Lateral Line March 2011 - Hill Country Cichlid Club

14The LED lamps have a life of 50,000 hoursand should not need replacement but onceevery 23 years.The electricity usage from Figures 1, 2, and3 above convert into the annual energy usagenumbers found in Table 8.The true cost of ownership is displayed inTable 9. In Table 9, the installation cost andone year of electricity is summed in the firstyear. In the second and subsequent years,only the additional cost of electricity isadded into the previous year. In year 5 forthe CFL, the cost of 4 replacement lamps isincluded.Conclusion:In part to manage my costs, and in part tokeep my wife happy, I am in the process ofbuilding a new fish room. I have removed allof my aquariums from inside the house andrelocated them to my “hobby room” whichis built onto the side of the garage. In all itsglory, my original fish room (100% insidethe house) consisted of 32 aquariums andover 1200 gallons of water. At the moment Iam only running eight aquariums at only 350gallons of water while I finish constructionof my fish cave. As I expand the fish cave Iam replacing and installing the LED lightson all aquariums. When I finish building thefish room I will have 45 aquariums with acapacity of 1500+ gallons of water. I willhave over 120 of the LED lamps installedthroughout the room, and will be paying ameasly $6.50 (only ½ on at a time unlessphotographing or showing the room) amonth for my lighting. The room is beingbuilt to optimize all the costs outlined in theintroduction of this article. As I progress,additional articles will be written to expoundon my findings in other areas.I hope you find the information objectiveand informative as it helps you decide howto manage your ever increasing costs.It will take just over four years to see anyreturn on investment for installing LEDlights. These numbers only hold true if youwere to purchase the shop light fixtures. Ifyou already own the shop light fixtures, andyou were to purchase the LED lamps as areplacement, it would take an additional twoyears (six total years) to realize a return onyour investment.