Emergency Power

[Eric the half-bee]

back up generators

back up generators

I recently built a home in FL and after seeing the '04 hurricanes' damages, a standby generator was a no-brainer. No offense to bean animal or any other fans of Generac/Guardian generators, they are "throw away" brands not intended to last more than 1000-2000 hours before engine rebuild/repairs. I took a big jump and bought a Gillette brand standby to insure my reef tank's survival. Check out Gillette's web site to read about "kleen" power.

 

[JHemdal]

I scanned through this thread and didn't see one solution (I might have missed it). Why not run your inverter from your car? Pull the car up near the house (NOT in the garage) and run a line into the house. Better than buying deep cycles and having them lose their charge after 12 hours or so. I'm not sure how often you would have to run the car, and there is a risk that if you drain the starter battery, you wouldn't be able to re-start the car as needed. Still, what does an average car use, 1/4 to 1/2 gallon of gas per hour at idle?

Jay

 

[Eric the half-bee]

Jay, hooking up an`inverter to a car battery as a contigency plan for lost power should be# 3 or 4 on the list. Sure, its a cheap and easy option but a dedicated generator is almost fool proof and quite safe. If you have several thousands invested in a reef as I bet many people in the hobby do, why go cheap on life support? Just my humble opine.

 

[FunkieReefJunkie]

The inverter hooked to the car method does work. When we redid our kitchen and the power had to be turned off to the fish room this is what I used. It's come in handy a couple of other times. I now have a generator, but haven't used it yet. I'm really not looking forward to when it's raining cats & dogs three in the morning and I have to drag that sucker out and start it up. I really need to build an area outside to keep it dry. Otherwise I'll have to run it in the garage, door wide open and stay awake to make sure no one pilfers stuff from my garage. Being how cluttered up my garage is, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. :lmao: Procrastination is not my friend. But I do have one Tripp Lite battery back-up to keep one tunze running with a few battery operated aerators in the sump. If you have a glass tank with bottomless stand I can say from past experience it's possible to light candles under the tank to keep the tank from freezing in winter.

This is originally what I wanted.http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/12728/cid/3399
But you'll note it's not allowed in Cali. It's small, economical and perhaps more practical for some.