Hi Lew,
When I am home, I can easily continue to do what I do now:
The power goes out (often ice storms, but about a week ago a fellow drove into a pole), and I fire up my portable Honda generator, connect it up, and rest easy.
The issue is that we are often away from our home...
I am trying to find a reasonable way to protect our place from freezing, and flooding, in that situation.
I appreciate your comments,
See my post RE: SCADA
Lew
Kenneth wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
*trim*
It sounds to me like you need an alternative. Would a passive drain of some sort be feasable? If you can keep water from entering your basement, you don't have to pump it out.
How about a neighbor? His power's likely to be out at the same time as yours, so he could start your generator and switch the sump pump over. (You'll probably have to bake him a cake now and again or something.)
How much water are we talking about anyway? Does the pump run constantly as it's raining, or does it run maybe 4 times a day? You could enlarge your sump pit and size it to fit your longer average outages.
How about... I just thought of this: A pump that's turned by water coming down your down spout. When it starts to rain, the pump starts going and drawing water out of your basement. You might even be able to use a water powered sump pump by directing the water from your roof through it.
Solar electricity is getting better. You might be able to charge a bank of batteries during the day and have them run your sump pump.
You could just go for a whole house generator and enjoy the extra power it can provide while you're there. It's sure nice to not have to reset all those clocks.
Keep thinking and asking, someone's bound to come to a workable solution.
Puckdropper
Another thought:
Forget trying to react to a loss of power, use an alternate power source from the git go for the sump pump and the furnace.
A couple of solar panels, some T-105, 6VDC golf cart batteries wired in series to provide either 12VDC or 24VDC and a sine wave inverter to run the sump pump on a full time basis.
The more batteries the better within reason,
6-8 would be manageable, IMHO.Standard stuff on a crusing sailboat, and definitely less costly than a SCADA.
Lew
Ken,
I don't have the link right handy but for whatever generator you end up with, you can get a converter for it that allows the generator to run on gasoline, propane or natural gas. I have the converter on my 8550W unit and it works but it is a bit hard to start on propane when it's cold. So I start it on gas, then switch to propane. Reason I bring that up is you'll get a longer run time than what you get on 5 gal of gas on the typical home generator. That gets you about 12hrs of run time with a 50% load. a 20lb bottle of propane gives you a little less run time but.... You can get larger propane tanks that would give you plenty of run time.
You could get one like this that has an LP option - with electric start capability
A battery backup sump pump with a battery to give you days of run time (on / off cycling) will probably go for about $3k. One house in our neighborhood has one - and it did work while she was out of town last year for a week, so it was money well spent according to her. Only to have her basement flooded (us too...) a month later.
Justify the cost by esitimating the damage caused if the sump pump doesn't work while you're gone. Add in freezing pipes, lost food in the fridge and freezer and whatever else your losses could be if you're not around.
Bob S.
The 7KW Generac is as small as I know. I am reasonably sure no manufacturer bothers with any thing smaller. It gets to a point where the actual manufacturing costs are pretty much the same the smaller units. Say you could find a 4KW unit. Everything for the 4KW would pretty much be the same as the 7KW that is available. The cost for the smaller generator head and engine would only affect the manufacturing cost by a small margin. You still need a cabinet to put it all in, plus a transfer switch. My bet is the manufacturing cost would be $100 less than the available 7KW unit, so the manufacturer does not bother to build them. So you want to buy a 4KW for $1800, versus a 7KW for $2000? Buck up and buy the 7KW and put a few more circuits on the transfer, and enjoy!
In another perspective, I work as a service tech for a company that sells standby Generac, standby generators. In 10 years we have never sold a unit less than 10KW. 10 years ago Generac built a 6KW unit. We had two in stock, and they sat in stock until my boss built a new home. He put both 6KW units on his home to get rid of them! There is virtually no market for the small units, in fact our main sellers are 13-16KW units. Greg
Hi again,
Many thanks to all...!
You have pointed me in useful directions,
How about this for the pump part:
How's this (work safe):
A battery backup and inverter is a possibility, but we have had outages as long as four days, and also have had situations in which our pump cycled on and off every thirty seconds or so for a week.
If those two situations were to coincide, I would need quite a pile of batteries to stay dry.
Sincere thanks, as before,
Kenneth,
How about going for the smallest automatic generator that you can find and then allowing your neighbor to tap into it during a power failure, right after he checks your sump pump? That sounds like a win-win situation to me.
Your neighbor may have to do some leg work at his house, but he should be able to run his circulating pump for heat, his well pump (assume he is on well water as you are), and maybe a light or two. Granted, not all at the same time, but it does offer him some incentive. Just a thought.
Peter.
I researched this problem when we were living with a generator.. Most places suggested a Honda 5000 and optional control panel.. a lot of bucks, but a sweet unit..
mac
Please remove splinters before emailing
As long as the neighbor is connecting to a receptacle, that's fine. If the connection to the neighbor's house is hard-wired, then you have both Code and safety issues. So install a GFCI-protected outdoor outlet on the side facing the neighbor, and all is well.
Hi Mac,
Am I correct that the unit you mention is not automatic? That is, it would not start on its own in the event of an outage.
Thanks,
Hi Peter,
Indeed, it would be a win-win, but...
My closest neighbor is on the order of a half mile. If I could afford that cord, I could afford a big automatic generator!
All the best, and thanks for thinking about it,
How about this and the remote start generator of your choice along with the above battery powered pump?
I think your best bet is to just bite the bullet and get a 7KW Guardian or the like.
You can get one of those for about $2200 and shipping and installation. The lowest I can find a UL approved automatic transfer switch switch and an electric-start portable for is aroune $1500 and then you're going to have to rig a fuel supply and whatnot and by the time you're done you'll likely be back up to that $2200.
The killers are the need for electric start so the thing can start automatically and for a UL approved transfer switch. You just don't find electric start on very small generators--in the low capacities they're made to be portable and adding electric start adds weight that reduces portability.
Kenneth,
I wonder if a solar or wind powered charger would be sufficient for the battery backup on the sump pump. 15-20 hours is quite good by itself, then add to that changing from solar power during the day...should be enough to keep the sump pump running intermittely for a long time.
JAT
Skip
Kenneth,
I wonder if an RV heater(s) would fit your needs. These are designed to run on propane and have a 12v electrical system. You could use batteries recharged with solar cells to keep the batteries going. The heater dosent have to keep the place toasty warm...just above 32 degrees most of the time.
Skip
If his pump is cycling every 30 seconds and draws say 2 amps then that's a 110 watt load---if it's winter then triple that because the days are short and you've got 330 watts worth of collector required, plus losses due to various inefficiencies. Not considering air mass and average cloud cover at his location and suchlike, I'm pulling 500 watts out of my butt as a number. At the 8 bucks a watt that I'm seeing in various places, that's $4000 worth of collector alone, then you have to add inverter, batteries, etc.
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