Creating UPS Powered Mains Sockets around Your home

Here’s one Automated home readers account of how he powers various systems around his home from special UPS supplied sockets. This allows him to keep not only his PCs up during power outages, but also his home Cinema System, TVs, Phones etc. as with all mains electrical power work, please only use a qualified electrician and follow the guidelines for your area.

Submission by David Chapman – Living in an area prone to power cuts I have purchased a number of UPS’s over the years for home and work from ‘Andy the UPS Man‘. My configuration has been in use and working well for the last seven years, here’s how I’ve done it.

I have an APC 3000VA tower UPS in the garage under a bench and it runs from an ordinary 13a plug in socket. My garage is well insulated but not typically heated and this results in a good environment, temp ranges from 10c to 20c and humidity is typically no higher than 50%. UPS’s dislike heat and I’ve found the batteries don’t last anywhere near as long if they are in warm equipment rooms.

My UPS output is directed around my house and office with dedicated radial circuits that terminate in bright red sockets labelled “UPS ONLY” on the walls (easy to do as our home was a selfbuild). The UPS powers all the TV and home cinema stuff, alarm, phone, PCs etc. This works very well and if we have a power cut it’ll run everything for about 30 minutes, longer if I turn off some items.

This gives me time to go to the garage and pull out my Kama suitcase generator (from eBay). This offers an output that is smooth enough the UPS will accept it as mains and switch back to normal mode. I put the generator on the bench, open the window, although it’s not noisy or too smelly, and it “re-charges” the UPS whilst that continues to supply the house.

The 1Kw generator has worked fine works fine as the UPS load in “no mains power mode” is typically much less than 1Kw. Although for this winter season I’m upgrading to a 3Kw generator so I can run a big fridge freezer at the same time in the case of longer power cuts.

In our hall, we have a “power cut torch” This is a rechargeable torch plugged in to the mains that comes on immediately when mains power goes off – this is helpful at night although because the UPS powers many of the screens there is typically enough light to see your way about when power goes off.

Another benefit of the UPS, our mains voltage fluctuates a lot and is typically very high (over 250v) causing much more PSUs failures than normal but the stuff on the UPS runs at 238v which can only be a good thing.

The UPS output goes in to a neon lit fused spur. This is wired “backwards”. Neon shows UPS output. From here two ordinary 2.5mm T&E cords go to the red sockets in the house. The red sockets are in two locations, my office and “node 0” which is a small cupboard behind TV in living area.

I don’t bother with any UPS signalling for PCs / servers. If I’m at home then generator implies they stay on, if I’m away and power loss is long enough for UPS to drain then servers are unlikely to be doing much and can tolerate losing power (that has only happened once).

One final point, the UPS is close to my main consumer unit so the layout ought to be apparent to all. but even so I’ve added a label on the main CU next to switch cautioning that red UPS sockets will be live when main power is switched off.

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