Category: Farm Tech

The Extended-Run UPS Trick

For those of you who know how to mess around safely with car batteries and other high-amperage/low-voltage applications, here’s an interesting one (please note the warning below!:

APC makes an extended-run UPS called the Smart-UPS XL, which supports external battery packs. The ones I have (Smart-UPS XL 1000) are a 24V system, which means that the internal batteries and the external battery packs are all 24V. The external battery packs and replacement batteries are expensive.

So when my batteries gave up the ghost, I wondered what would happen if I replaced the 20 amp-hour gel-cell batteries with 100 amp-hour RV batteries, which were cheaper in spite of having five times the capacity.

Using a battery connector from a spare/dead battery pack (you can also scavenge them from most dead APC batteries), I wired up two new RV batteries in series and plugged them into the expansion pack connector. Result? Greatly extended run time, as expected.

The batteries have been in use for five years now and have been slowly losing capacity. It’s about time to replace them. Five years is what I got from the APC batteries when the units were new. (By the way, this really does mean that an APC UPS will last more than ten years if you replace the batteries.)

Now, RV batteries are deep-cycle versions of car batteries, which means that they outgas hydrogen and need topping off, so use them in a well-ventilated area. Also, since they’re full of sulfuric acid, they are a little harsh on the surrounding area, as you know if you’ve ever looked at the area around the battery in an old car. Thirdly, gel cells use a slightly higher charging voltage than flooded-cell batteries, so water evaporates out of the battery faster than it should, and you need to top the cells off several times a year with distilled water.

All of these problems would be solved by using gel-cell batteries instead of the cheaper flooded-cell batteries. Good maintenance-free batteries would help but would not solve the problem.

I have also tried this trick on two Pacific Power Vanguard 1200 UPS systems, systems that I got for almost nothing years ago. Converting these was trickier because I had to open up the units and add external battery cables. The APC Smart-UPS XL is the only line that I know of with a convenient external battery connector. The Vanguard overcharges more than the APC, and was generally much less satisfactory.

I’d stick to Smart-UPS XL units for this trick if I were you, but if you ignore this advice, one thing to look for is a UPS with a cooling fan inside. I think that some of the short-duration UPS systems expect to run out of battery power before they have time to overheat, and thus would be lousy candidates for having their battery life extended.

Tip for anyone who would rather do things more conventionally: replacement batteries are very heavy and expensive to ship. Ask at your local car-supply stores and battery shops if they can get what you want. They get daily delivery by truck anyway, and the shipping should be free (ask). This will save you beaucoup bucks.

Tip #2: The world is full of low-quality gel-cell batteries that are shipped halfway around the world just to fail immediately in your UPS. If you buy them locally, you’ll probably get a warranty that means something. Ask. If you have to ship them back, the shipping alone will kill you. I know that APC batteries are good, and I think that ABC batteries are also good.

Power Outage Tips

I don’t know about you, but here in Western Oregon, all the power outages happen during the winter. They vary from flickers that last less than a second to outages of around three days. Here are some tips that work for us:

  • Have a wood stove you can cook on and heat the house with. I have two! If you have propane or city gas, pilot-light-style ranges, water heaters, and some kinds of furnaces will keep working when the power is out. (I don’t have gas.)
  • Have a ridiculous number of flashlights and lots of batteries. Trying to get anything done during a nighttime power outage is very difficult without a flashlight! Everyone in the family needs a flashlight, and you need a bunch more because they get misplaced.
  • Pick your poison where lamps are concerned. I’ve settled on propane Coleman lanterns even though they are expensive to run. They’re convenient, bright, and clean-burning. Gasoline Coleman lanterns set off my smoke alarms. Kerosene lanterns are too dim for area lighting. I’ve put hooks in the ceiling in my living room and bathroom just for the lanterns.
  • Have your water situation figured out. I have a generator and can run my water pump during an outage. Your situation might be more complicated.
  • Get a Honda generator. It’s sort of fun to go without electricity for a couple of days in the summer, but it’s a pain in the winter, especially when your basement floods without a sump pump, you have freezers full of chicken, or, worst of all, if you brood chicks with heat lamps during the winter. Honda generators are good. Some other makes are probably just as good, but I don’t know which ones they are. Figure out how to use your generator before the power goes out. Remember to have some gasoline. Buy plenty of extra-heavy-duty extension cords and multi-outlet adapters and store them somewhere sensible.
  • Use APC Smart-UPS UPS systems. These are the only ones I know of that work well when plugged into a generator. Put them on your computers and your TV/DVD/Tivo setup. There’s a “sensitivity” adjustment on these to determine how eager they are to switch to battery power. Set the sensitivity to “low.” Your equipment won’t mind. I always buy used units, since the systems themselves last forever, though the batteries (which are replaceable) rarely last beyond five years. See if you can find a local source for both UPS and batteries: they’re expensive to ship.
  • Have a good library. Even if you keep the Tivo running during the outage, the loss of power restricts your actions.
  • Have a method of brewing good coffee. This is essential! A Melitta one-cup coffee maker and a stack of filters will see you through until the ol’ Mr. Coffee starts working again.

There are plenty of other ways to do it, but these work for us.

We’re probably going to get a super-insulated electric water heater this winter, and we’ll get one that’s twice as big as we need, so it will take a long power outage to run out out of hot water.

