1500 watt tub heater

Iam useing 2 1500 watt tub heaters from tractor supply in bathtubs for horses water. electric bill going up anyone else useing them ?
how much electric do they use? I live in western pa. any suggestions
thanks

1500 watts is 1.5 kw. Multiply your kwh rate times 1.5 per heater, per hour they are plugged in- assuming no thermostat. Then times 24 hours per day, 30 days per month....

Oh Penn power is going to love you , next Christmas they might even send you a Christmas card. I know how much our electric bill would go up when i had the semi and it only had a 2500 watt block heater . I think it cost less to let it run over the weekends and burn the fuel then the electric for the block heater.

At my house that would cost .80 per day. A horse isn't worth that much to me!

(quoted from post at 20:09:55 01/26/16) At my house that would cost .80 per day. A horse isn't worth that much to me!

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uss, you either have some awfully cheap electricity or one of us isn't doing well with a calculator.

About $7 per day for the two of them. I'd be thinking a tank and a sledge hammer.

it's definitely expensive for a typical fully exposed tub.

A little creativity in insulating it though goes a long way.

at least a cover with a hole just big enough for drinking - but a box around it with insulation is even better.

(quoted from post at 18:49:08 01/26/16) Iam useing 2 1500 watt tub heaters from tractor supply in bathtubs for horses water. electric bill going up anyone else useing them ?
how much electric do they use? I live in western pa. any suggestions
thanks

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It costs 50 cents a day average to keep a 55 gallon barrel (cut down a bit to hold 40 gallons) from freezing in Wisconsin. Verified with a Kill-O-Watt meter.

We used bath tube for our cows and built a box around bath tub leaving 2 foot between tub and box. We filled it with dry saw dust and sealed it so water could not get saw dust wet. We covered about 1/2 of tub with heated under that cover along with automatic valve for water. It wasn't to bad on electric but also set in a place in barn yard where it didn't get hit hard by weather.

I have water and food in the barn for my mousers. They keep the mice away from all the equipment etc. The water bowl is insulated bottom and sides - however, the top is fully open. I keep the ice away with a 5 watt night light bulb placed under the bowl, between the bowl and the bottom insulation. Around 10 degrees the bowl will ice over and there will be a hole licked through the ice to the liquid water below. This effectively covers the top and protects the liquid water to zero - the coldest so far this winter.

Yes - I know this is far from a tub to water horses however, as others have posted, the first step is to insulate the tank if you intend to heat it. With 3" of foam on the bottom, sides and the top covered....I would start with a 100 watt heater and work from there. A 100 watt heater will run for 30 hours to use the electricity of two 1.5 KW heaters run for 1 hour.

3 kw X 24 hours is 72 kw X .11 = $7.92 My mistake!

The 1,500 watt heaters are going to leave a mark in your pocket book. Really expensive to run. What works good for me is a Rubbermaid water tank and a small Ice Chaser bucket warmer. Believe it or not that little 250 watt heater will keep a fairly large Rubbermaid plastic water tank free from ice. It will not work in a metal tank. If it does freeze it's thin and a smack with your hand as you walk by will open it up. Generally the animals will beat you to it.
Another really good drinker is a Behlens Automatic drinker. Really neat design. They are made of HDPE and are double walled with foam between the inner and outer wall. They use an inferred heat pad under the water pan that keeps the ice off. Animals are never exposed to the heater or wiring. The best part is the heater is 150 watts and keeps ice off really good. I never have to mess with them other than cleaning out the water pan. They are a little pricey, but what you are spending in electricity a year right now running two 1,500 watt heaters will pay for two drinkers the first year. I didn't believe it when I was given the sales pitch at the stock show several years ago. I bought one to try and it was everything they said. I now have two of them and love them and animals have an endless supply of water all year. I raise goats and they head butt, chew, and climb all over them and so far in seven years have not managed to damage one and the heaters have yet to fail and they don't rust. Worth a look. This is not an ideal time of year to install drinkers. You need to trench in water and electric and pour a pad to set them on.

