UPS Backup

[2807]

Hello All

I have a 120X47mm tube system currently successfully providing hot water and central heating in SW France.

This morning we have had (not unusually) a 2 hour power cut from around 9am until 11am.  Normally, the power outages are when the weather is bad & so it is not often a problem, but this morning, there was a cloud free sky.  Thankfully when the power came back on the manifold temperature had only reached 85 degrees & so soon cooled down when the circulation pump re started.

Would it be worth putting a UPS in the system to provide power for the controller & pump or am I over panicking?

2807

[damnager]

Hi 2807,
           Bit further north than you (87) and suffer the same problems  I run mine via UPS with a large battery (110ah) just for that reason. We used to get (almost like clockwork) 8 hours but they have renewed the substation recently  What you will need though is a "pure sine wave" UPS as the pumps do not like chopped AC to much.

before I installed a UPS we did have one stagnation (was going to test it but never could find a tuit in the shops) that recovered perfectly  .

Just my opinion.

Keith

(Sunny 25 degrees last two days and lashings of hot water  )   

[2807]

I run mine via UPS with a large battery (110ah) just for that reason. We used to get (almost like clockwork) 8 hours but they have renewed the substation recently  What you will need though is a "pure sine wave" UPS as the pumps do not like chopped AC to much.

Hello damnager

Thanks for your input.

The UPS I was thinking of using is currently "protecting" my TV and a couple of lamps to enable me to get to the fuse box in the event of the main fuse tripping....  it is one of these http://tinyurl.com/yznr49z and says that it produces a sine wave supply.  Dont know about pure sine wave, but I may give it a try & see how it works.

You say that you run yours with a "large battery (110ah)".  I hope you dont mind me asking, but how is the battery connected?

2807

[damnager]

hi 2807,
           Battery is connected externally via additional battery terminals (it's an ex IBM AS400 UPS that I acquired).
The APC unit you pointed to says it is sine wave and not "modified" (i.e. chopped square ) I would suspect that it will be fine. On my system if you use a modified sine wave ups the pump tends to hum much loader than with straight ac (that is with the TDC3, the Resol doesn't seem to mind). Give it a go, you cannot harm anything with a test.

I assume you have also protected your phone/adsl line against strikes, most machines I go to repair have been blown up due to strikes and nearly all of them say "but I unplugged everything when the lightening started" except the phone line  Not teaching you to suck eggs but you need the line protected before you split the adsl/phone parts of it.

Keith

[davebodger]

The UPS I was thinking of using is currently "protecting" my TV and a couple of lamps to enable me to get to the fuse box in the event of the main fuse tripping....  it is one of these http://tinyurl.com/yznr49z and says that it produces a sine wave supply.  Dont know about pure sine wave, but I may give it a try & see how it works.
You say that you run yours with a "large battery (110ah)".  I hope you dont mind me asking, but how is the battery connected?
2807

The APC1000 uses two 12v 12Ah SLA (gel) batteries connected in series to provide 24v to run it's inverter.
It has no external battery connections (some of the larger APC models do) so you would have to create some.
Simplest is to make up a battery pack with a lead that plugs into the internal connector and remove the internal batteries.
However you are limited to the internal battery charger which might struggle with charging 110Ah batteries.
Others may be able to advise on the largest batteries that could be fitted, I have never tried increasing the capacity like that.
I have regularly built replacement battery packs for several of the APC models and it is quite easy to do.
The old battery pack can be stripped of it's conneting components (fuse bridge and power connector) as they are simply bolted on.
The power connector is a simple push-fit type, making changing battery packs easy.

Good luck.

Dave.

[sleepybubble]

I have modified an APC1000 UPS to run from external batteries in exactly this way... the charger has no problems with getting them back to charge. There are a few photos of what I did to the UPS in my show us yours thread, entitled 'how not to do it...' you might have to wade through a few pages to get to the UPS pictures.
I have now further modified the UPS by removing and remotely locating the front panel of it.