generators as back-up

[moikoi]

Quote: Originally Posted by KoiCop the battery was dead, as in flat line dead. Started on two pulls, though. Gonna run it for 15 minutes to charge it up -- anyone know whether that will be enough? Don

Honda that's why they're 4x price for the same watts compare to other brands. just bought a like new EU 3000 (4 months old) gave the guy an arm and a leg for it.

[KoiCop]

my own fault, really. Hadn't touched it in six months.

Oh, and FYI 15 minutes didn't even begin to charge it up -- am giving it 45 minutes more as we speak. Don

[KoiCop]

FYI -- after 1 hr & 45 mins of charging time it's still dead. Manual specifies a .8 amp/hr charger, which will probably turn out to be an oddball rate and difficult to locate.

[jnorth]

Take the battery to Autozone and get a new one. While you are there you could pick up this . .2 amps extra wont hurt it.

[Rich L]

<H3 style="MARGIN: 12pt 0in 3pt">After an extended outage the entire filter system that doesn't have lots of oxygen must be purged.

A sump can be off for a week and still not be depleted but a bead filter with small passages between beads would have a problem in 8 hours. If a system is going to be down for more that a few hours and you're around, you can drain the water, the air replacing the water has lots of air to support the bacteria as long as the media doesn't actually dry out. The big problem here is a lack of food to keep the bacteria alive.

If the system has been down long enough to kill of the bacteria, you will find that it bounces back in a week or so if you don't feed. I've seen a pile of gravel from an old gravel filter sit around for six months while a pond was destroyed and it came back quickly once the pond was back in service.

Why are we so obsessed with our koi, but we don’t bother to do the same for ourselves. A standby generator that will come on by itself and supply the home circuits you consider important would be a better all round investment than a generator that stands around during an outage waiting for you to get home and hook it up. Not much different from buying Hikari Koi Food and taking our kids to MacDonnalds.

Finally, a battery backup can easily continue to supply air to an air fluidized filter for a day or so, and then a small generator well be fine to take over when you can get to it.

I’ve worked with lots large critical power systems and the battery backups were only used to eliminate a break in power until the generators could come on the line.

</H3>

[KoiCop]

Quote: Originally Posted by jnorth Take the battery to Autozone and get a new one. While you are there you could pick up this . .2 amps extra wont hurt it.

We have one of those stores located about 20 minutes from here and they have that item in stock. Will go get 'em this weekend. Don

[RayJordan]

I have a automatic back up system that use two marine batteries and a special inverter/charger that senses when the power cuts off and switches to the battery and inverter to power my main air pump for the pond. When the power comes back on it switches back to regular power and recharges the batteries. I found that the system will power the air pump for about 24 hours.

I have a two year old 8000W generator with electic starter. It will run about everything on the pond and house except for the air conditioners. It has a built in trickle charger and all I do is keep it plugged in and start and run for about 20 minutes every month. It is fairly large (2 ft wide x 2ft tall and 3 ft long on a two wheeled cart) and will run about 10-12 hours on 5 gallons of gas. I have never had to use it in an emergency yet but I sleep better knowing I have it.