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[budman]

I am installing my first outside wood stove , a Legend coal and wood furnace ( time to save money with fuel so high )and I have a question........
Has anyone installed a 12volt backup system in case the power goes out when you are not around. I know some will say get a whole house back up generator and tranfer switch but I can't afford it all at once. I am looking at wiring in a double pole double throw switch so when I lose 110 power it will switch to 12 volt with an inverter. I know I want an inverter with a low amp no load draw, I found some with a no load draw of 0.12 amps. But I know someone out there has a similar setup that can give me advice on an inverter.
I will be running 2 pumps , a Taco 009 (1.4 amps) & 007 (.71 amps) that will only circulate when heat is needed in the house or garage (not 24/7 )and the thermostat on the stove. I know this won't run it forever but if I am at work I won't come home to a frozen system, I will be running it off of a large dozer battery that will be maintained at full charge with a maintainer while the main power is there. When the power goes out it should run the system for at least 12+ hours maybe more until I can start the portable generator and charge the battery back up.
I have also thought of using a solar charger for the battery when there is no power , but I live in the mountains with alot of trees that block the sun most of the day and I don't know how well the solar charger will work without direct sunlight.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[RSI]

I would get a used battery back up that has a bad battery. It should be fairly cheap if you find one and you can connect it to your large battery. You wouldn't need the relay or charger either.
You probably would want to get deep cycle batteries though if you plan on it being needed more than once. Starting batteries don't like to go below 70% charge and will never get full capacity again if discharged much more than that. If you fully discharge them they will die fast.

[gmviso]

Advantage of the UPS (battery backup) is that it has a built in battery charger, but the typical UPS comes with a significanty smaller battery than I assume the dozer battery is. That means the charging circuit will probably maintain a fully charged dozer battery, but it may not charge one that has been discharged because the UPS had to run.

So, if the UPS runs because of a power outage, you may have to disconnect the battery, and charge it seperately.

You can also just keep the pumps plugged in to the UPS and forego the switch. The UPS would automatically switch to battery even if you were away when the power went out.

[RSI]

I forgot about another option if you would rather use an inverter than UPS.
There are some with a pass through mode so they kick on automatically when the power goes out. Works the same as a UPS but no internal battery. I believe one brand that has that is tripplite.

[budman]

First I want to thank all of you for advice, next I don't know much about UPS systems. How big of one would be big enough and how long would the battery last,I would like at least 8 to 12 hrs. The pass through feature on the inverter sounds like I could put as many batteries on the system with high amp hours to be able to get my time I want, now I am not giving up on the UPS system its just I know nothing about them. I like that the UPS has a built in battery charger and the pumps can plug into it.
Please tell me more good things about the UPS ex:size , cost , battery life

Thanks for all the help

[RSI]

The only reason to use a UPS is that you can find them with bad batteries real cheap sometimes and you won't need any of the relay stuff. As mentioned above, the charger may or may not be adequate for a really large battery so you may need to recharge it after a long run.

The inverters with pass through will work exactly the same. If you are buying new then go with the inverter with the pass through mode. It will have a 120v AC connection on it and will supply power to the outlets on it direct till it loses input AC. Then it switches over to inverter power.

If you decide to look for a UPS, total up all the stuff that will need to run at once and I can figure out what rating the minimum is that will work.

[RSI]

I just noticed you are running a Taco 009 pump. What is the reason for that? That is just about the last pump I would use. A 007 would probably pump more water and uses half the power.

[budman]

I looked at the pumps and I have a Taco 0011 & 007 , I don't know why I wrote 009.



RSI to answer your question , if everything runs at one time I will be pulling about 4 amps.Not counting UPS or inverter.