DIY UPS FOR POWER FAILURES
Although I have a generator, it is much cheaper and less hassle to maintain oxygen in my ponds with a deep cycle battery and invertor. I only use the generator for prolonged power cuts to charge the battery.
I bought this:
Deep cycle battery: R 1280.00 (Macro)
Battery charger(Auto sensor/cut off): R 420.00 (Macro)
350 watt Invertor: R 435.00 (Macro)
Total costs: R 2135.00
With this I either run three (30 l/m) air pumps for approximately 4 hours or an 8000 liter/hour submersible pump for exactly 2 hours 50 minutes.
The pump on the following photo(8000 liter) is running on the above system, and gives a lot of oxygen if operating as a fountain.
Whenever I need power at a remote place, I rather transport this system in stead of my heavy generator, and I take it on my 4x4 camping trips. It provided the basic electricity for a whole weekend.
The nice thing about this system is that I don't have to be home to start the generator. The battery takes over when the power fails, and the charger charge the battery automatically again as soon as the power goes on again, and switch off automatically when fully charged.