UPS for my forced air heater?

[T]

Hi All,

We have three feet of snow on the ground and with my trellised awning came crashing down. And with grids changing every 30 minutes and constantly having to reset my clocks, I thought it would be a good time to find a UPS power supply to backup my natural gas Forced Air Heater's fan:

6 amps (from the label) Rheem RGLA-075A-AR

I would like to put it in line with the power cord to the heater. But since it is in the garage, I would need something I did not have to fret over and that means no lithium batteries.

So far I have only found computer backups and they do not like motors.

You guys have any suggestions?

-T

[danny burstein]

When I took a look through the shelves at MicroCenter, they had a pretty decent selection of UPS'es, and yes, some of them were labled "pure sine wave".

A bit more expensive than the basic ones..

So yeah, they're out there.

Those should be ok for motors, but keep in mind the starting surge current requirements.

[Snag]

Buy a generator and an extension cord . Yeah , pretty blunt , but this is not something that is all that uncommon - even in your neck-o-the-woods . Some generators come ready for multi-fuel use , some need kits . Mine is gasoline but I plan to add an LPG kit since we now have a large tank . My shop is set up to hook the generator to the house via the main panel . I'll have to modify the feed when I add LPG capability or run a gas feed to the shop ... Hmmm , no more 'lectric space heaters ...

[Snag]

Or for a similar cash outlay he could buy a decent size generator and enough extension cords to power the furnace and a couple other things .

[T]

Without giving you the particulars, the only generator that would be feasible would be a natural gas fuel cell generators. And I can't find one.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

[T]

Without giving you the particulars, the only generator that would be feasible would be a natural gas fuel cell generators. And I can't find one.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

[T]

It this a DIY for does someone sell this commercially?

[Ralph Mowery]

That is what I would do. A motor often takes more current to start than to run. I would get a duel fuel (gasolean and propane. Use the propane as it will store and not go bad. If you do run out of propane , gas may be easier to find. If gas is used, try to only use ethanol free gas and run it empty when not in use . If all you want is heat get a small generator so the fuel will last longer. As you have natural gas you may want to get a generator that will run on natural gas.

[T]

Unfortunately, I can not do that. I won't go into particulars.

You know of a natural gas fuel cell backup?

[rbowman]

DIY afaik. Do you need automatic failover? Otherwise a car battery, trickle charger, and suitably sized inverter would be easy to assemble. Deep discharge cycles will shorten a car battery's life but this isn't a solar operation where it's going to get drawn down every night. Same with the charger; you're only trying to float the battery for infrequent (I hope) outages.

It would be primitive but that might get the job done. Line voltage goes to the coil and the NO terminal of one set of contacts. The inverter output goes to the NC side of the other set. When the line voltage drops out, the relay closes and you're powered by the inverter.

There might be some chatter if the line voltage comes and goes before finally dying.

[Pat]

Why does it have to be fuel cell? There are plenty of generators available that can run on natural gas instead of gasoline. I would think fuel cell devices would be rare and expensive.

[T]

I am deliberately not going into it as it would violate someones confidence.

It is either a battery or a fuel cell. If a battery, it need to be something I can extinguish with a standard fire extinguisher, so no lithium.

I would go for a power wall 2 as it is not lithium, but I can not afford it at the moment.

An inline UPS that would do a 6 amp motor would be a good temporary solution. But everything I have found so far is lithium and in the 2000 U$D range, so I'd rather put that toward a power wall and go into debt.

I need to read up on Ed's DIY solution.

[danny burstein]

There certainly are, as there is a market for modest sized fuel cells which are used in (sit down for this one...) powering traffic signs.

Hmmmm... when I just looked at the company that had been providing them, I'm only finding much larger ones. Don't know if the smaller units are still around:

I don't know if they're still available or at what cost, but Way Back, when I was getting the various telecom journals, there were advertisements for "thermo-electric generators".

THese worked by taking heat sources (diesel, propane, or natural gas), heating up one of those magical and mystical semiconductors, and getting electricity out the other end.

(I suspect you'd prefer the above sources for heat as opposed to plutonium... which was widely used by the Russians..)

here's some info:

Good luck

[T]

They look like only large one as you also noticed. I wrote them anyway.

The only heat source I would have to power a thermoelectric device would be my water heater and I double I could get 6 amps out of it.

They use these in unmanned space craft. Probably driven by that russian stuff

Me thinks I am stuck with a power wall.

[trader_4]

I'll bet if you do the math on how long you can run your 6A blower on batteries versus the initial cost, replacement cost of batteries, etc you'll learn that it's impractical, not worth it. With a power outage, generally you can without adding heat to the house for shorter ones and a battery solution isn't going to work when you need it for the serious, extended outages, like a generator will. That's why you don't see them.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Including Voyager 1, launched in 1977 and still working.

[snip]

[T]

It will be total fun when our first Faster Than Light (FTL) spacecraft passes it on the way to the Alpha Centauri system.

Unfortunately, neither one if us will probably be alive to chortle over it.