Achieving a Negative Carbon Footprint

Carbon abatement is for sissies. Let’s stop thinking like consumers and start thinking like producers. If there’s surplus carbon dioxide, instead of releasing somewhat less of it by modifying our personal consumption, let’s figure out ways of sucking it back out of the air and using it for our personal production.

So what can we make with all that carbon dioxide? Well, lots of things, but for the sake of this post, let’s make trees out of it. A good stand of trees will turn greenhouse gases into biomass and lumber. Planting a stand of trees on our own property is a way to take charge of the problem directly. You can buy a lot of rural land in need of TLC for the price of a hybrid car, and doing so will be much better for the environment.

According to some statistics I’ve used before (see my February 2007 newsletter), if you take 16 acres of pastureland and plant trees on it, you’ll achieve a personal carbon footprint of zero, even if you live to be 100 years old, harvest the trees every 30 years, and otherwise do nothing about greenhouse gases. If you plant more than 16 acres, your carbon footprint will be negative! This is infinitely better than what you can get by altering your consumption style.

Taking the tree route is not very hard. In large areas of the country, forest is the default condition: unless you mow, plow, or keep cattle on it, your land will turn into a forest on its own.

So I recommend that you get some nice acreage somewhere, not too expensive, and allow it to revert to woodland. Put a house or a cabin on it, while you’re at it. What the heck.

Do this on low-value land that never should have been cleared in the first place. It’s cheaper that way, and it takes ecologically marginal land and turns it back into what it wants to be. On our farm, we’re letting the forest reclaim a good-sized chunk of our property.

A negative carbon footprint ought to be low enough to satisfy the most guilt-ridden soul, and the timber income every thirty years is nothing to sneeze at. Lumber is durable and won’t turn itself back into carbon dioxide anytime soon, and the amount of carbon in the soil remains much higher on timberland, even after logging, than it is on pasture or cropland, if the trees are allowed to come back.

I think you’ll find that you can do amazing amounts of carbon fixing by acquiring land of your own and reforesting it — orders of magnitude than you can do by the lifestyle changes that are normally recommended. Nature is so much more powerful than we are that she should always be called upon to do the heavy lifting.

Water in Your Gasoline? Use Mr. Funnel!

Here’s a spiffy product for you: A funnel that lets gasoline (or diesel) through but hangs onto any water. It works! I salvaged about 30 gallons of water- and rust-contaminated gasoline from two different vehicles by running it through “Mr. Funnel.” All the crud and water stayed in the funnel. This single use more than paid for the funnel.

The instructions tell you to test the funnel before each use by filling it most of the way with water and verifying that it doesn’t pass through the filter. It’s sort of freaky to see how fast gasoline passes through a filter that’s watertight!

I don’t understand the physics of this, but assume it has something to do with water having a high surface tension compared to gasoline.

Looking for Tractor #2

My tractor used to have problems that made it sit unused for months. Mostly I fixed this through a few simple repairs, such as replacing the broken fuel shutoff to prevent constant evaporation and its attendant crud in the carburetor, replacing the corroded distributor points with a Pertronix electronic ignition (which is almost as easy as putting in a new set of points), and replacing a dying starter motor.

But any tractor that’s more than 50 years old is going to require some unplanned maintenance.
Over the past few months, I’ve had to replace the starter motor bendix and deal with my fuel-cap-related problems, each of which required a wait for parts and some miscellaneous delays which kept the tractor out of service for a week.

This is why most people buy new equipment — and why I’m looking for a second elderly tractor. It’s not like two tractors will make my 37 acres look crowded, though admittedly I don’t have an empty bay in my machine shed.

From the point of view of statistics, it makes perfect sense. If one tractor has 95% uptime, if I have two, there’s a 99.8% chance that at least one of them is running. (This is based on the assumption that, if I have a spare tractor, I’ll repair a broken one as fast as ever, which I admit is questionable.)

Mostly I use my tractors for mowing and for moving chicken houses short distances. My current tractor is a Ford 640, which is almost overkill for such tasks. I’m looking for another Ford tractor from the Thirties through the Sixties, with a vague preference for a 9n (made from 1939-1941), just because it’s the most antique Ford tractor that’s really suitable for my purposes. These things are everywhere, at least in theory. I don’t see one on Craigslist within an hour of me.

Tractors last forever, even if used hard, because they are simple and overbuilt. A tractor from the Sixties isn’t much different from one from the Thirties. Once tractors get too old to use as the lifeblood of a large commercial farm, their prices collapse to low levels, and you can pretty much pick your poison. A Ford utility tractor from the Thirties through the Sixties should be worth between $1,000 and $4,000 around here, based more on whether it’s been spiffed up than what its actual features are, and how good its tires are. A new set of tires will cost around $1,000. This also means that an elderly tractor will retain its resale value, such as it is, except for tire wear.

I could get a tractor with more features (diesel, power steering, more horsepower) without increasing the price much. This might be prudent, but I’m going to stick with what I know this time.

Not that there’s a huge consensus of what the value of such a tractor is. Some people will pay more, some less. I’m looking for a bargain tractor that’s mechanically sound. My budget is $2,000 (including the cost to haul it to my farm, since I don’t have a suitable trailer), hopefully including a 5′ mower. I’d go higher if it has a quality roll bar on it or a decent tractor seat, but hardly any of them do.

So if you know of a running Ford tractor within about 50 miles of Blodgett, Oregon, let me know. I’d be especially interested if it has decent rubber and a bush hog.