Lee Calladine's video: How much does it cost to run a pond

Hi it's Lee from the Japanese water gardens. In this is video I am going to explain about running costs of a pond and how to calculate them. I know a lot of people worry about the ever increasing cost of electricity so I can give you a few tips on how to keep things to a minimum without compromising on the safety of your fish. To calculate how much something costs to run you need to look at the wattage on the appliance normally the information is displayed directly on the appliance or in the instruction manual. Watts are a measure of power the more watts an appliance uses the more it will cost to run. 1000 watts is referred to as a kW. If you run an appliance that is 1kW for one hour you have used 1kwh of electricity. In the UK the average cost per kwh is 15p or £3.60 per day. On pond you are likely to have several electrical appliances, a pump to circulate the water, a UV filter for the green algae, an air pump Some will have a lighting system. And some might have a heater. There could be others but these are far and away the most common. Of these items the pump, Uv light and air pump are normally run 24hrs per day every day so it is vital that we are aware of what these are costing. To work out what these are costing we total up the wattages, then divide by 1000 to express it in kwh’s. The good news is that these items are not normally massive consumers. The average 2000 gallon koi pond will be running a 80watt pump, a 30watt uv and and air pump around 40watt. Add these together. And you get a total of 150watts. Divided by 1000 to convert to kwh and we have 0.15kwh How much is this per day? simple multiple your result by the cost per 1kwhour then multiple by 24 to get a daily price. In this case the result is 56p per day. Now what about those other appialnces, well lighting system particularly if it's an LED one will not be drawing many watts, also they tend only to be used for short periods of time at night so it's not going to amount to much. Ok so far so good but what about a pond heater? Pond heaters are much more expensive to run, because they draw large amounts of watts and if they are run flat out for weeks on end then the cost can soon mount up. But in general pond heaters are not run for more than a few months a year and if you take adequate measures to insulate your pond you can save some very significant amounts of money. I did a video recently that will give you some more information about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYzNd2hVS4 Saving money on electricity is important. Some of the things you can do are. Use a proper pond pump instead of cheap to buy expensive to run sump pump. Use a good size hosing or pipe on the pump. That way you can run a pump that consumes less power but still delivers a good water flow. Your air pump is probably not needed during the winter months as the fish will be much less active. Don’t run a UV that is excessively large. For most situations 30watts will be fine on 2000 gallon pond. There are of course many other measures you can take please make some suggestions in the comments. I hope you enjoyed watching this video and will subscribe to the channel, leave any questions in the comments below and give the video a thumbs up. It's bye for now from Lee at the Japanese Water Gardens.