Marine battery versus battery pack?

I had one blow up near my face once and I emphasize the once part because that is all it takes to learn how to prevent it from happening again.

It was while trying to jumpstart another vehicle, as the vehicle being jumped was cranking over I wiggled the leads on the cables connected to the posts and created a spark and boom. Battery acid everywhere due to a quarter size hole in the side of the battery. Luckily I had my head far enough away that my face wasn't burned but my hands were very red for a day or two.

Enough about the stupid things I did when I was younger. I have a question regarding running your machine in auto mode while on battery back-up power. All the charts I have seen relating blower pressure to battery life use a single pressure for their calculations. Is it OK to run in auto mode while using battery power? I assume that it would work but the consumption wouldn't track any chart where a straight pressure was used.

You'd pretty much have to make a educated guess... If you found the chart info for your low and high pressures, figure your average amp draw is somewhere in between... Either that or plan for the worst case and go with the high pressure figures.

travismcgee wrote:Is it OK to run in auto mode while using battery power?

Yes, no problem.

travismcgee wrote:I assume that it would work but the consumption wouldn't track any chart where a straight pressure was used.

For the purposes of working out required battery capacity you should probably use whatever your typical maximum flow rate is. This will give you the worst case scenario and in practice you may do somewhat better in terms of actual power consumption.

Cheers,

Bill

Thank you for the replies. They are much appreciated.

Regarding using an automotive battery to power electrical devices.

Several years ago (before Desert Storm) I lived in a 29 foot travel trailer in Saudi Arabia. Deep cell batteries were not available and I had to use Delco car batteries in my trailer to a power a small fluorescent light for a couple of hours a night and a water pump.

The batteries were usually fully charged daily from my truck's electrical system. I do not know how much of the capacity I was using; when a battery was only a week or two old, the battery voltage never went below 12 volts. When the battery was over two or three weeks old, the battery would be discharged by morning and had to be replaced. I had to replace the automotive battery at least every three weeks.

A 75ah marine battery can be purchased at walmart for $54.00, and a $9.00 battery-clamp style cigarette lighter connection can be purchased at radio shack. I purchased the resmed dc converter at ms.cpap.com for $69.00 (free shipping), so for $132 I can run my S8 Elite for 4 nights without detriment to the battery at all (no humidifier, 7 hours sleep time) Walmart also sells a 105ah marine battery for $78.00, which would power my S8 for 6 nights without hurting the battery or having to recharge, but I thought that might be overkill.

It is heavy...it certainly wouldn't do for hiking... but camping, boating and power outages and such...is ideal.

Automotive batteries will work, but aren't ment to be discharged more than 20%, so it would shorten their lives considerably.

best regard, rwk