Today’s Notes
General: Measured the power consumed by my CPAP with the heated tubing. It was actually lower than I had anticipated, around 45 watts. When we both travel I need to provide for 60 watts each and 8 hours run time. 60 x 2 machines x 1.25 efficiency x 9 hours = 1,350WH / 24V = 56.25 AH / 18AH = 4 banks of two batteries in series depleted to 25% charge. That’s taking EIGHT 12lb batteries, sheesh! One interesting tidbit is that the current for each battery is now 1/4th the total, meaning the wire size can be 2 * 3AWG + 10 or 16AWG wire to each of the batteries. I wanted to start the construction of the wiring to the UPS but didn’t get there today. I spent a good deal of time looking at power cords and extension cords. My wife and I sleep on opposite sides of the bed so she needs to run her power cord to my side (Or vis-versa). She also likes to have a miniature fan running that needs one more connection. What has worked thus far is running a cheap SP-2 extension cord from the UPS to her side of the bed. I connect directly to the UPS. I’ve also been thinking of fail modes. When we are close enough to drive back home during an outage we can bring a much smaller unit with say 1 hour of run time. If that fails it will sound an alarm and we’ll drive home and use the house power sources. (Which are many.) When we are in Florida that’s impractical to return home we have to have a much larger battery/UPS combination in place. To be autonomous we need 1300WH of battery and a way of replenishing that during the 8 hours of daylight. My portable battery bank is 72AH, to charge that in 6 hours I need 12Amps of charger. (Each battery string gets 3 amps.) It’s impractical to charge each battery, charging four 18AH strings is almost as impractical. If the power returns I need a 300W 24V @ 12A charger or four 100W solar panels with good sunlight. Day 2 of a power failure we can turn off the heated tub and hose reducing our power consumption to 70W. 560WH is a little easier to replace than 1,300WH. We could use the car alternator one time depending on the fuel levels. Might be easier though to buy that cheap gasoline generator that runs 7 hours on a gallon of gas. Four 100W panels are more clunky to carry around than the 100lbs of batteries. I did have a bit of luck at midnight tonight, Amazon ran a sale on their smart chargers!
TDL,
Talk to the neighbor about his offer.
Card for the drama department.
Lighting support for the Christmas play.
Eyedrops
process recordings
Build two long run UPS units that have external connections for a solar panel charge.
Get two teeth pulled and one post put in.
Plan a trip to Florida week of the 29th.
replace two of my outside cameras.
Mow the rest of the lawn.
Need referral for surgery on Jan 3rd at 8:30.
Call the doctor about the anti inflammatory that I seem to be allergic to.
Call Fl Blue, Lisa Rhodes 352-854-2100 about part D.
Call Mutual of Omaha (Ricky’s Insurance)
Find out about Dental coverage for Mom, Medicare “G”?
Find out about Eye coverage for mom.
Engineering: Try and reduce the number of batteries we carry for our CPAP machines. (We seem to be sleeping 10-12 hours a day.) 12Hours at 140 Watts is 1680WH which is eight 20Lb batteries and that’s not very portable. The current method is to invert 24VDC to 115VAC and use the power supplies that came with the equipment. (Which is rented, not owned.) I can probably save 30-40% by running the CPAPS on 24VDC directly, but the manufacturer chose a pretty unique connector that’s going to be difficult to find. I can also purchase two $400 power supplies with large Lithium batteries, but that has hazards of it’s own.
Planned Purchases: I need to replace two cameras, the D-Link DCS-2310 must not be made anymore because their price is either really cheap or terribly expensive. My secondary camera the DCS-2330 also looks like it’s on the chopping block. I’d like to stay with D-Link since I have 10 of their cameras already.
Purchases: Received one of two 1300VA APC UPS units that I am taking to moms. Received one Securify Peanut Plug. Two CPAP power supplies have been ordered for our Air Sense 10 machines.
Tomorrow:
Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feelings: Travel: Noteworthy: Accomplishments:
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT set clear goals for the day? No
Did I DMBT make progress to those goals? No
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT fix something today? Yes
Did I DMBT improve something today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
Did I DMBT be fully engaged? Yes
*Did My Best To