1/3 HP draws about 2 amps continuously, and more only momentarily, at startup. I can always verify it with a amp meter, but I would be surprised to see a big difference.
If the battery pack in the APC UPS has a 12 AH capacity at 48 volts, that translates to about 4.6 hours at 125 volts and 1 amp. Reducing that to allow for power losses to 3 AH at 125 volts, I can see that I can run this motor for about 1.5 hours. Even 1 hour would be fantastic, and looks achievable. I will also put my networking stuff on the UPS, which would add perhaps 100 watts at the very most.
"Reducing that to allow for power losses to 3 AH at 125 volts, I can see that I can run this motor for about 1.5 hours. Even 1 hour would be fantastic"
What fantastic news! You can run your furnace for a whopping whole hour in a power outage. I'm beginning to see where your screen name came from.
I see no reason to become sarcastic and somehow invoke my screen name, because of that correction. "
You chose the screen name, not me. You came in here pointing out that lightning had hit a tree near your house and you wanted to use a UPS for surge protection. Several of us have pointed out to you that a surge protector located in a UPS somewhere in the house is ineffective. For a surge protector to be really effective, lightning needs to be earthed to ground through a short path. Look at any industiral facility, or even the TV cable service that enters your house and you will see that surge protection is placed close to entry with as short a ground path as possible. A UPS used as a surge protector located a long way from an earth ground isn't going to be anywhere near as effective as installing a whole house surge protector. Plus, the whole house unit will protect everything in the house. But thqt apparently went right over your head.
And now you no longer appear concerned about lightning at all. Instead you want to use a UPS to back up a furnace? Even if you can run it for an hour, very few people would think it's worth the trouble. Even if I got if for free, I'd sell the UPS on Ebay, and use the money for real lightning protection. But then you sound like the guy with the big TV that listens to the kids in the store that tell you how you need the oxygen free $100 cables for the digital interconnect components. Did you buy the extended warranty too?
Yes. So, I agreed that I need other forms of surge protection.
The question I asked concerned redesign of my house's electricals to suit my new needs, and the issue of UPSes concerned more than surge protection.
And, by the way, this UPS does protect loads from surges and lightnings. It is not useless.
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``Protects connected loads from surges, spikes, lightning, and other power disturbances.''
Remember that a furnace does not run continuously. An hour of runtime, depending on ambient temperature, may translate into much longer time if the unit only runs intermittently.
I did not buy the extended warranty or monster cables.
You are beating a dead horse here, falsely implying that I do not want to use whole house surge protection.
The UPSes would not fetch much on ebay because even though at least 3 out of 4 seem to work, they are missing some front panels. I will sell at least one, but can make good use of at least two and see nothing ignorant about what I plan to do with UPSes. I could not care less if my UPSes are missing panels, they will be in the furnace room anyway.
If you have a suggestion about a particular whole house surge protector, I will be happy to listen.
furthermore... I am beginning to question the assertion that a whole house surge protector is going to to anything worthwhile to protect my electronics.
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`` No so called whole house protector is really suitable for electronics protection in home theater systems.''
If so, then the suggestions for a WHSP may be helpful for protecting my refrigerator, or some other motor loads, but it is fully beside the point as far as protection of my home theater stuff is concerned.
Whereas the APC UPSes that I am going to install, do offer various levels of protection, like conditioning, etc.
By itself whole house protection is incomplete. It should be teamed with point source protection.
Why do you seem to be so set to go against standard practice? What everyone is trying to tell you is standard practice and it became standard practice because of experience.
UPS is for maintaining power during a blackout or extreme brownout. Some (computer grade UPS) may output power so dirty (in battery backup mode) as to be a threat to small electric motors. Therefore many UPSes may not provide another number that should concern you: Total Harmonic Distortion or THD.
For better transient protection, enhance or expand the earthing system. For example, an AC controller (apparently) is not under an equipotential earth. It could be if part of a halo ground. From what I read, a transient entered the AC controller from earth, passed through AC electric and mains circuit breaker, then regained earth somewhere on another side of the building. An expanded earthing system would include the AC controller AND make an existing 'whole house' protector more effective.
No, one typically does not protect from all direct lightning strikes. But then a human may never see that so rare 200,000+ amp strike. If such strikes were common, then we would massively expand the household earthing system so that even
200,000+ strikes did not perform damage. Meanwhile, that is what commercial sites do to make their facilities protected from everything. A massive earthing system is for protection from the few; the rare and most powerful CG lightning.
Household earth> Well, perhaps I was unclear, but I think that a whole house surge
For lightning protection your looking for UL-96a. For insurance you will need to have the installation inspected and receive a "Master Label". Lightning protection is not rocket science. But it is certainly not running an extension cord out to your Christmas yard lights either. You can buy the parts from several manufactures. HINT..... your going to need more than one ground rod. Lightning protection is a sacrificial path to ground. I can guarantee you even if you have a Master Label on the system if your house gets hit your going to have a lot more damage than a busted TV. I worked on a house in Prescott Valley that got hit. We tore every sheet of drywall off and all of the stucco. Replaced every piece of wiring and plumbing. Not much of a fire, just a lot of black lines on the stucco and drywall. Thank god they were not home. Every finial on the roof was gone and all of the down leads were zebra marks on the finish of the home. Yep on a hill out by itself.
A whole house surge protection device in the electrical service panel will, HELP....... Please check the SOARS book on grounding at your public library. Surge protection per the IEEE is done in zones. You must have 2 of the three zones covered/overlapped for "protection" . Third zone is the utility and their concept of protection is nothing that will do you any good.
Proper grounding of your dish and the underground cable feeding your home will, HELP...... This does not mean driving a ground rod out there. Unless you follow the "supplemental grounding" in the NEC. Ever wonder why they tell you stand with your feet together during a lightning storm?
