Going to lose power in 9 days! Help!

S

sfsuphysics

Active member
Ok so PG&E tells me of an "interruption of service" that's happening on the 31st. They apparently are replacing a transformer near me and have given me a time frame of 8am to 1pm, not that crucial, but I'd really like to go without worrying about things. Now I can do with lights, heaters and skimmers. But I'd really like flow in the tank (this is what kills most tanks anyways), so doing some quick number crunching I can probaly go with a reduce flow setting which would consist of about 100 watts worth of pumps between two tanks.

So my question is how would I go to keeping these going for upto 5 hours? (with the foresight that it's PG&E, I wouldn't plan on them being punctual).

Here are some options off the top of my head

UPS, although the best case scenario I can see is dropping my pumps to a few 8 watt seios (24 watts total) but even then these don't exactly last very long at all... and expensive! I guess I could probably rent them someplace, but I doubt they have the type of capacity I need.

Gas generator... again expensive but I'd look for a rental first and formost. Not exactly something I really want to do, but if I had to go that route I would

Car adapter, I don't know if they sell a caradapter (that's also relatively cheap) so I can hook a long extension cord into my car. I have a Prius (hybrid) so I have lots of battery capacity not to mention my engine is efficient, if it turns on occasionally to recharge not a big deal.

so anyone have any ideas? helpful advice?
 
Mike,

Gets some air pumps and rigid air line tubing. Run the tubing down through some pipes, no air stones. Set those up in various places in your tank. The air lift setup is super low power usage, and gets you water movement and aeration.

Run the whole thing off of a UPS.... good to have one. Or use batter powered air pumps if you prefer.

Calfo uses air powered circulation in his greenhouses, doesn't he? Haven't had a chance to read through his book.
 
mike you can barrow my generator, its small light...simi quiet and will run all lights and all pumps for 6 hr on 1/4 gal of gas, you will need to pick up and return in walnut creek.

Nicholas
 
Thanks Nicolas, I might have to take you up on that offer :) Although right now I'm contemplating getting a DC-AC converter for my car, and just pipe the car exhaust out the garage. I got plenty of battery power in my hybrid, and the combustion energy turns off when it's not in use so it won't be running all day.

Will definately think of you if all else fails though :)
 
I was living over on taraval in sf and pg&e did the same type of thing... I ended up using my jumper power pack for your car and it lasted for about 2.5 hours and then I used an ac/dc inverter hooked up to my car for the last 8 or so... I was only running very small powerheads in all of my tanks... The inverters are pretty cheap normally...

If you want to be sure though I would go and get that generator... You can rent one as well over at usave on 16th street or that place at the end of vanness just pass the overpass.. The one whose propane tank exploded a couple of months ago.. Just call around..
 
I have regular car battery with a ac/dc converter from radio shack. I use it as back-up for a heater (don't need a stinkin heater when this warm weather and an airpump. Did this on my 58g.

I also have a battery powered air-pump as a just in case as well.
 
Raddogz, can you give any info on the cold cranking amps of the battery, the draw of the devices and how long it ran?
Whenever you replace the battery, a marine battery would be much better since they are designed for deep discharge w/out damage to the lead plates like a normal car battery.
Hope no ones recharging batteries in the house, they do vent hydrogen.
 
The battery's cold cranking amps is 660

One 150w heater

One el cheapo airpump

I ran it for eight hours on a 58g tank.

I agree yellow top marine (optima's) are one of the better one's out there. I originally bought it for camping running a laptop out in field.

Didn't know about charging in the house is a no-no. I usually charge mine in the garage, but it's pretty well vented.
 
Eileen,
beautiful fish in your avatar, some sort of fairy wrasse ?... but I already miss your old avatar :) Great info on the battery, and I do agree with both you and Fred that marine batteries are best suited for that purpose.

Mike,
We also have a UPS that you could borrow, I believe it is an APC800 (commercial version, not like one you would buy at CompUSA, got this one from my office to run my equiptment here at home) I also might be able to wrangle an APC 1600 on a loan. The nice thing about Nicholases generator though is that you know exactly how long it will run (jsut measure your gas can and that will tell you), not to mention if a UPS runs out, you are dead in the water (excuse the phrase :(), whereas with a generator you cn always run down and refill the gas tank when it starts running low. Best of luck and let us know if we can help :)
 
It's a male Lyretail Anthias. I have to figure something out for the top before I start to add any fairy wrasse.

Mike - you can borrow the battery and ac/dc converter if you want. Let me know.
 
Thanks everyone, I found a 200watt power inverter at target that was cheap enough that I might as well buy one. Not too bad considering all the battery power in my car, I should be able to keep both return pumps going no problem and probably a few SEIO powerheads.
 
Thanks Dudley, but I don't want to run my whole tank off my car, just needed about 100 watts for the return pumps and that should be sufficient.
 
We lost power yesterday (unexpectantly) for over 6 hours. After the first hour I relialized it was not coming back on any time soon, so I called into the PG&E "helpless" line and was informed, after putting in all of my account information, that the outage impacting my area was known and that "Due to the massive equiptment failures from the heat and storms (** what storms are they talking about ? **) they could not give us an ETR". At this point we naturally panicked, it could have been a canned msg they gave out for any outage, but who knew ?

The interesting thing about having that wonderful UPS we have is that if you haven't plugged in it and kept it charged, it is basically useless :(. So off we went to discover that every backup generator within a 25 mile radius was sold out. So with darkness falling we made a last ditch pit stop at the local Kmart and picked up 2 of the largest Marine Deep Cycle batteries and 2 750 W DC inverters. We ran the sequence return pump off of one and the refrigerator and a fan off of the other. They ran for about 4 hours before power came back on around 1 AM. By my calculations we could have gotten another 2 to 3 hours out of each setup (a more efficient fan would have helped also.. 150 W for a darned room fan is a bit much). If we felt oxygenation was a factor for our tanks we still had our 10w (I think that is the wattage) sweetwater air pump and tons of air line :)

All in all it was a stressful evening, since we didn't know when it was going to be "over". Plus, even though we live in a good neighborhood, all of the power was out for blocks, so our street was pitch black (and of course no moon was out last night). With the streets being pitch black and everyone's alarm systems on battery backup, we were a bit nervous. It was the one time the wife let me load the guns in the house :). People get "stupid" when power goes out like that, especially at night. Call me paranoid, but I prefer to call my self better safe than sorry, and at least am not being called a statistic come morning :) (ok, maybe over dramatizing, but I still say better safe than sorry). That is anyone could have made it through our dogs to get to us in the first place :D

So more than just our tanks and refrigerator are causes for stress with these outages, depending on the times they occur
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7794552#post7794552 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by raddogz
I have regular car battery with a ac/dc converter from radio shack. I use it as back-up for a heater (don't need a stinkin heater when this warm weather and an airpump. Did this on my 58g.

I also have a battery powered air-pump as a just in case as well.
Click to expand...
Does that converter have outlets to plug into?
 
Well my Prius' batteries when fully charged hold about 1.5kWh worth of juice, (basically I could do 100watts of pumps for 15 hours!) when it runs low the engine turns on and charges the batteries back up so my car is a nifty little generator :) Only problem is I can't go anywhere *laugh*
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7805354#post7805354 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Ti
Does that converter have outlets to plug into?
Click to expand...

The $30 (200watt) one I got at Target does, it even comes with clips on it so you can hook it directly to a battery if you want. The only requirement is that it has to be 12V batteries, 24V or 6V ones will kill it.
 
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