Greg

The heaters probably do not run 100 percent of the time, especially in warmer weather. It's hard to estimate the actual duty cycle without putting a meter on one.

A cast iron bath tub will conduct heat pretty fast. Can you insulate the tub to reduce the heat loss? Even floating a piece of insulation to cover some of the water surface will reduce the heat loss. A commercial insulated waterer could pay for itself in electricity savings.

I want to concur with GregCO's recommendation for the Behlen fountains. Mine also features a tube underneath the drinker that is dug deep, and brings geo-thermal heat up from the ground in more mild conditions. I have had one thermostat fail on mine, I just wired it on constant until I could replace the thermostat. Now I keep a spare in the toolbox for $8 to insure the installed one will never fail.

The fill valve on the waterer does make our water line "chatter" just enough inside the house, where I can tell when the cows have come up from the back pasture to drink ( no one else in the house can recognize the sound, hard to believe deaf-old-Dad can).

You may be over-heating. I use K&H heaters that are sized for the tub and sized for the weather zone I live in. I use the 500W heaters in the 50 gal tubs for the sheep and calves, setting on the bottom. The large 250 gal tub gets a 750 or 1000 watt one set to float (I forget now which size I bought). When it gets really cold, I may have to knock a skiff of ice off the tub but that is pretty rare. Plus, they come with a 2 year warranty. Had to use it once out of a 1/2 dozen heaters.

http://www.khmfg.com/ultimate-stock-tank-de-icer.html

I had started out with the 1500W heaters at first but was amazed at the electric bill, had to be a better way.

John

I tried bath tubs, water tubs, heaters, etc. Finally this year I found something that works. I had a small chest freezer die on me. It's about 42" tall and maybe 2'x2'x3' inside. Even with temps below 0F the worst that happens is a bit of skim ice. Fill it morning and night, provides for 2 Percherons, 3 Haflingers and 2 riding horses. No need for a heater. Now, admitiedly, this has been a mild winter, but the regular Fortex tubs for the sheep and goats need to be broke out twice a day. The dead freezer works. With more livestock a larger freezer would work too. I had a larfe cheat freezer in use this summer, but it was too big for what stock there was and got grungy inside. It did keep cool water cool though.

I took a 100 gallon rubbermaid tank, built a base out of a pallet, put 2" foam on it, put the tub no that, build plywood walls, with 2" foam all the way around, put foam on top, only left an opening about 18" wide at the middle, it has a 1500 watt heater in it, uses much, much less electricity that way, without it insulated normal winter electric bill was $350 to $400 a month, now around $200.

(quoted from post at 17:49:08 01/26/16) Iam useing 2 1500 watt tub heaters from tractor supply in bathtubs for horses water. electric bill going up anyone else useing them ?
how much electric do they use? I live in western pa. any suggestions
thanks

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Use one heater and put a thermostat in the electric line so it doesn't run when it doesn't need to. Insulating the tank/tub will REALLY help as others have said. I have a thermostat that plugs into an outlet or extension cord with a place to plug in the heater; it comes on about 36 or so and shuts off about 48 - got it at local ACE for about $35. You could use one of those and a light sensor to let it run only at night if that is enough run time - anyway you do it it's gonna use more electricity, all you can do is help it use as little as possible. One [b:ca8a3195f4]no-cost[/b:ca8a3195f4] method I've heard of (on Farm Show?) is guys digging holes with a posthole digger under tanks that rest on the ground, insulating the tank from the ground with BluBoard (holes cut in BluBoard to match postholes) to let ground heat keep the tank from freezing (depth of holes determined by how cold your winters are and what your latitude is) Seems like in N. Wyoming and Montana they went about 6' deep. 8)

Might try that, have a 100 gallon rubber maid and a 1500 watt drain plug heater, power bill doubles in winter with that and tractor block heater use.