

Steve

I agree. We all need to look beyond price when we buy things.

For example something we all use in our hobby is a return pump. A return pump runs 24/7/365 right then consider these products for the job.

An Amp Master 3000 from Dolphin Pumps moves 3600 GPH while drawing 96 watts of electricity.

While the ever popular Reeflo Dart movers 3600 GPH while drawing 160 watts of electricity.

We should always include energy usage as a major criteria when buying an automobile, a refrigerator, a Big Screen TV or anything else we buy.

I think looking beyond price is a load of *&^*& :mrgreen:

yes it is a valid statment given the two objects are equal in every other way, but unless there is something very compelling besides energy use I will pick the cheeper object every time.

the example you gave below the reeflo is the one I would pic despite the increased rating, as it actualy uses less than it states, but that asside the amp master is loud, prone to seal leakage and generaly a lower quality pump.

as for TV's well there is a whole different game. whats the resolution and the quality at that resolution.. hows the color quality, contrast, ect.. I would pick a TV that uses 10X the power if it was betting in the other aspects. now if they were the same quality and one used less energy.. I would pick the cheeper one. now if price was also the same I would pick the one that uses less power.

Steve

we should start a save the sheeps wool for an hour day and walk around nekkid in respect for all those sheep who go nekkid for us to have those warm sweaters on to reduce the heat to be energy efficient

Bingo. Couldn't have said it with any more truth...

*CAUTION: RANT FOLLOWS* I personally have a huge problem with people considering aluminum cans to be 'disposable'. I believe it was Buckminster Fuller who thought that with all the materials we had pulled out of the earth by the '70s, we should be entirely self sufficient as far as needing materials, since almost everything is recyclable (and aluminum pretty much tops the list of easily recyclable materials). And yet, here we are. I suppose everything is disposable, really... including our own planet.

I wonder when the cockroaches will grow intelligence. Then we're really done for. :wink: *END RANT*

Anyhow, as far as shutting the lights off I'll still be at work at that time and my electricity is relatively low impact hydroelectric power. I actually moved a step in the wrong direction by switching to CFLs, since they contain toxic mercury where the incandescents I had before didn't. Saved some electricity though, so more can go to the US where they depend on oil generating stations... so maybe I'm actually status quo after all. Every little bit helps.

PS: OH YEAH, tank not just lights... yup, no way. My tank uses a total maximum (with heater and lights on) of 210W. I've seen incandescent light bulbs larger than that.

+1 and I think I'll kick the local enviro nazi in the nads while I'm at it.

Keep sipping the coolaid.

Grumble, grumble -- I always hear this a lot. Part of what I do for a living is calculating the "overall" cost of electronics and we do buy a lot (7000+ computers running at a time, tv's, projectors) and the cost of power is HUGE in the long run and especially over many items.

Example -- a $20 CRT computer monitor is MORE expensive than a $200 LCD after 3 years of 9-5 work. CRT's use 30 watts in standby and 60 while on. Automating our computers to turn off and back on again in the morning amount to about $20 per computer per year.

And it is really, really important on TV's -- Large Plasma's can be upwards of 600 watts to run and the same size LCD 200 watts. Add in A/C cost to the heat and you get about 500 watt difference -- or about $.04 per hour. Over 2000 hours per year, is $80 a year more expensive to run. So saving $100 bucks on a TV that cost $80 a year more to run is just silly.


The same stuff applies to our reef tanks. I think the most common debate is always "what give the most light vs. power" initial cost is only a small part of the debate. Of course it works out nicely the the greenest way to do things is usually the cheapest :biggrin:
How many reefers have a kill-a-watt kicking around?

Now, just don't get me started on the governments way of calculating how a crown corp. or agency is carbon neutral or not.. that is really really silly.

