Circiut breaker trip on the coldest day. All my @#$$%^! fish in garage gone

[htown]

Came home from work. Circiut breaker tripped in garage. The coldest freakin day, and this @#$% happens. Trio of Lwanda plus 50 fry, gone. Three wild caught bn adults, gone. Five adult azureas, gone. Four adult lithobates, gone. Trio of sunshine peacock and other misc mbuna all gone. Sucks. Didnt lose this many during hurricane, without power for one one week
Had to vent somewhere. thanks for listening

[semper]

sucks to hear,

but not surprising

pretty cold these last few days,

even a short amount of time with no power will be devastating

sorry for your loss

[fshfrk]

Sorry for your loss. I can give you 20 simochromis babulti's for free. change out that breaker. smk is a electrician maybe he could help you out down there. pm him. for side job.

[semper]

awesome John, always helping out our box buddies and

thanks for the heads up on smk

[newb]

sorry to hear dude...your the man John...so generous. those are some really cool fish too.

[Complexity]

How horrible! I'm so sorry to hear what happened. That has to really hurt.

[billansor]

I am sorry to hear of your loss. That is one of the toughest kick in the gut situation to come home to.

For others, its a good time to look at your circuits handling your fishroom or collection of fish tanks.


One of the issues of circuit breakers is age. Many people do not realize that a circuit breaker will age over a period of time... Also many circuit breakers for the garage may be ill equipped to handle a higher load when heaters are kicking on along with filters, pumps, lights, especially some of the higher rated wattage lights that are so common now days......

Some of these lights are quite massive in the amount of wattage that they use.

So folks.. Check to make sure your circuits are labeled. There is a simple two unit tester from Lowes or Home Depot that will along you to do a complete wall outlet by wall outlet check so that you may know what your actual load is going to be.

Many garages (older types of 50 years or older) only have wiring that will handle no more than 20 amps -- many times it was common to have 15 amps.

In my garage, the entire circuit on one circuit breaker had two over head lights. 4 wall outlets and the garage door opener... the circuit is rated for 20 amps. I will be pulling an additional wiring through the wall and running a separate circuit breaker.

On Newer homes, many garage have the fail safe circuit box that is hooked so if there is any short, it will trip the individual outlet box. This is particularly a problem when a heater decides to break or one of the water movers or power heads decide to start to leak a little bit of electricity. Then your down for the count until you reset it again

I am sorry to hear of your loss. That is one of the toughest kick in the gut situation to come home to.

[PhishPhreek]

http://www.ingramproducts.com/Home_Safe_Products-Power_Failure_Alarm_Flashlight.html

There are some easy to install power failure alarms on the market

[billansor]

I hate to bust bubbles.....

But here is the question; When a tree falls in the woods, does it make sound if there is no one around to hear it???

I am sorry to be in a sense sarcastic.... but it was not my intention but a good way to make a point. John's idea is great and there are actually some alarms that are diversified and will let you know if there is excess carbon monoxide, fire, smoke, electrical failure.

Years ago, Radio Shack had a closeout on a dumb kinda thing, but it was an alarm that was essentially a modified reverse answering machine. If you had a fire.. the machine would call you and tell you that you had a problem in the house. You could hook up several different devices that would trigger this reverse answering machine. If course, you did need to have several different plans into place. If you were somewhere to where you could not go home, you could have your neighbor come over and see if the house was burning down to the ground....

What is needed is a fail safe system that will notify of the exact problem and if the original person is not available, then will go to the next contact person.

Bill

[billansor]

oh
one other thing is garage doors. Many people hear about the many many big bofo bucks that are spent for a garage door that is insulated...... 100's of dollars more than a normal garage door.

The individual panels can be insulated very easily with a 1/2 to 1 inch thick sheet of blue foam insulation.. The kind that they use to insulate the outside of the house when they add siding on an old old house that they do not want to tear off the old siding.. You can insulate the garage door so well that you think your in Minnesota Ice Fish house watching the super bowl on a day that is 62 below zero.

[armthehomeless]

Once everything gets warmer, let me know if you want more africans. I've got plenty that you can have.

[Darbex]

Sorry for your loss

[Complexity]

Just a thought... perhaps a UPS system would be useful. It would only power essentials, such as an air pump and heaters, should the power go out. That would keep the fish alive while someone was at work or in case of a power outage due to broken power lines (frozen tree falling on the lines). Just a thought.

It would be even better if it could be designed to call a cell phone to notify the person that it's been activated. Then the person would know their tanks are running on emergency UPS power and may be able to get home faster to perform emergency work to save the fish. I haven't looked at UPS systems in a long time, but I wouldn't be surprised to find some with a call feature.

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=Uninterruptible+Power+Supply&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=qV1JS4TCIYT0sQP6-bD1Dw&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CDoQrQQwAg

[smk]

hey just picked up on this thread if you need any help i can help you out htown just a little more sounds like you probably have 4 tanks maybe more? simple formula watts divided by volts(120)=amps
if you live in a newer house this circuit probably is shared with outdoor outlets with the cold i'm sure your heaters were running wide open which might have caused the trip sounds like you need a circuit or two added to garage to ensure this doesn't happen again i know we don't get these temps often but when we do it sucks sorry for your loss let me know if i can help
scott

[smk]

me again a ups sounds like a good alternative but its not unless you have big bucks for a ups ones for computers that you get at electronics stores would not run equipment for any length of time they are basicllyjust to give you time to shut down comp in outage
scott