miker wrote:

I live in a small town in Canada where the power sometimes goes off in
winter for a few hours. Last year when when it went off for a day and it
was -20C I was concerned about frozen ho****er pipes. Does anyone know
roughly how much power a ho****er furnace takes? My system is small having
one circulation pump, a blower and one thermostat.

Instead of a generator I was thinking of a 1000W inverter and a car battery
just to keep the pipes from freezing. I see a small electrical box with a
ricker switch that is close to the furnace. I could turn it off, cut the
three wires and add a male & female prong and socket plug. When the power
goes out I could turn off the power to the furnace with the electrical box,
unplug it and plug it onto the inverter. I have a 700VA UPS that I could
also use if possible.

miker


You have a Hydronic system with oil-fired "boiler".

In very round approximate numbers,
the burner motor might draw 2.5 Amp
the circ pump motor might draw 3.5 Amp

or about 700-800 watts.

Your UPS may not be of much help if it won't "self-start"
when disconnected from the 60cyc line.

The 1000 VA Inverter should be capable of running both motors,
assuming both don't start together. Try it and find out.

FWIW, I ran an oil "furnace" here off my 1000 VA Inverter
in power outages. It had to start the burner motor and then
the blower fan motor. It complained, but the house didn't freeze!

Jim