On 28/12/2013 15:40, wrote:
On Sat, 28 Dec 2013 13:49:15 +0000, wrote:

On Sat, 28 Dec 2013 00:07:03 +0000, wrote:



2. A lot of people have a power source parked on their drive,
learn how to tap it to run the telly,radio laptop etc.
Sine wave inverters aren't that costly and while continuous use
might not be recommended an hour or so to check on things should
be possible. You might even run an oil or gas fired boiler if you
can power the electric controls at intervals and keep warm.

G.Harman


We also, generally, have a fully charged spare car battery - which is
one of two used for powering an electric fence and I'd really like to
be able to run the oil boiler and router and laptop sporadically
during power outages. I'm very interested in your point 2 concerning
an inverter.

The boiler specifies a 5A supply but I guess this is only at startup.
General running , I'd expect to be about 300W plus 100W for the
circulating pump. Router and laptop would be very minor. So, total
would be around 500W. Battery is 50-60Ah so, I'm guessing would run
things for , at best, a couple of hours. As we'd have to presume any
power outage could be a few days, it looks only practical for
recharging a mobile phone and running laptop/router and radio. These
things alone would be very useful.

Could I trouble you to point me to the sort of thing that might be
able to do this?
Have a read of this,
http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Technica..._Inverters.pdf
As with anything you can buy cheap on Ebay but reliability and doing
what it claims it can do usually costs bit more.

Personally I was thinking along the lines of running the car engine
for the short period you may want to do a few things rather than run a
battery down too far,especially a car one.
For some people that is the only generator they have access to and in
many homes won't have room for much else.
Others may actually be better off with an actual generator if they
have room for it and to safely store the fuel as well.
But cheap ones aren't really designed to run for days. You really need
a well built diesel one for that.
That you have an electric fence suggests you may have a bit of land so
do have a tractor? you can get generators that run of the Power take
off but even if you need to charge a battery to run an inverter a
tractor would usually be a better tool than a car.
It's all about making the best of what you have.

G.Harman

I've used a small inverter from the car(400watt) on 3 occasions when
we've had a power cut. I ran a small LED light and a laptop for a whole
evening by just running the car for 10 minutes or so every hour.