Advice and help needed please!

The setup I've described would do about 24 hours. You can only discharge a lead acid battery to 50% before it goes 'low voltage' so a 120Ah battery will give you 60 Amperes at 12V DC for an hour, or 720 Watts at 240V AC for an hour (assuming 100% efficiency of inverter). Allowing for conversion losses on a 25W electric hen gives a day, or less if you decide to switch a light on as well. I've only been without power for more than 4 hours once back in the 80's. We had no power for 4 days in the middle of Winter. Had to light a big fire and then get to Leek, 30 miles away, to hire a generator to keep the central heating going. We've now got 3 generators -next thing is a big petrol can. But you can't store unleaded for very long before it degrades!
 
Lots of food for thought - but I run four electric hens as well as the incubator. Ffor myself in the house, I am not so worried, have been without electricity and hot water etc. for long, long stretches before, and can make myself comfortable with just a fire - courtesy of years of scouting and guiding! :D

That book sounds good Chris - will have a look at the library and see if I can find it. Can you give me the proper title please.
 
Diesel Generator Handbook by LLJ Mahon. Published by Butterworth/Heinemann ISBN 0-7506-1147-2. Its a really detailed book Philcott and covers some massive generators. Tells you everything technical you need to know about the theory of designing generators from scratch. Then you start on the detail design, creating the package, which is what I did for a living once. Chapter 11 is the one you might want to read. It will probably throw up more questions than answers.

You may find that approaching the problem a different way will give you a good solution. Have a standby heavy duty inverter system with 12V batteries kept charged from the mains. The inverer needs to kick in when the mains fails. But then to avoid the complex control system of the generator just use it to keep the charge in the batteries -most have a 12V output. You will need 12 hours in the batteries for the load you have in case the power failure is during the night. Anyway, sounds like a fun project.
 
Philcott said:
Been cleaning out the chicks, and have discovered that the Brinsea EcoGlow is not pushing out anywhere near enough heat. The little red electric light is on, and there is some heat in the plate, but not nearly enough for chicks. Will give Brinsea a call and see what they've got to say.
Click to expand...
Back to the original problem - I've been researching electric hens including the Ecoglow 20 from Brinsea, and found this on the Brinsea website (well hidden)

''For indoor use only - room temperature should not drop below 10 degrees at night.
IMPORTANT - The latest EcoGlow brooders from Brinsea now have a modified design which has increased radiant output more than tenfold. All EcoGlows now supplied will be of the new design but if any users have EcoGlows with shiny 'silver' finish on the underside please return them to Brinsea Products Ltd for modification without charge.''

Did you contact Brinsea, Philcott? If so, is your ecoglow more than a yearold, ie before March 2011? If so it will be one of those you can return for 'modification without charge.' No help whilst you're needing to use it, but maybe worth knowing about.

There is one on e-bay ATM, 'used once', which doesn't say whether it is pre-March 2011. I have asked the seller but people need to check this before buying EcoGlows, especially second hand ATM.
 
Thanks Marigold - I really can't remember where or when I bought it, but it has a black plate not a shiny one, so am assuming that it is one of the newer one's.

Well that puts paid to using the EcoGlow in the broody shed then ! The chicks water froze during the day, never mind overnight! The littlies are all back inside again (I lost two overnight even with the big electric hen on) and the newly hatched ones are having to take their chances ! Not ideal, but needs must when the devil drives! Many thanks for posting that Marigold - I hadn't spotted that! I have been in touch with them and they are going to send me a new power supply in case that is one of the problems. To the touch it just feels far too cool - regardless of outside temps!

Did find another electric hen (those nice black ones) sitting on the top shelf of the Breed Shed yesterday! Had completely forgotten it was there! So will fish out the very big wooden box today - or try to, it's heavy and I'm not as young or as strong as I used to be, and see if I can 'manhandle' it into the broody shed. Being so thick and with a piece of cardboard over 2/3rd of the box, it should be warm enough for them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top