Ain't no guarantees that after you install all of this equipment that it will even help.
Each site is different. Please consult local pros for advice before you start funding the bush economy.
Actually, plug-in UPS does not protect from typical surges and lightning. To do so means it must have a less than 10 foot connection to earth ground. Manufacturer claims protection for a typically nonexistent type of surge ... so that you will assume it protects from all types of surges. Plug-in UPSes have only one function - maintain power during blackouts and extreme brownouts.
Where in that APC site are specific numbers for protection from each type of transient? They don't make that claim. In previous times, APC would claim protection from only normal mode transients. Now they pretend all transients are same - make no mention of each mode of transient - so that one will assume all transients are the same mode.
APC 2200 UPS produces a sine wave. It has a surge energy rating of 880 joules. See
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In comparison, the Intermatic whole house surge protector offers 1,200 joules of clamping protection. Not terribly much more than 880 joules of APC 2200, given a much bigger protection responsibility.
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Can you clarify what you mean by this. I have decent ground, very close to the panel.
By AC controller, do you mean an Air Conditioning controller?
It seems that when I use UPSes, a whole house surge protector is more of those "peace of mind" items, in relation to stuff that is protected by UPSes. That's especially so since its clamping voltage is too high to protect electronics, anyway.
It has a role, to protect motors and electronics not on UPSes, but I find it dangerously close to oxygen free cables and other gobbledygook "peace of mind" items. I am hesitating to buy one. I may decide to do so, and will read more information.
What I am absolutely clear is that use of UPSes has numerous benefits and next to zero downsides.
I am not planning on using those, except for low value items. No sense to spend a lot of money to protect some $50 POS.
Thanks SQLit. I do indeed want to avoid wasting money.
I think that there is a cost/benefit ratio at work here and spending thousands of $$, to protect equipment worth thousands of $$s, against an unlikely event, does not make sense.
So... I do not need protection against direct lightning strike that blows up all wiring, I rather want to be protected against lower power, but more frequent events such as the one that already happened near my house 3 years ago.
I will use cheap used APC 2200 UPSes for the expensive stuff.
I may use a whole house protector also.
You made an excellent point on grounding the dish. I will also try to use some sort of surge protection on the TV cables.
How does your telcos protect a computer connected to overhead wires everywhere in town? They use only 'whole house' type protectors AND expand that earthing system immensely. They don't put protector adjacent to electronics. Protector adjacent to electronics will not nothing effective because the earth ground is too far away. Therefore electronics suffers no damage during direct lightning strikes that occur every year in every town.
Your home entertainment system needs equivalent protection. Any effective protection adjacent to electronics is already inside those electronics.
Once you have enhanced the earthing for that 'whole house' protector, consider a series mode protector on the power cord. This is a major and expensive line filter that will also filter AC noise from the entertainment system. Brand names include Zerosurge, Brickwall, and Surgex.
But again, if you make conclusions from the gross half-truths promoted by APC, et al, then you also want to buy an East River Bridge - that may be available on sale due to a transit strike.
Don't believe for a moment that the APCs do significant line conditioning. They hype major claims - without numbers. IOW they may do some conditioning - and then charge tens of times more money for it.
If c> furthermore... I am beginning to question the assertion that a whole
There are basically two kinds of events that can damage electronics:
1) power surge between hot and neutral. Which is fully taken care of by the UPS. 880 joules clamping power, see
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2) a sudden common mode voltage surge between neutral/ground conductor and whatever is the other path to ground for the devices. This is a rare event at best, since conduit does provide a path to ground and could only have high voltage at the receptacle if directly hit by thousands of amps of current passing from the receptacle to ground.
And most home equipment, normally, is set on wooden furniture and does not have any alternate path to ground.
This is basically a scenario of lightning striking the house directly, and not only that, but entering through the receptacle that I am trying to protect.
An extreme rarity.
I would like you to clarify the scenario that you are referring to, as I have a hard time visualizing just what exactly you are referring to that UPSes do not protect against.
I would like to hear a little more detail on the exact mode of transient that you are referring to.
My UPS provides uner 5% THD, see the spec sheet I mentioned.
At 100% efficiency, a fully loaded 1/3HP motor will draw 2A (750 / 3 / 120V) _all_ the time, and many times that (probably > 15A momentarily) during startup.
Startup with a blower takes a long time.
[A blower motor is fully loaded all the time.]
But motors aren't 100% efficient. Fractional HP motors less so.
In reality, you're going to see at _least_ 3A continuously, more like
4-5A. I've seen 1/4HP motors with 12A FLA on the plate.
Well lets see what this UPS outputs. It also claims to output a sine wave. Two 200 volt square wave with up to a 270 volt spike between those square waves. Yes, that is a sine wave - and a few other things also. But when selling to people who don't always demand numbers, then this UPS outputs a sine wave.
Again, what are the numbers for that sine wave. To get a better sine wave, that UPS costs what - $500.
Again, APC also outputs much propaganda to deceive by telling half truths. Again, what is the THD for that UPS? A number that should be there with so many other numbers.
800 joules is typically undersized. If they were providing accurate numbers, then they also said where each joules were connected between. This because no all 800 joules in a plug-in unit would be used in protection. This being different in a 'whole house' protector where all joules are used. Just anther reason why 'whole house' protectors have higher life expectancies.
To be equivalent to the Intermatic protector, the APC must be 3600 joules plus any other joules found on the telephone line or network cable protector. Don't for a minute think APC is a trustworthy company. They routinely forget to provide essential numbers. Its called lying by telling half truths.
But aga> APC 2200 UPS produces a sine wave. It has a surge energy rating of 880 > joules. See
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