Can anyone recommend a whole house battery backup system?

You'll need a power generator not a backup battery...

[Link: northerntool.com]

A generator is the only way to run the entire house and they must be connected to the house system by a licensed electrician certified by the local utility to install transfer switches.

No that is not entirely true. There are residential battery based back up systems that can run an entire home. They do however require a standard generator to charge them to support extended blackouts.

There are UPS systems that can run a house.. Think solarpanels with battery backup for homes that are off the grid?? Any solar company could design a battery bank to operate portions of the home when power is not available from the grid. Or you can just get a commercial UPS system. You will need to know how long they want to last and how much power is needed and size accordingly. I would set it up just like a generator and only put the bare essentials on it such as refridgerator, smokes/security a few lights and so on..

[Link: woodhyrst.com]

still allow for a UPS for any media servers etc as there will be a short delay between power outage and generator start

Do you truly want to run the water heater and HVAC and stove from a battery backup systems? I have built systems large enough to do this on bus conversions but not a standard stick house. You are talking about an inordinately large battery bank and inverter system.

I doubt they want to run the entire house.. I have never even seen a generator run the entire house before and I have worked on some extremely large projects/homes. You always pick a number of must have life safety items to run and a couple important areas of the house to light and put that on the generator. Even with a generator if you really want to protect correctly you still need a UPS for the period of time when the power goes out and the generator starts and gets running. I have worked on 2 houses where we had a single large UPS to cover this down time rather than various UPS's throughout the house. Much easier to install and maintain.

Me too. I have several smaller UPS systems as I did not want to rewire for dedicated circuits all over the house. I have a 15KW Onan (surge to 18kw)in the back yard with auto start and on-load and off-load testing.

During cold weather the start/throttle /transfer time is about 15 seconds max. We do have the HVAC fan on auto transfer but we automatically disable the compressor. WE have gas heat so the system will easily run the T-stats,gas valve and air handlers.

The usual cost of a high capacity UPS and the battery maintenance costs are too great for many folks. Batteries DO have a shelf life.

are you serious? whole house.

you have never seen a whole house on the generator? that is almost the norm here. i would say at least 50% of our jobs, run whole house generators. 50, 60, 80kW generators and larger. the other 50% pick key circuits to power.

I agree I would say almost every house we work in if it has a generator the whole house is on it...i mean everything...you have to be able to run the pool pumps in a black out!

Wow, the norm around where you are is 80kw generators? Must have a bunch of electricians smiling ear to ear... a 60kw single phase generator can push 250amps... and that's a bone that we get tossed only once every now and again.

Just sell them a generator, a natural gas connection and then convince them they need it to be on an automatic transfer switch - then find an electrician and plumber and make some nice referral fees.

Gensets MUST be on transfer switches by NEC and most all state and municipal codes.

Some non compus mentus brain trusts have made male to male cables and plugged them into a dryer outlet. Hopefully they will end up being filtered from the gene pool.

[Link: richardgrayspowercompany.com]

We did a project with one of these. It would power the whole house for hours if the generator failed to start. The power for the audio, video, server rack ,lighting, sewing room, blah,blah,blah all went through it. The wall outlets were about the only things that were not on it.