had power outage..

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After Katrina, we were without power for 31 days. I tried to run my Helix's with our generator, and they woulld dispplay an error as soon as the power hit them. My Johnson however, worked fine on the generator. On/Off t-stats seem to do better than proportionals on generator power.

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I guess it would make sense that it would do this since generator power can be pretty variable and surge and drop a lot. I wonder what would happen if you plugged the proportional thermostat in a surge protector or maybe some kind of UPS first and then into the generator?

Mark

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Originally Posted by muddoc

Jen, just a note on generators. Most generators do not supply clean enough power to run a Helix. After Katrina, we were without power for 31 days. I tried to run my Helix's with our generator, and they woulld dispplay an error as soon as the power hit them. My Johnson however, worked fine on the generator. On/Off t-stats seem to do better than proportionals on generator power. Just my two cents.

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That is good to know, we are looking to get a generator before next winter. Glad I have both types of T-stats.... only we have herp stats, not helix, but I'd imagine the herp stat would probably display the same error message as a helix.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

I guess it would make sense that it would do this since generator power can be pretty variable and surge and drop a lot. I wonder what would happen if you plugged the proportional thermostat in a surge protector or maybe some kind of UPS first and then into the generator?

Mark

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This was exactly my first thought on reading that post. If you were to use a UPS in line between your generator and your thermostat it should clean the incoming power and provide you with steady, reliable output. You can pick up a small UPS that would be more than sufficient for this purpose for less than $20 on ebay..

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Originally Posted by CntrlF8

This was exactly my first thought on reading that post. If you were to use a UPS in line between your generator and your thermostat it should clean the incoming power and provide you with steady, reliable output. You can pick up a small UPS that would be more than sufficient for this purpose for less than $20 on ebay..

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I disagree entirely. Seriously... a $20 UPS is going to be rated at MAYBE 200 watts (probably less). Furthermore, putting another device between the Thermo and Generator gives you a single point of failure. 200 watts isn't even enough to handle 10 feet of 11" flexwatt.

If you are using 11" flexwatt, count the total amount of flexwatt in feet, and multiply that by 20. You'll have the approximate output rating (in wattage) for the Surge Protector.