Battery size on Tunze Saftey Connector

carb850

carb850

New member
What size battery everyone is running with the Saftey connector? I'm getting ready to build a cabinet to hold my power strips, Neptune DC8, etc and I'd like to leave space in the bottom to keep a batter for temporary backup purposes.

My tank is 120G and I have dual 6101's, I thought about just getting a single Saftey Connector to use and hopefully have enough batter for 24-36 hours. Would a lawn tractor size battery do or would I need a car sized battery?

Also, do you keep a trickle charger on the battery or just put it on a charger every so often. I'd just assume pass on the trickle charger, already have enough gadgets plugged in around the tank.
 
Each safety connector can only run one pump and it will only get 12V so you will have a max of about 2000gph. At 12V the pump uses about 1.2 Amps. A 26 Amp Hour battery should run it for about 24hrs. You don't need a tractor or car battery and I would advise against anything with liquid acid inside, I would get a gel cell, you can find smaller gel cell batteries at batteries plus. If you hook the battery to a solar panel charger you can greatly extend the battery life during a power outage, provided you can get the solar panel in a sunny position. If you wanted the ultimate, you could get an Orbital battery, the car batteries that look like a 6 pack, they run about $150. Those have about 86 Amp Hours.
 
Ideally you would have some sort of trickle charger, the kind that look like a wall pack transfer that put out 1 Amp is all you need.
 
Yes, within the limit on the manufacturers recommendation that the battery be less than 30 amp hour.
 
They should say Gel Cell, the other type to consider is glass mat or SLA (sealed lead acid). Most small lead acid batteries are gel cell, they usually have a black body.
 
Bump this old thread. ;)

We had a major winter storm go through the area and had massive number of power outages. I'm one of the lucky ones this time. I need to better prepare next time so I thought of this thread once again.

I don't have a Battery's Plus local. We have places like Lowes, Home Depot, Auto shops ect. I know I need a Gel Cell but can anyone give me an link to one would be appreciated. If a 26amp will give me 24 hours I think that would be about enough, a little more wouldn't hurt if they don't cost a lot extra. My thinking is that for outages over 24 hours temperature will likely become a big issue and a generator will be in order.

So if someone could point me to a 26amp Gel Cell batter and ample trickle charger it would be appreciated.
 
Suitable Battery

Suitable Battery

Here is a great battery, and they also have chargers.
http://www.odysseybatteries.com/battery/pc925.htm
http://www.odysseybatteries.com/accessories/aci.htm

If you have local Sears Auto center, the Diehard Platinum batteries are made by Odyssey.

Optima batteries are also good, and can be found at just about any Autozone, Advance Auto/Pepboys type of autostore.

Battery Tender is a great charger
http://batterytender.com/chargers/waterproof-800-usa-western-hemisphere.html
 
Thanks! I priced the Optima batteries and they seemed to be in this same price range. I guess I secretely hoped that with Optima you were buying the name and I could get someone just as nice for half price. I guess not. ;)

So this will run me roughly $250 for the Tunze connector, battery, and charger. Not cheap but it would let me rest better for sure.
 
That would work. The Optima is about 85Ah if I recall so it is definitely overkill, it would run the pump for about 3 days.
 
Since you guys know this stuff. Besides getting the tunze battery backup unit, I also want my return pump to run for a while when power off, luckily it is only a MJ1200 (23W) do you think I can use a 200W invertor and run the MJ normally.

As for the battery charger, what is a good charger to charge the gel cell full time?
I am not sure if the battery tender can supply enough amps to keep the battery charged and not drain it for normal use.
are there invertors that normally use the wall outlet but switch over to the battery.. even UPS uses the battery inverted power full time.

As far as heater, I think it is a problem when the temperature dips below 70F. But heaters draws a whole lot of power (300W) it would be difficult to run one off a inverter?
300/120V = 2.5AMP so a optima battery ignoring invertor loss should run the heater for 30 hours or so? Did I do the math correctly?
 
The heater would use 30A at 12V so it would really drain the battery pretty quick, if I recall an Optima is about 90AH, so 3 hours tops. The best we can do with batteries is keep things alive for a day or so by running the flow pumps in the tank. For much else you will need a generator and that is probably a wiser purchase if longer power failures are a concern, especially since you can pick up a fairly small and quiet one for not much more than a couple Optimas and an invertor. As far as temp goes, if you have a fireplace in your house, your best bet would be to run the fireplace in case of a power failure to warm the whole house.
 
Roger I have a stinger spb 1000 car audio battery. it is a dry cell battery would this work? The battery does not tell me how many amps it is? it only shows volts
 
It would work, but I can't get enough info about it to tell you how many hours it could run a pump, it simply says 1200Amp when I search the manufacturers site and I assume that is peak capacity, it doesn't give an Ah rating.
 
what happens if the pumps are connected to the Tunze Multi-controller 7096 and the power goes out? Will the batter backup still come on ?
 
Yes, since our controllers are powered by the pump, if the pump has power, the controller continues working with the pumps.
 
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