Grid failure alarm
 

When the power lines go down late at night, do you want to know?

http://www.cshincorporated.com/images/failed.JPG

Made in the USA!
FCA2-05-15 Failed Circuit Alarm, Power failure alarm, auto reset, Power failure
They leave the screws loose, so you can install your own 9V battery without tools.

Simple relay circuit inside. Looks like good quality workmanship and parts.

The beeper is shrill and good and loud (I've got bad hearing)..

I've installed this in the small bedroom (next to the master BR)
so I can hear it easily and it's on a backed up circuit.

So, if the power fails tonight, it will wake me up, so I can turn on the backup (for the sump pumps etc).
And if the Battery bank goes dry and the inverter turns off, I'll be awakened again! :D

I took a pic of the guts, if anyone is interested, I'll post it.

My UPS back up power supply, like is common for backing up computers in power outages has a buzzer that goes off when the power is off, a device like this also keep power going to the device, like your fridge, freezer or sump pump while the power is out, just in case you are not home at the time.

I could wire up my system so the backup comes on when the grid fails,
but I didn't want to leave my inverter on all the time.

It's in manual mode now, but it's easy to re-wire my pump circuits so they will work in full-auto.
Might do that mod during vacations.. ;)

Here's the guts..

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...olar/alarm.jpg

Very simple unit. Easy check the battery with the Test button. Still loud.. :eek:

It works!
 

Well, it has been working fine, when I've pressed the Test Button.. :thumbup:

But this morning at 6:45AM, it woke us up out of a deep sleep.
My wife said, "What's wrong!", and I said "The grid is down!" and jumped
up to go reset that long loud beeeeeeep!

As I switched off it's little 9V battery, I said to myself,
"It's too early to be the Rapture, go back to bed now".. :rolleyes:


The power failure only lasted about a minute, and came back on..

There were three or four happy beeps from the kitchen (Stove or gas-CO alarm)?

The Sanyo shudder stayed closed w/o power LED on..

About two minutes later, it came back on in heat mode.
I guess the 5-minute transmittance cycle was up.
(The Sanyo remote shoots an IR data burst every 5 minutes)..


In an actual emergency (long grid failure while raining), I would have
turned on the battery-backup system and gone back to bed.

But as you can see, I couldn't sleep.. That's my story and I'm sticking to it..

Happy End Times, :p
Rich

It's been 1 year, 4 months and 18 days since install, and we've only had to mute the alarm a few times.
Tested it today and it's still very loud. That Safeway 9V will likely last a few more years at this rate.. :)

**** 4 Stars! I highly recommend this product.

I don't see the reason of being alarmed unless the power has been out long enough to have a problem. If it were in the middle of the winter and temperature would be an issue, I'd know because the house is cold or I wouldn't be home to hear the alarm.

I'd rather have something that told me how long the power is out. For example I went on vacation a few months ago and came back to flashing digital clocks and had no clue whether or not I could trust the refrigerator contents, good thing for me is I didn't have any milk because I had finished it off before leaving and I'm not worried about the ketchup, pickles, etc too much and there was no meat in the fridge so there wasn't really anything to go bad except for a few remaining slices of cheese. I used to live in a house with a mechanical 12 hour clock on the oven and that was nice because if you were at work or gone for not too long you could have an idea that it was only out for a couple of hours and to not be concerned. ...if it were out for 12 hours, I would have started chucking goods that were possibly spoiled. In my case I think I will put a thermometer that records min/max temps in the refrigerator when going on future vacations.

I'm not sure why you need an alarm to tell you the power is out immediately outside of needing to know that you have failed power for a sump pump or something, but in that case the 12v backup should have an alarm to indicate that its running on the backup.

We have had power failures during the night and had no clue until morning.
If it's been raining, I want to make sure that my pumps are working like they should.

During the winter, I want to be able to be awake to insure the back-up heat is working.
I hate waking up because the indoor temperature is near freezing.. ;)