Hello!

I've seen a few YouTube videos that explain how to turn a regular cheap computer UPS into a UPS with a huge runtime by swapping the 12V 7ah battery for a large deep cycle marine battery.

This seems pretty straightforward as long as you have basic electric knowledge, and i'm seriously looking into this. Things to keep in mind :

-The built-in charger in the UPS (mine is an APC ES 550) has very low amps (1A or so) so it might take WEEKS to top off the deep cycle battery once it's partially depleted.

So yeah, i'm thinking about drilling holes on the UPS battery panel, pull the battery out and use 14AWG cables to extend the leads so I can connect them to the deep cycle battery.

I was wondering...

1) Will the APC Powerchute software report correct runtime once it runs off the deep cycle battery? (i.e. 623 minutes of runtime rather than 8 minutes).

2) Would it be safe to permanently attach a trickle charger to the battery, to top it off, even through there already is a "tiny" charger on the UPS?

Your thoughts are welcome! Try everything you try at your own risk, always.

Thanks!