I have a large plasma, 60" so I know what your talking about, I have also changed all the rest of my TVs to LCD. so yes I am power concious as I have to pay for the stuff and it aint getting cheeper, but for example with my plasma we are not talking about saving 100 bucks on the TV, we are talking about saving 5000.00 bucks for the comparable quality. the LCD 60" were upwards of 7000.00 and higher, the plasma was 2400.00, I wanted a LCD but couldn't justify it, as LCDs work better in lighter enviorments.

take the new LED tvs compared to LCD tvs they aree a further savings yet.. about 50 - 60% less power, are you going to run out and spend an extra 1000.00 bucks for the comparable tv, just to save 40-100 watts?



for the record, I am energy concious, I know what I spend power wize and where I spend more than not. My bills are about 1/2 the amount of a comparable family in a comparable house with comparable apliances. I have switched most of my lights to a mix of PC and LED, I am happy being in the dark, except when I am eating. what I don't believe is any merrit of a camapin to save the world by turning off some lights for a hour.. my normal usage this would make no differance on my power consumption at all. it is kinda like a campain to get gas companies to lower prices by boycotting a station for a day. wanna do something meaningfull turn earth hour into earth week, mind you if I shout off all the power to my hour for 1 week it would only save me 10-15 bucks, so for money wise big deal, but it will teach you some humility and repect for what we have.

Steve

how do you figure green is cheeper. 9 out of 10 times green is more expensive and yes I am including the initial costs as they are still part of the cost.

take home building for example, to build green is usaly substantualy more, normaly taking 10 years of living in the house to recover the extra cost. Would I build my next house green yes, but I plan for my next to be my last, if I was only building it to live in for 5 -10 years, there is no way I would spend the extra money for something I would never recoup.

green making sence is a game of payback, if you have a car that costs 10K and gets 15mpg or a car that costs 65K and gets 60mpg but are other wise the same, which are you going to buy? I know I am getting the 10K car as 55K worth of gas is a lot of miles.. mind you we did pay 30K for a 65mpg car over a 24K 40mpg one, but that wasn't based on only gas milage.. the car is also a diesel, had more interior room and the wife liked it better. I liked the fact it is deisel as I feel diesel is the way to go. as it is less refined than gas, cheeper, has a higher BTU factor, and the engines are built to last longer. the untapped power in diesel engines is increadable also. take my truck, was a 16mpg in town 22 on the hiway, I took it from 200hp/500ftlb to 400hp/938ftlb and 20mpg in town and 30 on the hiway and there is still more gas milage and power to be had.. I am just happy with what I have now as the next round is going top be expensive.

I guess I just feel there is so many other places we can look to save the enviroment. heck just tuning up your car will do more than a week with out lights. this light thing is a tolkin campaine especialy in BC where we have a lot of hydro power and very cheep rates. want to do something meaningfull then take measures to drop your green house gas emissions, or carbon foot print.. I still need to caluculate the reduction from modifying my truck and for getting rid of the wife's old car and getting the new one. I also replaced my furnace and hotwater heater in the fall from normal units to ultra high efficiency units. now the hard desision is how to heat the shop for next winter....:wink:

Steve

I don't agree with the concept of Earth Day so everything of mine will remain on. I think telling people to install some energy efficient appliances or even simple things like low wattage light bulbs would do more good in the long run.

I think Earth hour is very good to teach young children that we have to be more mindful regarding energy use. As many of you have pointed out a bunch of people doing this for an hour a year is a waste of time IMO.

We do this on a daily basis (not to the extreme)......but we are very cognizant of energy useage.

I will maintaining my part of earth by leaving everything running :wink:

Ok folks, turn the lights back on now :lol:

Well, Earthday ended up kicking my ass pretty good after what I said earlier. The power to my entire condo went out about an hour ago, just came back on a few minutes ago. We were probably the most Earthday devoted building in the city!! The entire time I was worried about my tank though (luckily nothing seems to be wrong).

I also learned that there are some cute girls in my building and they all congregate in the lobby in their pajamas when the power goes out (next time I'll be sure to bring some pillows for them to fight with). I also learned that 6+ firetrucks will get here very quickly too and that they frown on you getting off the elevator (apparently running on aux power and no one knew it was still running) to get to the lobby and make you take the stairs back up to the top floor (yes, it sucked!).

sadly that isn't the case, I have not seen any "earth hour" things, the kids have not been told anything at school, so it looks like earth hour is a designer promotion and not as wide spread as it apears. which goes to my point it is a useless promotion which has no real effect.

I did chose to watch the canucks lose on my LCD instead of my Plasma, and I did my welding in the afternoon.

Steve

well the numbers are out.

BC reduced its power consumption by 1% during earth hour.

Steve

What, we were supose to turn our lights out ? I should really stop using halides in everyroom.. :idea:

haha Kamloops had a overall reductions of 0.04% I'm liking this town :mrgreen:

Steve