Emergency battery powered insert fan

[TradEddie]

As noted on another thread The Icepocalypse hit the Philly suburbs Wednesday morning, spectacular ice formations, but life threatening road conditions with thousands of downed and snagged trees, more than half the county was without power. It was soon apparent that while my Lopi insert would keep us warm enough even without power to the blower, that it wasn't putting out anything like the heat it did when the blower was available.
For my old smoke dragon, I had a housing made for a PC fan but the Lopi air inlet was a different shape and needed a different housing, and I had never got around to it. So with no TV to watch, I took my tin snips, riveter and the remnant sheet steel from my block off plate.
If necessary, two of those 6V lantern batteries could be wired in series to give the 12V needed for the fan for best airflow, but I thought I would see how long and how well 6V would work before the outside temperatures got too extreme. The results were great, the heat output was noticeably better, the stovetop stayed slightly cooler, and a single fresh new battery lasted more than 24 hours before the power came back this morning.
It's not the neatest job, but it works and it's cheap.

TE

 

[ridensnow23]

TradEddie, that is pretty creative. Guessing you got your power back since you are posting on this forum.

I picked up a little 800 watt generator from harbor freight tools for this purpose. It was about $90 with a coupon. I found it had enough wattage to run the insert blower and my kitchen fridge at the same time.

Another option would be to build a battery bank using RV batteries or golf cart batteries. Set those up with a charger and small inverter and you are good to go. Charge the battery bank off the generator during the day and run the blower off of it at night.

Steven Harris has a good information on how to do this. I think he has some YouTube videos as well.

http://www.battery1234.com/

 

[begreen]

Pretty clever and resourceful TE.

 

[fossil]

Excellent.

 

[tfdchief]

Looks good! I have generators but usually just hook up my inverter to the car or truck battery and run the insert fan. It doesn't use much power and will run forever on one of my vehicle batteries. I have a hard wired plug next to the stove that comes from the garage, so I just connect it to the inverter and vehicle and I am good to go.