UPS batteries?

[David Wolfskill]

Last night, Lynette noticed an "odd" smell in one part of the house;
further investigation (mostly on her part; my sense of smell isn't
very acute) identified the UPS I use for the non-Microsoft boxen
as the apparent source of the odor.  After some discussion (and
considering that the time was late on a Saturday evening), we decided
that about the best we could do would be to shut down the machines
gracefully, then power them back up without the benefit of the UPS (thus
freeing up the UPS for service or replacement).

I note that during our previous power outage -- a couple of weeks ago --
the UPS only lasted a few minutes, vs. the 45 minutes it had lasted
before.  Thus, I expected that I would find something fairly wrong when
I opened it up.

I was not surprised, then, to find that some of the "sealed" lead-acid
storage batteries had ruptured.

Fortunately, this should merely be a matter of buying replacement
batteries, putting them back in the cabinets (wired correctly), and a
bit of testing, followed by deploying the UPS once again.

Although I believe I have seen batteries like those I need at HSC (aka
Halted), I don't recall the price, and they're not open until Monday.  A
quick search on the Net showed a huge variation in price for allegedly
equivalent batteries -- from $45.00 each to $9.45 each (the latter
vendor offered them for $8.95 each, qty. 2 or $7.95 each, qty. 10).

I do have a few batteries that look OK, but the UPS itself uses 5 of
these batteries, and the expansion unit has 10.  The batteries are 12 V,
5.0 Ah units -- some are Yuasa NPH5-12; others are Portalec PX12050SHR.

In any case, I expect to be needing to buy at least 15 batteries.  Given
that and the state of our finances, I have incentive to be rather
conservative about spending money.

So:  Are there any particular vendors folks have used with especially
noteworthy results (either positive or negative)?

I will summarize private responses, of course.

Thanks,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
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