afboundguy's DIY DC battery backup project...

[afboundguy]

After the UPS backup I got from work (they were throwing it out and I just replaced battery with something bigger) failed last week when the whole town lost power for 5-6 hours I decided I wanted to essentially start from scratch.

I researched and saw a bunch of DIY battery backups but they all used a pure sine wave converter for the DC from the battery to AC for the equipment's plug conversion. Those work fine but there is a loss of power from that conversion so I started looking at how to do a purely DC battery backup system.

I was able to find a DC transfer switch for under $7 (https://a.co/d/c7fX3cs) and I purchased some DC male and female plugs (https://a.co/d/6nJVsWB), battery charger and a DC 12V to 24V booster (https://a.co/d/g7kwbXV) all for under $50 bucks plus some miscellaneous wires.

I used the DC plugs to essentially create a 3 way splitter that normally comes with most DC UPS setups. I tested out the system and was having issues and realized the snap connectors that came with the DC booster weren't the best so I used wire nuts and it worked!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[afboundguy]

I plan to purchase a 100ah lifepo4 battery and based on my math that should provide over 12 hours of battery backup for three DC pumps (return pump for DT and display fuge, and a pump for a manifold that I was planning to run GFO but I ditched the GFO for now) so I should get even more backup only running two pumps!

Here is the switch. I plan to get 1-2 more and wire them separately and place them in a suitable electrical box.

The DC male and female plugs made it super easy to wire in basically without any cutting! I did trim some of the wire to use the wire nuts but if I had just soldered everything I don't think I would have needed to cut anything!