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View Full Version : Materials sticky?



cvermeulen
08-24-2009, 01:07 PM
Hi everyone, I've built a couple of scrubbers now. the first one was the super basic, super cheap, two light bulbs and a screen version but it still cost:

$5 per light socket (Home Depot)
$10 for the water resistent cord
$10 for misc fittings
$1 for screen ( cheapest part!)
$10 each for 1500lumen CF bulbs

And I won't account for the acrylic box I made for it later. Now if you have all this stuff to recycle, it's a cheap thing to build ($36 really isn't that expensive, but this was the cheap one recall.)

Yesterday I was wandering around the hardware store and I picked up all the materials to make myself a very simply bin scrubber for my aboveground 200gl pond.

4x 18" T8 bulbs = 4x$3.50 = $14
1x 24x12x6" clear bin $13 (!!)
1x ballast to drive the bulbs $15
4x sets of fluorescent "ends" for the bulbs = 4x$3.50 (!!) = $14

And at this point I put it all down and went home. I still didn't have fittings, glue, a screen any dividers, a cord, any idea how I was going to attach the ends to the lid, and so on, and I was approaching $60.

So the point of my longwinded rant here is, maybe we should start a sticky with sources for inexpensive materials? I'm in a fairly remote area, so maybe my material costs were a bit inflated, but I was in a national franchise hardware store, so I'm guessing they were pretty standard.