Surge protector or UPS?
Discussion
I've currently got an APC SUA2200 protecting my TV and AV setup from surges. The battery has gone and it's beeping 
So I could put a new battery in it, but that's about £70 by the time it gets to me and I'm tight.
Are there any good six way IEC surge supressors about to protect my kit or should I just replace the battery?
All linkys etc gratefully received
So I could put a new battery in it, but that's about £70 by the time it gets to me and I'm tight.
Are there any good six way IEC surge supressors about to protect my kit or should I just replace the battery?
All linkys etc gratefully received
If you can get the batteries for £70 I'd say replace them, that's pretty cheap for batteries for something with a reasonable output.
The UPS will continue to provide surge protection even though the battery is dead, but once it goes beyond the configured parameters, it may try to switch to battery backup until the condition is rectified. Obviously if your battery is dead then everything will go off!
I guess a UPS may be a bit of overkill for AV equipment though. If the power goes off you don't really lose anything, and most modern technology will cope with variations in input voltage to a degree. If a surge protector is less than the batteries, it's probably a better long term solution as you will have to keep replacing the batteries every 3 years or so.
The UPS will continue to provide surge protection even though the battery is dead, but once it goes beyond the configured parameters, it may try to switch to battery backup until the condition is rectified. Obviously if your battery is dead then everything will go off!
I guess a UPS may be a bit of overkill for AV equipment though. If the power goes off you don't really lose anything, and most modern technology will cope with variations in input voltage to a degree. If a surge protector is less than the batteries, it's probably a better long term solution as you will have to keep replacing the batteries every 3 years or so.
I'm not worried about runtime and yes, a UPS is probably overkill, but it was just laying around so it made sense to use it. The only prob with surge protectors is they all seem to be a 13A socket, not IEC.
Do surge arrestors provide the same level of protection as a UPS?
Worst comes to the worst I could always take it apart and cut the bleeper off the board
Do surge arrestors provide the same level of protection as a UPS?
Worst comes to the worst I could always take it apart and cut the bleeper off the board
As I said, it's more about surge protection. My first plasma died during an electrical storm. While it was investigated and they said there was no connection I don't believe it.
I just want to make sure nothing nasty gets through to the TV.
Perhaps an IEC surge arrestor would be the best bet (and much smaller) but do you think I can find an IEC one, can I buggery.
I just want to make sure nothing nasty gets through to the TV.
Perhaps an IEC surge arrestor would be the best bet (and much smaller) but do you think I can find an IEC one, can I buggery.
BliarOut said:
Worst comes to the worst I could always take it apart and cut the bleeper off the board
That's probably what I'd do.
We have
ing shit mains here in rural Ireland. We get brown outs (fnurk fnurk - see why I called it shit?) all the time. Sometimes as many as 4 or 5 a day. I'm right on the virge of going for a UPS to protect a few main boxes but just haven't got the funds. Still when a brown out can cost you a few hours work, it's not long a contractor would recoup enough and it would pay for itself.
So I'm thinking, I get a regular surge protected 6 socket strip block, I'll wire half a dozen 13 amp plugs to female IEC connectors and I'll swap it for your UPS.
That way I get a UPS for £80 and you get your surge protection..... Deal?
BliarOut said:
Perhaps an IEC surge arrestor would be the best bet (and much smaller) but do you think I can find an IEC one, can I buggery.
JeeEEEEEzusSSSS... you really are behaving like a women today.... is it the full moon or didn't you drink enough last night?
Plug you IEC block into one of these.....
www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=31304&doy=11m8&C=SEO&U=strat15
or similar...
You can get a very basic 13A UPS for £29 Ex
www.misco.co.uk/categories/~725~/Power%20
I could replace the power cords but it took me ages to put the IEC's on. I've got a horrible feeling that's what I'll have to do in the end though.
www.misco.co.uk/categories/~725~/Power%20
I could replace the power cords but it took me ages to put the IEC's on. I've got a horrible feeling that's what I'll have to do in the end though.
BliarOut said:
You can get a very basic 13A UPS for £29 Ex
www.misco.co.uk/categories/~725~/Power%20
www.misco.co.uk/categories/~725~/Power%20
But why is it £29? I can't even get a battery for Diddy Ex's mini quad for that price.....
TheExcession said:
Still when a brown out can cost you a few hours work, it's not long a contractor would recoup enough and it would pay for itself.
what's a brown out? I do 99.9% of my development work on a laptop (Dell M50 1600x1200 2.8GHz p4 1GB RAM 120GB HD ... so a pretty good workstation, though getting a lttle long in the tooth) because amongst other things it makes it all but impossible to lose work from power problems. My file server can fall over, my house can burn down, the Taliban might take over the local council, but you'll see me and my laptop running over the fields and I won't have lost any work.
Every place I've worked, come the time when it's needed, the "don't worry, everything is on a UPS" wonderful system has done shag all.
Example 1: A SQL Server had its own UPS, but the planks hadn't configured the machine to shut down as soon as the UPS cut in ... so when the office lost power at 2am we came in to see that the SQL Server had died ungracefully at 5am when the batteries were flat. So that helped. Worse still, the server also died another time when the UPS decided its batteries were knackered ... so it just switched itself off. You really couldn't make it up.
Example 2: The bank had el grande UPS .. room full of batteries type of thing ... when the power died we discovreed that even in the server room as well as across our desks in the dealing room, half the monitors were plugged into the UPS for no good reason ... and half the PCs were on the unprotected mains circuit.
Example 3: My favourite. Realtime news information company I used to work for had a building full of main frames in the Docklands. It had a room full of batteries that were supposed to tide it over until a big diesel generator next door could start up. There was a direct lightening strike on the building that made one hell of a bang and took out the mains. The systems instantly cut over to batteries without a glitch. Result! The generator didn't have a starter motor. It used explosives to turn it over. Except unfortunately the engine was seized (may well have been some sort of safety lock on the crank). When the explosives fired there was another enormous bang and the seized engine's bottom end was completely lunched. And then the batteries went flat.
Moral of the story. Unless you've set the UPS up yourself, don't trust it. Unless you know exactly what the UPS will do if it detects a problem with its batteries, don't trust it.
Edited by ATG on Friday 11th August 13:53
aldi said:
Dunno! There was a power cut last w/end so I have to assume they were knackered in such a way that the charging circuit never tripped out. I had to swap the whole unit out cause it took about 3 hours to cool down enough to handle..
Fair play though, they never leaked!
Fair play though, they never leaked!
Had a very similar one a couple of weeks ago.
We have two rack mount 2200VA APC UPS, one of which was complaining that it's batteries were dead. I tried to replace the batteries, but they were wedged in. Ended up spending two hours removing from the rack and dismantling the chassis to get the batteries out. They had expanded massively and two had leaked, so a lucky escape really as they would have emitted hydrogen gas in a confined environment with lots of switching circuits!!
Still don't know what caused it. Put it down to the hot weather tied with power cut.
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