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Originally Posted by ClubReef
We installed central AC this summer and I've noticed less humidity on my 90G which is located on the main floor. Do you think that a large tank placed in the basement combined with AC will be good enough to keep the humidity in check?
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In the summer, yes absolutely. But in the winter, not really, because you probably won't be running it in the winter.
It's actually the winter where it's more of a problem because of the walls and windows being cooler, the water condenses onto them because of the cooler surface.
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So if I decide to go with an HRV unit..how much can I expect to pay??
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Roughly the same as central air.
Maybe a little less. If you're handy you can do it yourself (Home Depot sells HRV's - I didn't know this until after I had mine installed). It's just basically a box with 4 holes in it. Two go to the outside (so you have cut vent holes, like for a dryer), one is the ingoing and one is the outgoing - and the other two go inside (again, one is the ingoing and one is the outgoing). You can either bring these to your tank room, or just some central spot in your basement (well.. not next to each other obviously, otherwise you just vent that one spot
), or, you can have the venting go to your tankroom AND cut into your main furnace lines so that the whole house can get some recirculation happening. I think if you do this you may need to get some interlock happening so that the furnace fan turns on when the HRV is doing its thing. If you just vent the room then you wouldn't need this. But I figure if you're going in for a penny you might as well go in for a pound. I wouldn't know how to do the interlock myself but on the other hand it's probably not that bad to figure out.
I used these guys:
http://airproheatingairconditio.supersites.ca/door/
They came recommended to me by another Canreefer (Monza), I think they've done a few other installations for Canreefers. At any rate, they know ALL about aquariums and humidity, they seem to have done a few jobs for guys with big tanks. I was very happy with them in the end. Might not have been the cheapest but they did, what I felt, was a proper analysis of the situation. (I had two other places do estimates.. one guy just told me a number over the phone, another guy came to my house, looked in the front door, and THEN came up with a number. I really needed something more than a WAG because I had a specific problem that needed to be fixed - I was not about to plunk down $1500 or whatever and then discover that I still had that problem. But what AirPro did was produce a whole document that explained how the product was going to solve the problem, what sizing of unit was needed, and so on - so I had a degree of confidence that this wasn't just a silly thing to do, it was going to fix the problem, and if not, I had some recourse available to me.)