I didn't know what topic to put this in, anyway this thing:

http://www.jehmco.com/html/battery_backup_system.html

Any idea what they made it from? Boat battery maybe?

I want a battery backup, but I really don't want to use a computer UPS because they have such short run times even for like 100 watts or so(Much less than the JEHMCO unit above anyway).

My tank could likely run for 24 hours on the JEHMCO. Anybody know what they rebranded here? Or perhaps someone out there has plans for a DIY long term, low wattage battery backup system for running a heater and a pump?

not sure, but when you find out let me know.

It uses a deep cycle marine battery. You could make your own with a deep cycle battery and an AC inverter. Last power outage lasted more than a day and my setup ran two 6045 tunzes for the 28 hours and were still at full power. Add a small trickle charger and you have a fully automated backup system!

Thankyou! Any idea what the housing needs to be made of? Can I use wood or would I be smarter with a metal or plastic body?

I suppose you could enclose this in some kind of case. Never really thought of doing that.

well...otherwise its just a big ol' dirty lookin battery and an inverter

Wood will be fine. Plastic will be fine.

I'm going to go ahead and suggest that you may not want to use a metal case with a large lead-acid battery.

Ever see what happens when the terminals get shorted? It's quite pretty, if spark showers, vaporizing metal, and explosions of sulfuric acid are your thing.

Better to stick with something nonconductive.




Edit - you can also use a 120V relay to automatically switch from normal house power to inverter power, and back again. That way you don't need a massive charging circuit to provide your load and your charging current.

Well you could just use a new battery!


Yeah, you might not want to do the metal thing. I wouldn't want to hear about any spewing of sulfuric acid!

Just so you know, charging a lead acid battery puts off toxic chemicals. Better to keep them outdoors.

wut?

source?

We have massive lead-acid battery rooms, and our only concerns are short circuits and hydrogen gas.

And hazmat spills, and explosions depending on how the room is setup. We had/have them too. They are nasty. We are actually smack in the middle of a remediation because we had several batt's leak in one of our batt rooms. Not allot of fun.

We are slowly shifting to LiON. We have a vendor who has solved the whole heat/explosion issue with them. PM me if you are interested and want details.

In other news you could just go out and buy a decent sized computer UPS and hook your heater and a small power head (both in tank) to it and save yourself allot of hassle.

I think I remember something about not being able to run a heater off a UPS. You could go that route for a couple of powerheads though!

yeah thats why im trying to avoid the UPS situation. They can't run heaters for any real length of time, and up here in Canada there's really not much point for 6 months of the year if you don't have a heater going the stuff is going to die anyway. Why doesn't anyone make a long run, low wattage backup system? All I want is about 150W of power for about 24-36 hours.

You might be better off looking into a small generator!

450 Amp-Hours. Not that bad. A deep cycle battery and inverter should be able to handle it. Two batteries at most. If you have to survive for longer, you can charge them with your car engine.

There's no reason you can't run a heater (resistive load) off of an inverter. None at all.

Inductive loads can sometimes have a problem, but if you get a good quality sine-wave inverter instead of a cheapo square-wave inverter, then there's absolutely no difference whatsoever.



If that doesn't work for you, well, you always have the generator option.

That is good info on the inverters. I must have one of those cheapo square wave ones!

I'm thinking I'm just going to get one of these

http://www.frontierpc.com/product/Tripp%20Lite/PV375.html

They're so useful for any kind of blackout situation in general.

Then all I need is some gas I imagine you can idle a car for at least 24 hours on a tank of gas.

wait...couldn't I hook that up to a battery just stand alone? I think I could...

As you can tell, I'm no engineer...my biologist mind has trouble with this techy stuff. Maybe my dad can help, with his elecrtical engineering background...

Yes.