Employee plugged space heater into the UPS

[Texashiker]

They're also not supposed to be plugged into cubicle power rails.

Nobody said this was in a cubicle.

 

[MotF Bane]

She.

 

[Josh123]

Do you have any idea what the power draw on space heaters are? We couldn't even plug those in in the winter while in the field, they would cause all sorts of problems with the generators and I plugged one into an UPS that ran a ton of gear, no load and just turning on half of the space heater pulled over 70% load on the UPS. I stopped giving the generator guys a hard time and continued to freeze after that. Space heaters are the devil!

No I thought if a UPS was drawing power from the outlet it wouldn't actually use the battery backup if anything was running on it. I know space heaters use a lot of power, women would always blow our breakers with them and their damn personal refridgerators during winter time.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Nobody said this was in a cubicle.

Just general 'do not bring heater to work' info for you..

 

[crab]

Do you have idea how cold it is in space? I wouldn't want to lose power to my heater either

 

[Mark R]

Just general 'do not bring heater to work' info for you..

IT was a lot of effort, but I did get my last but one employer to provide a space heater in my office.

It was a bitter Winter back then, and the office was just a 20 year-old "portakabin". It was freezing; so cold that you could see your breath indoors. Anyway, a couple of space heaters got delivered.

There was a problem though, the office and adjoining offices had a lot of comps (3 comps per cube) - with RAID arrays and triple-head monitors. Power was via two 240V 32A circuits.

Unfortunately, adding the space heaters was the straw that broke the camel's back, and with the heaters plugged in, the breakers kept tripping out. At its coldest (and busiest), the power was going out about 3 times a day - in the end, the buildings department, left the electrical panel room unlocked, so we could keep turning the breakers back on.

This was all well and good, until one-by-one the comps either ended up with corrupted hard drives, or ended-up with blown out PSUs; and other people elsewhere in the building started complaining that the PCs running server/firewall software were unreachable (the firewall comp was a big problem as it provided the interconnection between the departmental LAN and the rest of the network).

In the end, the heaters got removed and replaced with a heat-pump. Still no UPS on the PCs though.

 

[Eli]

I don't quite understand. If the UPS was plugged into the wall and the grid was powered, it shouldn't have drained the batteries.

It was probably just complaining about the excessive load.

 

[KeithTalent]

I don't quite understand. If the UPS was plugged into the wall and the grid was powered, it shouldn't have drained the batteries.

It was probably just complaining about the excessive load.

This. I plug my vacuum into my UPS all the time with no problems, of course it's always plugged in. It also just happens to be closest to one of the rooms I need to vacuum. /shrug

KT

 

[preslove]

OP, was it the old kind with exposed heating elements or the new kind that heat oil.

The newer kind are much safer and are allowed by my workplace. Hell they even loaned us one for our office.

 

[hanoverphist]

Even when it's running off the wall, the UPS could still identify that there's an excessive load on its battery-backed outlets, and start complaining.



.

thats why we have UPS's that have a surge only side as well as a back up side. makes it much easier to use small tools, laptops and what not without taking load from the battery side.

 

[vailr]

I'm guessing that the UPS batteries were already on the verge of needing replacement anyway.

 

[KeithTalent]

thats why we have UPS's that have a surge only side as well as a back up side. makes it much easier to use small tools, laptops and what not without taking load from the battery side.

Aye, that's what I have. I use the surge side for regular stuff and the back-up side for my computer stuff.

KT

 

[Texashiker]

OP, was it the old kind with exposed heating elements or the new kind that heat oil.

Exposed elements.

 

[preslove]

Exposed elements.

Jesus christ, that's stupid.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I wasn't paying attention once and plugged a vacuum into a power strip that was connected to a UPS. Doh!

lol I did that by error with my server UPS. I was vacuuming the basement with the shop vac, and I plugged it into the wrong power bar. I wanted to plug it into the non battery bar and got mixed up. I could not hear the beeping over the sound of the vacuum so I went on for a while. To avoid dealing with this, I built my own power bar that is made for UPSes. I use that particular one for my workstation though, but I plan to build more. I don't know why no one has ever invented that concept.

As for a space heater, it depends the wattage. I've plugged a 550 watt space heater into a small APC UPS just to test it. In fact it's a great way to do a load test, see how long it runs on the battery. Add a light bulb too. A 1000va UPS will do about 600 watts.

 

[gothamhunter]

Do you have idea how cold it is in space? I wouldn't want to lose power to my heater either

win

 

[hanoverphist]

As for a space heater, it depends the wattage. I've plugged a 550 watt space heater into a small APC UPS just to test it. In fact it's a great way to do a load test, see how long it runs on the battery. Add a light bulb too. A 1000va UPS will do about 600 watts.

for 6-24 minutes.

 

[HeXen]

Tell her to dress warmer.

 

[alkemyst]

You're not supposed to plug a heater into a UPS? You make it sound like everyone should know that.

QFT, if people knew how basic setting up routers can be many would not have a job.

 

[Rubycon]

She.

Careful, careful there...

Those toes you step on today may be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow.

So now UPS' will have integrated heater protection enabled that shuts down the device when a purely resistive load of 1.5kW is detected. Bonus points if the user is in the shipping department and those fancy Dymo printers start printing out ID10T errors. :biggrin:

 

[Aikouka]

I don't quite understand. If the UPS was plugged into the wall and the grid was powered, it shouldn't have drained the batteries.

It was probably just complaining about the excessive load.

This is what it most likely was, and it's what I've seen in the past. I use some smaller UPSs on things like my TV, and they absolutely do not like TV + 360 + PS3 all being on the battery plugs. My larger UPSs probably wouldn't care though.

 

[BUTCH1]

IIRC a typical space heater is 10-13 amp range, your not gonna run much else on that circuit or the breaker will pop and trying to run this huge pure resistive load on a UPS designed for electronic gear is pretty dumb.

 

[Modelworks]

A good UPS will beep or alarm if you overload it even if the main power is fine. Older homes were wired for 15A per branch circuit so a 12A heater doesn't leave much overhead. Newer homes are 20A .

 

[ShawnD1]

My ups beeped when i tried running a laser printer. Apparently laser printers pull about 5A when warming up.

 

[cirrrocco]

did she do that because the UPS peed in her front yard?

That was a beautiful thread.