Question for a Smrt person

[Redfish]

Its not that I am trying, not to give EcoTech $150.00 for their battery back up for their MP power heads. Its just that I think we can build a system for our tanks for the same amount of money or less, that would run the power heads for a longer period of time, but there is a problem that I just can't get around, am sure their is an answer for this. You need a power inverter, not a big one, power heads, no matter what brand, don't use many watts to operate. You need a battery, I am thinking a deep cycle battery, like the ones fisherman use to run their trolling motors all day. Ok, this is where the smrt person comes in, I have never seen how a power inverter works, but I may know the answer, we will see. You have to have a way for the power head to know its not getting power from the wall and to take power from the battery. Can you take your power head on the tank, plug it into the power inverter, plug the power inverter into the wall outlet, take a wire with two alligator clips on it from the power inverter, hook it up to the battery. Would this work, would the power head on the tank draw power from the wall outlet and then from the battery if the power were to go out. I know you would have to have a battery charger trickle charge the battery, or every so often, take the battery and put it on a charger. I want to get something set up before the dreaded, you know what season gets here. I have checked on power inverter prices, you can get them pretty cheap, at least the ones big enought to run a power head, the battery would cost the most. Did I spell smrt right?

[Redfish]

Here it is

http://www.bostonreefers.org/forums/sho ... ery-Backup

[Redfish]

http://www.amazon.com/Humminbird-770028 ... 94&sr=8-11

[Redfish]

You have to size the charger with the amps of the battery, the more amps of the battery, the bigger the charger you will need. I am not the smart one here, someone is feeding me this info, I am just passing it along to ya'll

[Gerwin]

meh just buy the Ecotech and be done have some all ready in route

[Redfish]

I guesss that would work also

[Scott Allen]

I have seen some people use battery backups intended for computer use. Comes with a hell of a warranty against surge!! But they typically don't last nearly as long as the Ecotech backups.

[jjordyyall]

yeah the UPS(uninterrupted power supply) we use up here at work will give your computer about 3 minutes of battery backup. we strictly use them in case the power goes out to give our generator time to kick on without users losing there data. Depending on what you plugged in to the UPS you could get more or less time. but i believe ecotech backups can give your power heads 8 hours which is a long time so Scott is right you could do it with a UPS but you wouldn't get much fail safe time.

P.S if you do decide you want to go with a UPS APC makes the best one I believe the one we use is the ES 550 capable of 330 watts and around $50.

[Redfish]

I will most likely go with Gerwins idea (which I should have done to start with ) and just buy the EcoTech back up, pretty sound advice I was thinking if I could increase the run time by 2 at half the price why not go that route. There is something to be said about the EcoTech back up, one unit, self contained, nice, neat looking, easy to mount. Even if I buy 2 it would only be $150 more than what I could make them for and would look a whole lot neater looking under the stand without anymore wires and batteries running all over the place, have plenty of that now