Power Outage

[blazzent]

I had a "scheduled" power outage in my area last night at 10 PM that lasted until 3 AM(was told supposed tobe until 5 AM). I didn't have the money for a battery backup that would last that long so off to autozone for a cheap 400w inverter, 50 bucks, hoping I could make that work. I hooked it up to my toyota corolla and ran an extension cord into my house. I have 3 ph, 1 ps ph, 1 CPR aqua fuge ph, and 1 200w heater. The lights i didn't have to worry about of course. I decided that I would run 1 maxijet 600(8watts), the aquafuge ph (8w) and the heater (200w). I figured that the battery would last 2 hours at least, so I set the alarm on my cell for 2 am, 4 am, and 6 am. I would stay awake for the first 2 hours, until 12 midnite. Well 10 Pm rolls around and sure enough, pop! the power goes out and the race is on. I went and unplugged the power strip from the wall and plugged it into the extenstion cord, ran outside and turned on the inverter, all set. Back inside I made sure things were running, they were, so i started to settle in for a long night. A few candles and a fire in the fire place and a good book. 11 Pm, things were going good, I was just praying that the power wouldn't be out that long. So 11:45 comes and things are still running, the inverter has a alarm that sounds when the battery is low(dying, dead). Well... I fell asleep and guess what, the alarm sounds, 1 AM, the battery is dying. So I run out to the car with a flashlight, start the car...barely starts. I open my durango and quickly hook up the inverter to it. I figured if I got 3 hours from a little battery I should get the same from the durangos battery if not more. Now look at the toyota, and not wanting to take chances I took a 20 min drive to charge the car battery. I got back and thought well lets see if the toyota can give me another 3 hours...not going to happen. It gave me only enough until 2 Am. Back outside to hook it up to my durango again, hoping it would get me through until 5 am. back inside I fell asleep again and all of a sudden... all the lights came on, 3 Am. So I unhooked the inverter, plugged every thing back into the wall and went to bed for the final time.

Question: Would a reef tank be ok without any circulation and heater for 7 hours?

 

[alum]

What a night then eh? lolz

sorry, don't know the answer...but...i'd say no because the water would cool down too much and that's not good.

 

[SkiFletch]

Question: Would a reef tank be ok without any circulation and heater for 7 hours?

No, not at all. I wouldnt go for more than an hour without circulation. It can go without heat for 7 hours this time of year, no problem, but not water circulation. Why not just run the toyota? A car at idle only uses maybe 5-10 gallons of gas a day. Better to spend the little money on gas and save your tank.

Good call on the inverter. When I lived through 3.5 days without power I used an inverter to give my tank flowrate (no heat) and ran my car the whole time. Used 15 gallons of gas, but my tank survived. Got really really really cold (high 50s, low 60s), but with the flowrate everything came back when I got the heat back up

 

[blazzent]

Wow Ski, 3.5 days without power, I can't imagine going through that. I never thought of just leaving the car running the whole time. One problem though would be somebody bustin the window and driving off with the car. Wait I could have just blocked the drive way with my work van. I could have slept the whole night. I am going to save up for a descent battery back up though, one that will at least give me 8 hours of juice.

 

[SkiFletch]

Wow Ski, 3.5 days without power, I can't imagine going through that. I never thought of just leaving the car running the whole time. One problem though would be somebody bustin the window and driving off with the car. Wait I could have just blocked the drive way with my work van. I could have slept the whole night. I am going to save up for a descent battery back up though, one that will at least give me 8 hours of juice.

