UPS

[linseed]

I have two TrippLite Internet Office UPS. One of them I have at home and to it I only have a computer and a monitor. The other I have at the office, also only PC and monitor. Every now and then the UPS would turn off and all my equipment would shut down. I thought thje problem was a defective UPS, so I switched the home UPS (which was working perfectly) to office and vv. It is happening again the office UPS is now turning off and the one I have at home is now working perfectly.
I think there might be some problem with the electric installation, but I don't know what to check. Of course I will have to call an electrician, but I want to know what he needs to look for. No one else at the office has a similar problem.
Thanks

 

[Raiddinn]

Ok so what you did was take the one that doesn't work to a different place and it still doesn't work, then you took the one that does work to another place and it still does work.

It sounds like the one that doesn't work needs to go in the trash to me.

 

[linseed]

Ok so what you did was take the one that doesn't work to a different place and it still doesn't work, then you took the one that does work to another place and it still does work.

It sounds like the one that doesn't work needs to go in the trash to me.

No. Let's call them UPS A and B. A was not working at the office and B was working at home. I switched them so now B is not working at the office and A is working at home. A and B work at home and A and B do not work at the pffice, hence the problem seems to be is at the office, but I don't know where to start looking or what to tell the electrician.

 

[Raiddinn]

Ok so neither one works at the office and both works at home. I didn't read it that way the first time, sorry for my confusion.

I don't think you really need to tell the electrician anything different than what you told us.

You have two UPS, both dont work at the office and both do work at home.

They should be trained enough to already know what to look for in a situation like that.

 

[linseed]

Ok so neither one works at the office and both works at home. I didn't read it that way the first time, sorry for my confusion.

I don't think you really need to tell the electrician anything different than what you told us.

You have two UPS, both dont work at the office and both do work at home.

They should be trained enough to already know what to look for in a situation like that.

Yeaaa... I live in Mexico City. Electricians are more like self-trained. I already called one and he suggested to plug a surge suppressor to the outlet and then the UPS to the surge suppressor, and then he said that not all surge suppressors work as they only suppress the current going back to ground and let the extra current pass to the appliance connected to it. He tried to sell me the "only one that really works" for more than 80 dollars. I am not sure if I can connect the UPS to the surge suppressor or if what he said was true. I asked if the problem could be in the outlet's wiring and he said if he changed that then the rest of the outlets in the office would have problems (???) I sent him home.

 

[Raiddinn]

Well, in any event, your situation caused me to do some reading into wall - surge protector - UPS - Computer power chains.

The collective wisdom here :

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/213390/ups-plugged-into-a-surge-protector-bad

seems to be that most people don't think it would hurt anything.

Most do, however, seem to agree that it will cause an undue drain on the batteries and result in the UPS running out of battery power faster than it would otherwise.

Instead, there is something called a PDU (Power Distribution Unit) that smoothes fluctuations in current that does work just fine between the ups and the wall.

Additionally, the last post specifically mentions the UPS shutting down its power supply which would cause computers/etc to turn off, which sounds like it relates to what you are experiencing.

It notes that the shutdown issue is due to a failure of power to be distributed efficiently/evenly you may want to look into this as a potential cause.

Also, I am not an electrician, but I could see how a newer type of cable could be incompatible with older types of cables. At least in America, wiring standards have changed quite a bit in the last 30 years. I had an electrician at my house a month ago and they showed me some things that were present in my wiring that wouldn't fly if my house were built today.

In any event, I don't know what to tell you if you can't trust the electricians to be good at their jobs, regardless.

 

[ko888]

Are you on the same circuit as everyone else in the office or are you on a different circuit?

What else is on the same circuit that you're on?

Has the circuit's voltage been measured and monitored to determine if it's within spec?

 

[FunSurfer]

@linseed - Did you try to use another AC cable for the UPS in the office?
Did you try to connect the UPS in the office to a different outlet?
If there are power flactuations in the wall outlet you should hear clicks from the UPS. Did you hear any?
Did the UPS in the office beeps somtimes?
Try to connect the two UPSs in series at the office. If the first will turn off the second will beep for you to turn the first on and keep your PC running.

 

[linseed]

Thank you all.
Raiddinn I did a little reading myself as you suggested, all those volts and amps and watts get me a little confused, but I will get them one day. ko888 and FunSurfer I will try those suggestions today and at least now I have something to suggest or ask the electrician when he is doing his thing

 

[Raiddinn]

It really isn't that hard.

If I was trying to explain this to your average 8 or 10 year old kid and I was willing to bend the truth a little for the sake of comprehension, I might try:

BPretend you want to get a bunch of boxes of power from here to there. They will ideally arrive in shipments of an exact amount. Barely over or barely under is OK, but it is best if it is the exact amount. You can get all the boxes there faster by using more trucks with the exact same number of boxes in each one. It will get there twice as fast with 2 trucks as with 1 and 50 times as fast with 50 trucks instead of just 1.

The trucks are the volts, the amps are the number of trucks, and the wattage is all the boxes.

AC power, what the power company sends to your building and what most appliances use is very "dirty". That means the size of the trucks they send varies a lot. You might get a truck with 100 boxes followed by a truck with 50 boxes followed by another truck with 80 boxes.

Many appliances don't like this, but it is the easiest and cheapest way to get the average as high as possible to as many homes and businesses as possible from the same power station.

The reason Thomas Edison (the founder of General Electric) succeeded in the power business when others failed is because the others were trying to send DC power out of the power station. Thomas Edison designed the power grid to send out AC power which was tremendously cheaper and much less power was lost as heat. This brought power down to a cost cheap enough to be useful for people.

DC power is what I said above, you want the same sized trucks all the time. They don't just have to average out (AC power), but they absolutely must show up in trucks of very nearly the exact same size.

The power station sends you very dirty (variant) AC, and you have to use a device called an AC to DC converter which is like a middle man in the shipping process. They take all the variable sized trucks from the power station in one side and send them out the other side in trucks that are the exact same size.

This helps to protect sensitive equipment from being destroyed by power variance.

Some middlemen are better at their job than others. Some middlemen load truck one truck with 100 boxes and another truck with 80 (variance of 20) while others load trucks with between 85 and 95 boxes (variance of 10). The latter is better for electronics equipment.

It could be that your current middlemen are not too good at their jobs (high variance) and that the electrician guy wants you to switch out these middlemen for a different company that is better at their jobs (low variance).

Or it could be that they are just trying to sell you things you don't need so they can put food on the table this month.

Anyway, I hope at least some of that simple kid oriented terminology will help get you up to speed on the concepts that are being discussed.

 

[linseed]

Best answer selected by linseed.