electrical setups

[Fish'nforinfo]

I just came into my office this morning to find all my fish dead and everything else hanging on for dear life. THe electricity went out and the battery back up never kicked back in once the power went back on. I though I had it covered by having the battery backup on the pump incase the power went out for an hour or so. Unfortunatly everything else came back on but the pump
Any way does anyone know of some good systems to prevent this from happeniong again. I have a 150 gallon with all types of equipment pullling electricity.

thanks

 

[RobbyG]

Sorry to hear this, do you know what happened? Why the UPS did not switch back on?
If I was you I would just get a higher quality UPS and make sure you test it and see what it does under all possible conditions.

 

[Fish'nforinfo]

Not sure why it did not come back on. A electrician happen to stop by today and he wasen't sure either. HE said there should be some type of redundancy for the tank. Two pumps, ect... I was hoping I could find some info from the forums. This must happen a lot?

 

[RobbyG]

"This must happen a lot?" Not that I have heard of. BTW I dont think Pump redundancy is the solution, you need to have a reliable tested method for power backup.

 

[BeanAnimal]

The problem is more than likely that fact that your UPS is not a TRUE SINE WAVE unit. It either burned up, or the pump did. If it did not burn up, it went into overload and tripped out of the circuit.

Putting a return pump on a battery backup is pretty much pointless unless you have a LARGE UPS with a LOT of external battery packs. The UPS will be expensive (expect to pay $500 for a bottom of the line unit that is suitable and worth the trouble). For a unit that will run your return pump for a day, expect to pay 5-10 times that much. Also expect to replace all of the bateries every 18-24 months, they have a VERY finite lifespan.

A good use for the ups would be a small powerhead like a minijet or something. At 20W or so, you can get a lot of runtime out of one on a UPS.

 

[RobbyG]

I agree with BeanAnimal about UPS and poor battery life, I think you would be better off getting a 1000 Watt Inverter at Circuit City and then use a deep cycle marine battery and a small constant trickle charger (Like the ones they use on generator starter batteries). This whole design will be cheaper upfront and in the long run!

Lastly you would need to use a 20 Amp 110V relay /NO (Normaly Open) and wire it up with plug ends so that when the Power goes off the relay closes and the power is supplied by the Inverter. If you are really interested in doing it and have some Soldering skills I can design a wiring diagram for it. Parts are all available at Radio Shack. BTW I prefer relays because they almost never fail.