Tunze safety connector - return pump backup?

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Ky_acc

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@rvitko Hey just wondering why you don’t see this more —

could I use a 12v 100ah battery to power a dc return pump (varios, sicce sdc, etc) using the tunze safety connector?

Some of these mid sized DC retuen pumps only pull like 40watts so even if they stayed at 100% when switching to backup power, a 12v 100ag battery could power them for a good bit.

just wondering why we don’t see this more and was wondering if there was some issue that I’m overlooking?

thanks!
 

rvitko

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Generally, there are two reasons this doesn't work well. Return pumps tend to be 24V, at 12V they usually work but with so little head pressure they likely won't pump any water back. Maintaining 2 batteries in a 24V system is complicated and requires a fairly expensive and difficult to find charger as usually only heavy equipment and large diesel engines are 24V. The other reason is that you only need some flow to keep things alive in an emergency, I can say from experience in the freeze here in Texas where we were practically off grid for a week, that just a spoon every hour combined with small windows of power was enough to keep my tank alive, I literally just stirred it. With that in mind, running a 15W powerhead is far more efficient and if nothing in the sump can run, there is very little reason to have the return pump running. In fact, in that freeze, a friend of mine was doing just fine with a battery air pump and floating a bowl with coals from his fire place, then the power kicked on and filled his tank with the 50 degree water from his sump and he never was able to recover from that, the power died again and he was now contending with a low 60's tank.
 
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Ky_acc

Ky_acc

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As always this is a reason I buy Tunze products — due to your (i.e., @rvitko) thoughtful and well reasoned responses.

I greatly appreciate this reply as this makes complete sense. I will go ahead and plan my system around battery backups for my circulation pumps and not the returns
 

Clownfishy

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I have been running the Tunze Safety Connector for years now and I think this is one of the best products they produce. It is AWESOME that you can use any 12v battery, just brilliant. I have both my 6095's connected to their own Tunze Safety Connectors with their own batteries that will run my pumps for 2 day :)
 

Clownfishy

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One follow on question. When the pumps are running off the 12v battery, does the Safety Connector run them at 50% or are they running them at the speed the controller is set to? Mine are being controlled by an Neptune Apex controller which would be dead without power so I assume the pump would run at a default state of 100%?
 

rvitko

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Both, so you would have half the voltage and about half power, but it would also run whatever it is set to, generally with lower voltage, head pressure drops substantially.
 
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