Infared Bulbs

[kit-e-kat]

Greetings,
I just got my electric bill yesterday and I was shocked! I am using two infared bulb units, one for each pen, and my bill was sky high. I also just started using a electric type heater for my living room. My question is does the heat lamps eat a lot of electricity? I run a 75 watt all day for a baby boxie, and a 100 watt 13 hours a day for a RF. What are your thoughts? I know that the living room heater is part of the problem, but are the bulbs a big consumer of electricity? Is there a energy saving type infared bulb? Got to save cash for my torts.
Thanks for any thoughts or info.
John and Joanie

 

[ekm5015]

In California it costs on average about fourteen cents to run 1000 watts for one hour. So your 100 watt bulb would cost you about 18 cents a day and about $5.46 a month. The 75 watt bulb would cost 25 cents a day and $7.56 per month. I think the inflated electric bill is more due to cold weather and having to heat your house than the two bulbs.

 

[Yvonne G]

Sorry...I'm afraid its the space heater! Didn't you notice how your lights go dim when you turn the heater on?

 

[tortoisenerd]

Agreed...its the stuff like heat, a/c, water heater, and fridge that run up the bill...you'd have to have a huge amount of light and heat bulbs to affect the bill significantly. The space heater is the culprit. Some are much more efficient than others. You can start by looking up the stats on yours. There are more efficient ways than other to heat the house...and efficient space heaters can be one of them (heating a small area with a newer/efficient space heater while keeping the house thermostat lower). We do this at my house. That and keep your thermostat low and add more insulation to the walls if its an old house. We will bundle up before turning on heat, use an electric blanket at night, etc. You can look for some articles online on how to reduce winter heating costs, and also maybe compare your usage to similar customers to see if you are above or below average. Is this your first winter in this house, or did you just add the space heater on top of the thermostat settings you used last year? I like to look at the historic data on our electric bills to see if we are higher or lower than the previous year to put it into perspective, as our bills skyrocket in winter as we don't have a/c in summer, so we have really low electric bills most of the year. As for estimating electric costs for tort heating & lighting, its all about the wattage...if you are just using regular lights (not UVB), you can find some that have lower wattage but same output (the newer energy efficient ones...but I stay away from the spiral ones), like a halogen energy efficient flood light (for example, they sell a 90 Watt equivalent that only uses 60 Watts...but you have to account for the higher bulb cost and compare the life, so its tough to know when its worth it). You can look up on your bill your cost per killowatt hour, and calculate how much that bulb will cost you to run for a certain time period (based on how many hours it runs per day). Doing this helped me put it into perspective for my husband that even running all the time, our tort's ceramic heat emitter wasn't going to drive up our bill. Here's a simple electric cost calculator to get you started: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/

 

[kit-e-kat]

Thanks for the info from all you Tort lovers. I suspect that it could be the space heater. I'll look into the specs and make a determination. One of our problems is that our electric bill has been very low in the past, with all energy saving bulbs and appliances. We got the heater and the bulbs around the same time, so it probably was a double whammy. I recorded the meter reading today, and I won't use the heater today (it's not that cold today). I'll check the meter tomorrow. I hope that it's the heater, I don't want our tort kids cold!
Thanks Again
John and Joanie

 

[tortoises101]

Boxies and RF's need high humidity (boxies not that high, but still in the low 70's) and heat lamps are pretty dehydrating in my view. I suggest you just replace the heat lamp with a 40w or 60w ceramic heat emitter (100w for large enclosures) and for UVA/UVB, add a small 14w 2.0 UVB tube. (no swirly bulbs as those haven't been proven safe) The UVB tube emits zero heat, and for a small tube it gives off a lot of light. This design is pretty energy efficient, and if you look around your house for things that can be turned off or replaced with more energy efficient designs, you will find your bill decreasing indeed.