Billy wrote:

"pausto" wrote in message
...
|
|
| Conclusion:
| Heat transfer capability of makeshift heat exchanger,
| Impressively adequate

Wow....well done. Perhaps I'm missing something, but how would this
be of benefit in a power outage, with the need to circulate water
through the exchanger? I suppose a UPS could push a *small* powerhead
for quite a while.......

Thanks for the compliment. The test was fun.
And the results really surprized me!

The power head I used is small, 12 watts, as opposed to 300 watts of
electric heat. The sump filter pump is big though, 50 watts. I have
plans
for an inverter and some deep cycle batteries.

If I really get rambunctious, there is a small 50 watt pump designed
to circulate water from the house water heater, to keep the water hot
at
the sink taps. I could use that to heat my heat exchanger. And with
some
relays, it could all be made automatic.

But I haven't yet done any real calculations on how much deep cycle
battery it would take to run all this for say 5 hours. I could
turn off the main filter pump for 15 min each hour, and the heating
pumps would probably run 50% of the time. Less than 75 watts total
average, if I figured that right.