Duane Attaway wrote:
On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Brad wrote:
Thanks Duane. I am running about 10-12 feet of 10 gauge water resistant wire in a window and into the ac breaker. I will have the black wire connected to one breaker, the red wire into the other breaker, and both the green and white connected to the grounding block in the box.
When I throw the main, am I totally off the grid? Is there any chance that poor wiring in the house could make this unsafe? I have a new 120 amp service that was inspected by the city, but I cannot swear all the wiring in the house is the greatest...it's an older home.
BTW, I am the one on the list that gave you those UPS's...sounds like they are getting good use.
When you turn off the main, your circuit to the grid is off. The National Electrical Code specifies a transfer switch and something else if I remember right. Yours and mine may work well in an emergency. Hopefully one day I will get the money for a proper transfer switch and other things to meet the Code. Its a well written guide that almost eliminates any possibility of accidents.
Oh thank you! I recognized your name after I sent the email! This UPS has been very nice during power outages. One of these days, I'm going to add solar power to this project. If you ever need any help throwing large stuff in the dumpster again, please let me know. ;)
-=Duane http://dattaway.org
Well- my comments would be partially redundant save for my just having used parts of what I preach . The furnaces at the campground have been fitted with standard 3 prong 15A plugs that are usually plugged into a socket assigned to it . No expensive transfer switch or chance of a back feed - simply unroll a heavy enough extension cord- Almost took advantage of a camper with a genset tonight" If the power stays off I may beg to plug into your genny"
Most rooms have a cheap flashlight from walmart or target of the "comes on when power fails type " . I have a 1500 W inverter fitted with car jumper cables on it's input side . Had tonight's power outage- from 2am till 345 or so been longer I would have hooked it up to a car -to run each furnace long enough to keep pipes and us from freezing .Hardly ideal or painless but bare survivability beats the alternatives . Hacking standard UPS boxes to allow external batteries demands caution as the battery circuit is often "hot" to earth ground! The automatic flashlights turned possible panic into a mild annoyance . Knowing we had a heating backup if the power stayed helps keep calm too , Now to be fair- I was VERY envious of our overnight camper who had his genset autostart on the power failure ! That autostarting genset being what woke us up to hear the silence of no power .
This experience may make me speed up the Biodiesel project . Several vendors are selling former rail reefer power units based on the Detroit diesel 2-71 engine and a 30A 3 phase alternator head . If connected properly one of these could keep a barely normal lifestyle . Cost - 1 to 2 K genset itself and about the same to take it from a skid mounted configure to a seamless autostart with transfer switch . NOT cost effective compared to my ancient tripp-lite square wave inverter and running a car . Used on Biodiesel in making the meter run backwards may have er- Potential . Watts the point in missing a pun in an ot post anyways ? To make the Biodiesel and generator thread back to topical we COULD use Linux to design the systems and as control software . Even a future issue of handshaking with a utilities SCADA system to isolate an "island" of one or more distributed generators - As some -see Sprint campus etc may have enough extra to power some priority neighbors- Gas stations , grocery stores etc -how many minutes of an hour do furnaces need to run to keep average houses at 50F ? Thus rotating feeds into residential areas if reclosers could be so programmed ? Hmn - the nontrivial modeling of such schemes cries out for a Linux cluster !
Oren