Gas/hot water Heating battery backup

edgreenberg

We have natural gas, hot water heat in our 1500 sqft ranch home in upstate New York.  We have two zones and two circulators.   We don't have a generator.  Last night, the power went out for a few hours, and while it was out I was thinking of how I could battery back up the furnace.



I would need to run two circulator pumps, the furnace itself, and optionally, the (gas) hot water heater.   My expectation is that all the furnace needs electricity for is ignition and a pump, not a fan.  Then two circulator pumps.   I really don't (yet) know how much power we're talking about, but I think it lives on one 15 amp breaker.



I envision a bank of RV batteries and a UPS charger/inverter.



I also wonder how reliable the gas supply is when the power is out.  I have a question in to my gas/power company, National Grid.



Am I out of my mind?



Thanks,



Ed Greenberg

Jamie Hall

Not out of your mind

but you will need a pretty decent sized inverter to supply the power required, and it probably will need to be one which gives good clean power (not all of them do).  I believe that UPS devices which can supply that kind of load do exist, and might be the way to go -- although most of them are designed to give you enough time to gracefully shut down your system, rather than power it for any length of time.



Do your wiring carefully -- if you don't use a UPS which floats on the system all the time, you will need a changeover switch just like any other backup power system.

edgreenberg

Maybe an RV converter/inverter

Once I calculate the power load, I was thinking of an RV style battery charger/inverter.  



As far as wiring is concerned, that's why they make electricians



Thanks,



Ed