Hehe, good luck. Remember, batteries are complicated no matter what anyone tells you. A big part of my job is working with batteries of many types (lead acid, NiMH, LiIon, LiPo, and experimental versions of all the above) and I can tell you that properly choosing and maintaining batteries is not easy. While the lithiums offer a far better power density, their low life (2 years) and poor performance when stored with a full charge make them poor choices for battery backup. Charging is also difficult and expensive. NiMH offer good power density, have a longer shelf life and store well fully charged, making them good candidates for battery backup, yet again, charging is expensive and complicated.

lead acid have very long lives and store well fully charged, and chargers are relatively cheap and easy to use. The only drawbacks for lead acid is the low power density and the fact that you need to keep the cells wet with RO water. If you let them dry out, the battery will likely fail or suffer diminished capacity. Its a good idea to check the cells monthly for water level and keep them on a charger/cycler in storage. With lead acid, I'd look into marine or boat batteries as those are far larger than car batteries thus boasting higher capacities.

Work out your watt draw and then compare that to the battery's amp hour capacity times its operating voltage to compare watts to watts. Then divide the battery wattage by your watt draw to find out how many hours it will run. And remember, a heater may not be necessary but pumps are.

 

[fishlette]

Wow Ski, 3.5 days without power, I can't imagine going through that. I never thought of just leaving the car running the whole time. One problem though would be somebody bustin the window and driving off with the car. Wait I could have just blocked the drive way with my work van. I could have slept the whole night. I am going to save up for a descent battery back up though, one that will at least give me 8 hours of juice.

Hehe, good luck. Remember, batteries are complicated no matter what anyone tells you. A big part of my job is working with batteries of many types (lead acid, NiMH, LiIon, LiPo, and experimental versions of all the above) and I can tell you that properly choosing and maintaining batteries is not easy. While the lithiums offer a far better power density, their low life (2 years) and poor performance when stored with a full charge make them poor choices for battery backup. Charging is also difficult and expensive. NiMH offer good power density, have a longer shelf life and store well fully charged, making them good candidates for battery backup, yet again, charging is expensive and complicated.

lead acid have very long lives and store well fully charged, and chargers are relatively cheap and easy to use. The only drawbacks for lead acid is the low power density and the fact that you need to keep the cells wet with RO water. If you let them dry out, the battery will likely fail or suffer diminished capacity. Its a good idea to check the cells monthly for water level and keep them on a charger/cycler in storage. With lead acid, I'd look into marine or boat batteries as those are far larger than car batteries thus boasting higher capacities.

Work out your watt draw and then compare that to the battery's amp hour capacity times its operating voltage to compare watts to watts. Then divide the battery wattage by your watt draw to find out how many hours it will run. And remember, a heater may not be necessary but pumps are.

my husband and i have been pondering this of late ourselves. we were thinking about getting a generator. would that work maybe?

 

[SkiFletch]

Absoloutely, in fact its an ideal solution.

 

[fishlette]

Absoloutely, in fact its an ideal solution.

fantabulous thank you

 

[leecara]

reading this it has worried me so i have warned my parents that if we lose power(as are area does )that we can be losing easily£250 and 5-6 months work so we also have now decided to look into gnerators but i dont know what they look like what i should be searching for so... could i ask what should i be looking at
(i have 13 plugs lol)
but i only would need to run 1 filter 1 heater 2powerheads i think so what genrator should i be looking at and what type of prices are we looking at here or is there any good websites ??

cheers lee

 

[atmmachine816]

Leecara you will have to find out how much your things will need to run but probably the smallest generator will work, Ski can probably help you on that.

 

[leecara]

ok cheers
but i dont really know how much power i need to run them il just have to wait for ski or some1 to help me out with the techinal stuff lol

 

[atmmachine816]

Look on them or a little tag on the eletrical wire, it should say on that. I think it's required too.

 

[SkiFletch]

Its tough to find ones under 2000watts and a 2000watt generator will power lights, heater, filters, and powerheads for most 90g systems I've ever seen . If you can find one for 1500watts, that would do the job too, but those are tough to find, at least in the states.

Edit, if you go for a bigger one (2500-3000 watts), you can power your refrigerator, basement sump pump (if you have one), and maybe a small TV in case of a longer outage...