DC Fan for Power Outages

[cmarc]

We’ve had some interesting weather lately in the Carolinas. With potential for ice and power outages, I wanted to be sure my flush mount insert would still be able pull its weight. So I got some old PC fans that run on 12V DC and rigged a setup that can be run off of a car battery. If my math is right, the current draw is low enough that it could potentially run for days

Doing the initial tests now, but so far it’s moving a decent amount of air and is very quiet compared to the factory blower.

Just wondering if anyone else has done anything similar?

 

[spudman99]

Why not just use a 12v inverter on the battery, then plug in the insert to the inverter and run the regular fans. The internal fan for my BK insert pulls 30 watts. That should run for quite a while off a charged battery.

 

[Whitenuckler]

We’ve had some interesting weather lately in the Carolinas. With potential for ice and power outages, I wanted to be sure my flush mount insert would still be able pull its weight. So I got some old PC fans that run on 12V DC and rigged a setup that can be run off of a car battery. If my math is right, the current draw is low enough that it could potentially run for days

Doing the initial tests now, but so far it’s moving a decent amount of air and is very quiet compared to the factory blower.

Just wondering if anyone else has done anything similar?

If you like the DC fans better, you could run them from a DC power supply. Or, if you had a place to hide the battery, you could add a small battery charger and run it all the time. Then when the power failure hits, it will just keep running and you are free to get more wood..