UPS on pellet boiler?

[myusername]

I'd like to consider adding a UPS to manage the load when we drop utility power before the whole house generator kicks on. I'm very familiar (and have spares of) UPS for computer equipment which don't tend to like having motors driven off of them. Has anyone done this and can comment on any gotchas and if it worked ok?

Our windhager pellet boiler runs from a dedicated 20A 120V circuit and, if I'm reading the specs properly, should draw much more than 1kW during startup but I'm less clear on the draw from the vacuum to refill the hopper or the motor that scrapes the ashes into the bin. Either way a 2200VA UPS should be big enough - I hope a 1500VA would do the job but that's undersized if a 20A circuit is really needed. Since most smaller UPS can't take a hard-wired connection, I would imagine taking the feed for the boiler's dedicated circuit, adding a plug to connect it to the UPS. I suspect that is not code compliant. Perhaps a small automatic transfer switch on the boiler feed?

The reason for all of this is that our boiler does not seem to like losing power. The control panel doesn't always come back until a couple of reboots. In addition, we have had some unburned particulates blasted out of the boiler enough to set off the smoke detectors the next time the boiler fires after a power outage.

Has anyone done this and can provide some feedback and lessons learned?

Thanks

 

[Sparky978]

I'd like to consider adding a UPS to manage the load when we drop utility power before the whole house generator kicks on. I'm very familiar (and have spares of) UPS for computer equipment which don't tend to like having motors driven off of them. Has anyone done this and can comment on any gotchas and if it worked ok?

Our windhager pellet boiler runs from a dedicated 20A 120V circuit and, if I'm reading the specs properly, should draw much more than 1kW during startup but I'm less clear on the draw from the vacuum to refill the hopper or the motor that scrapes the ashes into the bin. Either way a 2200VA UPS should be big enough - I hope a 1500VA would do the job but that's undersized if a 20A circuit is really needed. Since most smaller UPS can't take a hard-wired connection, I would imagine taking the feed for the boiler's dedicated circuit, adding a plug to connect it to the UPS. I suspect that is not code compliant. Perhaps a small automatic transfer switch on the boiler feed?

The reason for all of this is that our boiler does not seem to like losing power. The control panel doesn't always come back until a couple of reboots. In addition, we have had some unburned particulates blasted out of the boiler enough to set off the smoke detectors the next time the boiler fires after a power outage.

Has anyone done this and can provide some feedback and lessons learned?

Thanks

I have done exactly what you are looking to do. I also have Windhager which has worked flawlessly since my install in 2014 and I also noticed when we had power outages that it would go into burnout in the 8-10 seconds my it takes my generator/ transfer switch to flip to emergency power. Then it would have to start the ignition process again. So I did some testing and found that the 1500W UPS I had would not handle the load of the vacuum motor. I felt that for the few times the vacuum motor actually runs that it was not necessary to have that on the UPS. I was able to go through the wiring diagram and isolate the vacuum motor so that was the only item not on the UPS. I would not recommend doing this unless you have a good knowledge of electrical circuitry. It works perfectly. We have had a few outages since and the Windhager never misses a beat. Like you mentioned you could probably use a larger UPS if you want to put your vacuum motor on it. Good luck.

 

[myusername]

Thanks! How, exactly, did you pull the vacuum off if you are willing to share?
For the connection to the UPS, did you just pull out what was wired into the house and put a plug on it, go through a wired ATS that is joint fed by the UPS and street power or something else?

 

[Sparky978]

Thanks! How, exactly, did you pull the vacuum off if you are willing to share?
For the connection to the UPS, did you just pull out what was wired into the house and put a plug on it, go through a wired ATS that is joint fed by the UPS and street power or something else?

I basically wired the vacuum to a constant feed and the rest of the boiler went through the UPS. I replaced my original single pole switch with a 2 pole switch so I still just have 1 service switch, 1 side of the switch has the constant feed for vacuum and the other side has the feed from the UPS. Yes I just put a plug on the boiler feed side and plugged it into the UPS and added a constant receptacle to plug the UPS into.

 

[myusername]

I haven't yet opened up the electrical boxes and electrical connection area of the boiler to see what is going on and I'm unclear from the E drawings in the installation manual. How is the vacuum powered normally - that is, what and where needs to be rerouted to street power to move the vacuum? I'm hoping it is obvious when I open it all up but any pointers are appreciated to short circuit (sorry, had to do it) the effort in difficult to reach spaces.

Is the vacuum motor just a 120V 3-wire feed coming from the vacuum to the boiler that I can reroute and feed while leaving its 12V control wiring alone or is the vacuum powered via some other path?
Thanks

 

[PassionForFire&Water]

use the 240V control voltage from control board that goes to internal relais to power an external relais to switch external 240V to the vacuum.
This needs 20Amp circuit
The BioWIN2 is internally 240V for all electrical parts
BioWIN1 (old model) is 115V for all electrical parts

 

[myusername]

Thanks!

 

[myusername]

To close the loop on this, I found the spare UPS I had (1500VA/900W) insufficient to manage the non-vacuum load. It would pop the internal breaker just during the turn-on motor movement. A 2200VA/1500W might have done the job. Instead I found a good deal on a 3kva/120V UPS which is able to handle the full load with the vacuum just fine. It's oversized for the 20A circuit but should not overdraw since no additional load is applied to the circuit beyond the small overhead of the UPS.
I also added a mini network switch so I can monitor the UPS and the pellet boiler with only having a single network cable to the boiler location.
So far so good.
For anyone finding this later by searching, my boiler isn't in a hot boiler room. If yours is, be wary of colocating the UPS there as heat kills UPS batteries.