On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:48:04 -0000, Mike wrote:

It's brand new but I only run it at a few degrees below zero.

Food safety wise a freezer should be below -16C. There is a reasonable
probablity that some organisiums can still reproduce at warmer temps.
We run ours at -24C.

I don't think I'd want this coming on automatically, and the wiring
would need major alterations.

No major changes to the wiring just a fail safe change over contactor
in the meter tails and installation of a good local earth. The complex
bit is the auto start/stop logic. You don't want the genney firing up
for a 1s cut unless you have say 2 or 3 such outages in a couple of
mins say. How ever if the outage lasts 30s the chances are the power
has really gone so start up, then when it comes back how long to wait
before switching back and stoping the genny...

Original idea was for individual UPSes between the mains socket and
key appliances but this idea doesn't seem practical apart from for
the heating.

The only things that we have here that really object to haveing the
power removed without warning are the computers, they are on a UPS.
Everything else can take outages without agro and essential things
like cooking, light and heat have alternatives that don't require
power. A generator is on the shopping list to run the freezers and CH
system and maybe a few lights but that will (initially) be connected
in with extension leads rather than a change over switch.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail