UPS with Rheem gas hot water?

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bun1

22 posts

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#270167 26-Apr-2020 14:44

I have a Rheem Integrity 26 continuous hot water system. I want continuity of hot water when there is a power cut. Can you use a UPS with this? What size would you need?

The other alternative would be a diesel generator that I could just unplug the unit from the house and into the generator. Would a MSW one work or would I have to go down the more expensive route of a PSW? What size would I need?

richms

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#2471628 26-Apr-2020 15:14

Not sure about that one, but a friend has run their old infinity of a cheap inverter on their car in the past when needing a shower during a powercut.

Richard rich.ms

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sparkz25

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#2471631 26-Apr-2020 15:19

I can confirm that it works fine on a UPS, I have a APC 3000va online UPS and my infinity and servers all run fine on it.

MickeyD

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#2471633 26-Apr-2020 15:30

I looked into this a while ago when moving to an area with unreliable power supply, then figured I wait and see until how many power cuts we actually got.

I couldn't find anything offered by Rheem, but Rinnai published this technical bulletin for their systems after some prolonged power cuts in Canada. They give times for the Hugo X1 UPS that they sell, but also reference the APC SMX750 that is available here. Presumably how long it lasts for will depend on how often you're turning the tap on and off (with most power required for ignition).

@sparkz25 how long does your UPS keep your hot water available? Are you shutting down your servers to preserve battery capacity for hot water?

sparkz25

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#2471638 26-Apr-2020 15:52

MickeyD:

@sparkz25 how long does your UPS keep your hot water available? Are you shutting down your servers to preserve battery capacity for hot water?

The only reason the Infinity was on UPS was when the Infinity was installed the power point that was the closest was back to back and supplied by UPS at the time and I was too lazy to run a new cable to the infinity still haven run a new cable.

We have only had 3 power cuts in the last 4 years due to cars hitting poles and a transformer fire, I shut the servers down as a precaution and then left the UPS to run it course, the wife had a shower on the ups once and it was fine.

PolicyGuy

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#2471689 26-Apr-2020 17:53

According to https://rinnai.co.nz/EF26#technical, the power requirements are

Power consumption
Normal: 63 W
Standby: 2 W
Automatic Frost Protection: 92 W

So running it off a UPS shouldn't be a major issue unless it's quite a long outage and you have several showers
😀

Edit: formatting

SomeoneSomewhere

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#2471696 26-Apr-2020 18:17

If you're expecting long power cuts, bear in mind that UPSs generally have fairly high standby losses and will usually drain the batteries in a few hours even with no load. They're not intended for a 24 hour outage.

A 1500VA petrol generator is more than adequate to run this, a fridge, and some lights.