Re: Did someone say Electric Bills.
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Did some mention electric bills 🙂 The electric bill is a very sore spot around our house. Every month I have to hear from my wife about how high our bills is compared to every other person we know. I tell her it is all part of my hobby and that out of the money I make on my hatchlings I can help pay for the electric bill. That sounds like a good plan except for the part were I spend every dime I make on my hatchlings to buy more turtles and improve or expand my tanks setup. Every year I promise I will put aside the money and every year I don’t. How many other people have high electric bills because of their turtles or other pets? Our bill is at least $100 more a month than all of our neighbors. The electric company says we are 4 levels higher than the average house our size. Jonathan http://www.diamondbackterrapin.com _________________________________________________________________ Get business advice and resources to improve your work life, from bCentral. http://special.msn.com/bcentral/loudclear.armx
Jonathan, I am in the same boat, but on the East coast. (big boat! )For years I have heard about the electric bill. We are only two people and we use more power than a family of five. In the begging of our marriage I blamed my wife for leaving the TV on when she gets ready in the morning. Then it was the ac/heat. Then I had them change the meter twice. Still the bill was high. I just got last months bill and it was 140 dollars higher than normal! We added some new snakes to the collection and they had a respitory infection. ( quarantine is very important, even if it’s inconvenient) Well it started to spread to the collection and I had to separate them. Well, any good herp house is always maxed out on space so I had to put them in the spare bedroom which still has not been changed over to normal heat. Lucky me it’s electric! We’ll to summarize, I’m in trouble, but the snakes are almost better. The moral of the story, high bills are never your fault. Never except blame because your wife/husband will never forget. But if they are still with you they know what they signed up for. Enjoy the spring, Dom
mine is about 60.00 more I only have three tanks
Our electric bill is about double normal. We have gas heat and hot water included in the rent and water is billed at a flat rate since our complex is an older one without individual gas or water meters, so that has worked to our (turtles’) advantage. Filter pumps draw very little current, so most of our increased electric usage comes from lights on the turtle tanks. Another larger draw is a dehumidifier we run when we can’t have the windows open during warmer months. One big difference in lighting I have found is switching over to the new colied, screw-in compact flourecent bulbs REALLY saves on electric. Sams Club has great deals on packs of 13 watt and 26 watt compacts that put out more light than 60 and 100 watt incandescents. The turtles have really perked up since I have been able to put a couple of those over each tank in addition to a heat/basking bulb. I have also switched over to halogen flood bulbs over all of my adult stock tank groups. The turtles seem to really like the heat and penetration of the halogen bulbs better than any of the other light types I have tried over the years. And you can use a lower watt halogen to achieve adequate basking site temp than an incandescent. The only heat/basking bulbs that I think would be better would be the still expensive combination UVB bulbs or the really expensive (and high current draw) metal halide salt water aquarium bulbs. I didn’t mean to bring up the always controversial lighting subject here, but I know my above comments will do that. After reading everything I could find on the UVB output of artificial bulbs, I am to the point that it seems even the new UVB combo bulbs put out only a fraction of what real sunlight provides. Several fairly convincing reports online basically show that just a few minutes under natural sunlight is equivalent to days or even weeks under the best readily available artificial UVB lights. My goal now is to make sure all of my turtles get natural sunlight outside as much as possible during the half of the year here in the north that they can be in outside patio ponds. Todd Jonathan Helms
ohhh ya! until recently, the electricity was my financial responsibillity! But aren’t we so lucky that we have found someone who loves us and our 100+ turtles! 🙂 Thankfully I live in Quebec and since we produce most of the electricity, it doesn’t cost much! Julie Jonathan Helms wrote:
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