During our recent power outage, I realized that if I had a battery backup (UPS) for my computer, I could have used it to power a lamp and a cell phone charger for a few hours. I've wanted to get one anyway since we're prone to flickering lights and brown power. I'm tempted to pick up one for my computer and another one for my entertainment center. I don't really care too much about runtime on pure battery power. My main goal is a smooth power stream for all my expensive toys. Battery usage would be restriscted mostly to providing light when there is no power.
Does anyone have experience with UPS's? Any suggestions or common pitfalls I should avoid?
PS. I'm going to be making two posts a day for a couple weeks because I have a lot of content that I want to get posted. Who knows how long it will last, but if you love it or hate it, drop me a line.
More Power!
I have some very generous friends. For the front yard project, Tim and Brent loaned me their tractor, Don loaned me his Chevy 2500 diesel truck, and my neighbor Randy loaned me his dual axle dump trailer. We ran all that equipment very hard on the first Saturday of the front yard project. We moved 50-60 yards of sod and dirt in 14 loads. Each load was at least an hour round trip to a spot where Tim’s friend let us dump it for free (saving us $1500-2000!) The only catch was that getting up to the dump spot required powering straight up an extremely straight driveway towing 5-6 tons. We had to put the truck in 4 low just to make it up the hill, and man, you should have heard that diesel screaming up the hill! It was nothing that the truck couldn’t handle, but it was pretty impressive.
On the final run, Tim stuck his phone out the window to record it. Of course the video doesn’t even come close to doing it justice. The hill looks way steeper in person. Before you watch it, picture that you’re driving $50-60K worth of somebody else’s equipment on somebody else’s property and if you slide back down the hill you’re going straight through somebody else’s house into the river. No pressure.