Back up power for a Taco pump

[2ManyToyz]

Good morning everyone...
First time poster on here...veteran poster on many other forums ranging from snowmobiling to country living and so on.

Need some guidance from experienced people.

I recently set up a Thermo Control 500 stove/boiler in my garage. It's currently heating the garage and my DHW. The DHW system involves a 50 gallon storage tank with a Taco OOR-IFC series circulating pump.

The storage tank feeds a 30 gallon oil fired hot water heater. Five of us in the family including three athletic teenagers...we average 8 showers a day. Future plans are to add radiant floor heating on the first level of our 100+ year old farmhouse.

The Taco pump has to run anytime the stove is generating heat because the storage tank and oil hot water heater are located in the basement. There is about a 35 foot run of copper pipe between the stove/boiler and the storage tank

I'm concerned about a potential disaster if the power goes out.

So I plan on the following system to power the pump:

1) Pump is plugged into a 400 watt inverter. (I run the pump at speed 1, 75 watt power draw)
2) Inverter is hooked up to two batteries...battery's cabled together (they're from boats that are stored in my basement for the winter)
3) Batteries are hooked up to a battery charger

Basically this set up needs to run 24/7 during heating season.

Any potential pitfalls to this system?

Any issues with a power inverter and battery charger running 24/7?

Can I run a trickle cahrger or should I go with a full 12 amps?

Another thought is to keep the pump plugged in to an outlet and only use the back up system when away from home, at night and when a storm is forecasted.

Thanks in advance for your input...great website by the way!

 

[Fi-Q]

I am not an expert, but is your pump runnning fine on this small 400 wAtt inverter ? I am assuming it is one of those cheap car type inverter wich usually are modified sine wave and a lot of small motor don t like them. You ca check on ebay for used UPS and connect you battery to it. The ups will use shoe power when available and automatically switch to battery operation in a power outage. Depending on your electrical k owledge you could build youself a small automatic transfer switch with some relay, I would think iy can be easy to do, but used ups should be the way to go. Do a search there should be a bunch of older thread talki g about ups.

 

[2ManyToyz]

I am not an expert, but is your pump runnning fine on this small 400 wAtt inverter ? I am assuming it is one of those cheap car type inverter wich usually are modified sine wave and a lot of small motor don t like them. You ca check on ebay for used UPS and connect you battery to it. The ups will use shoe power when available and automatically switch to battery operation in a power outage. Depending on your electrical k owledge you could build youself a small automatic transfer switch with some relay, I would think iy can be easy to do, but used ups should be the way to go. Do a search there should be a bunch of older thread talki g about ups.

Thanks for the fedback...I'm not running this set up yet...It's something I'm considering. I'll look into the UPS back up

 

[jebatty]

The UPS backup but remove the internal batteries and hook up your deep cycle batteries instead, series or parallel to match the UPS voltage requirement. The only issue I have with this is whether or not the electronics in a UPS are designed for long term operation. A UPS typically only operates for minutes to allow a normal shutdown. If you go this route, get a used UPS, even one with dead batteries, and keep the cost down. Unless you have a good use for the UPS internal batteries, don't pay for them.

 

[2ManyToyz]

The UPS backup but remove the internal batteries and hook up your deep cycle batteries instead, series or parallel to match the UPS voltage requirement. The only issue I have with this is whether or not the electronics in a UPS are designed for long term operation. A UPS typically only operates for minutes to allow a normal shutdown. If you go this route, get a used UPS, even one with dead batteries, and keep the cost down. Unless you have a good use for the UPS internal batteries, don't pay for them.

I did a search on threads regarding back up power and it seems like I need a relay switch that detects when the power goes out and switches the pump over to my back power source.

Anyone have suggestions on how to set this up and where to buy a relay switch?

 

[jebatty]

A computer style UPS has this built in. House power goes out, UPS power goes on almost instantly, fast enough so that a computer won't even shut down.

 

[__dan]

Good morning everyone...
First time poster on here...veteran poster on many other forums ranging from snowmobiling to country living and so on.

Need some guidance from experienced people.

I recently set up a Thermo Control 500 stove/boiler in my garage. It's currently heating the garage and my DHW. The DHW system involves a 50 gallon storage tank with a Taco OOR-IFC series circulating pump.

The storage tank feeds a 30 gallon oil fired hot water heater. Five of us in the family including three athletic teenagers...we average 8 showers a day. Future plans are to add radiant floor heating on the first level of our 100+ year old farmhouse.

The Taco pump has to run anytime the stove is generating heat because the storage tank and oil hot water heater are located in the basement. There is about a 35 foot run of copper pipe between the stove/boiler and the storage tank

I'm concerned about a potential disaster if the power goes out.

So I plan on the following system to power the pump:

1) Pump is plugged into a 400 watt inverter. (I run the pump at speed 1, 75 watt power draw)
2) Inverter is hooked up to two batteries...battery's cabled together (they're from boats that are stored in my basement for the winter)
3) Batteries are hooked up to a battery charger

Basically this set up needs to run 24/7 during heating season.

Any potential pitfalls to this system?

Any issues with a power inverter and battery charger running 24/7?

Can I run a trickle cahrger or should I go with a full 12 amps?

Another thought is to keep the pump plugged in to an outlet and only use the back up system when away from home, at night and when a storm is forecasted.

Thanks in advance for your input...great website by the way!

There are two basic types of battery chargers, float type and trickle chargers. Float type chargers are made for long term maintenance. A trickle charger left on the battery for a long time can be expected to ruin the battery. The issues are voltage regulaton and AC ripple. Poor voltage regulation or AC ripple in the charging voltage both shorten the battery lifetime. The inverter load on all the time will be electrically noisy on the battery charging circuit(AC ripple).

That's why the posts above talk about using the hardware from an old UPS with a larger battery capacity. The UPS runs straight on utility, float charges the battery, and switches over to inverter only after detecting power loss.

The only problem with experimenting is the costs of the batteries. If perfectly cared for, batteries may have an expected lifetime of 5 years. If you play around with the numbers, how many batteries plus replacemet costs, other alternatives may look better.

The small portable suitcase type generators in that load range are very inexpensive and sip fuel. If you run the stove basically manual and always attended firing, someone there to quickly swap power to the tiny generator, that could be a system worth spending a few dollars on. Any battery system, there's no guarantee it will be there when you need it because the batteries are high maintenance and need replacement over time.

 

[ewdudley]

Since the unit is in a garage, an option to consider would be a heat-dump device above the stove fed by gravity and controlled with an AutoMag type device, same as many boilers.

You could use a baseboard finned-tube array, or maybe a 50 gallon tank of cool water.