Electricity - It's such a common thing

Welcome back to Civilization, Bob! I’m glad you were prepared, with the heater, Coleman and such. I bet 5 days with the power out makes one appreciate the convenience of electrickery.

Around here there has been talk about ”planned power outages”. Central and Southern Europe has relied on Czar F-head’s (sorry!!) natural gas for decades, and now that the valves are shut and pipelines blown up, we are in a bit of a pickle. Germany especially, as they pretty much shut down their nuke reactors and built gas power plants. Swedes have problems with their nuclear plants, and our new plant has been under construction for 17 (sic!) years, and still not fully functional. A prototype, what do you expect. We are on a common electricity market, the price has gone up 10x or more for some people. Oh well.

I have a 2-ton, quite effective wood burning lump of soapstone in the middle of my house, but it is not a fast heater, as it takes a few hours to get it hot, so it’s not much use for emergencies. On the other hand, it does stay  warm for two days after proper heating with about 40-50lbs of dry wood. I already got fresh batteries on my ”crisis radio”, an old Luxor FM receiver. Other than that, I just keep both cars operational and the tanks full. A propane cooking stove might be a good addition. I have a gas grill but it just hogs the gas, especially in the winter weather, and it’s not suitable for indoor use.

First of all Kari....I love that fireplace, and the dog, and the elephant - a symbol of republcanism and consertativre values.  

My fireplace is much less grand but, it in the basement and the kerosun heater in the kitchen wards off the extreme cold.  Both saved for emergencies.



I find it amazing that one pompous little P-man can create such mayham in the world.  That fella needs to be shut down and not in a courteous manner.  I understand the debate regarding nuclear power.  But it's the cleanest most reliable form of energy that we have.  We lived close to a power plant in Florida, kept us cool and our energy bills low.  And the Manatees loved it.  

Oh yes, My go-to....... Battery, solar power, crank magneto, am/fm, all the Noaa weather stations flashlight




Bob

Looks like you’re sending it our way Bob…. Lo of 10F on Thursday this week…. Glad you made it thru OK

Hi Bob,

Glad you are OK,

Back in 1999, there was a fear of an 'upcoming' y2k 2000 electrical grid failure.
Dad got a Honda generator and wired up the house to it. (with luck, not needed yet )
Every year, we have a ritual,
Test run it, and the Honda snowblower.
The snowblower is on it's second set of rubber blades...
Every old 'wood fireplace' around here is now 'fracking' gas powered.

I like AM radio. Canadian, CBC broadcasts programs from all over the world. Between 1 and 5 AM.
Other than that,
Without Electricity,
We are...
With Respect,
Dave

Looks like most of the country is going to get it Robert.  Perhaps another sliver of ice will coat West Virginia.

On the way over to my daughters house yesterday (she lives in-town and had electricity) to fill up the water buckets I passed line-men fixing our grid.  Happy to see them I'm waving and all happy.  They were not happy, looked at me with abandon while shivering with the cold.  

Better to be prepared Half-a............"Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."  

I have a love/hate relationship with AM radio.  PBS (Public Broadcasting System) uses it to spread their liberal agenda. But they provide some remarkable programming as well and they have the best signal in this area.  I have no problem with PBS and their politics but they provide no balance.  There is right and there is left, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Hi Bob,

I listen to AM radio here. Because I can.
Was on the almost same frequency way back when. (27.whatever)
A trucker with a boosted CB radio passing by,
Would interfere.
With some luck,
The plane kept flying, the trucker kept going...
No big deal.
90% of the people I know are Conservative.
10% go left or right.
Almost like steering a FreeFlight !
Your friend,
Dave
(no intention of hi-jacking this thread )

In late-August we had quite a storm go through that knocked out the power for large parts of the area. Our power was out for about 3 days. Usually, if it goes out, it's only out for less than a day. It's been many years since it went out for much longer than that.

The first thing I normally do is go grab the spare car battery and a power inverter to turn the TV and a lamp on if needed. That should run the TV and a lamp or two with a LED bulb for a few hours if need be (that battery is getting old so who knows for sure). I normally like to have a deep cycle marine battery sitting around for this purpose. Once the weather settles down, I go out and start a generator. I have 3 of those little 2 cycle 1000 watt generators, in which I normally start off using one of those. They'll run a TV, some lamps, fan or space heater... I could (and have in the past) run a refrigerator off one, same with the furnace blower, but I like to keep those jobs for the larger 4 stoke generators. Better voltage and frequency regulation with the 4-stroke sets. Power outages that required the refrigerators to be hooked up to a generator are very rare, I think I've only had to do it one other time. I have never needed to run the furnace during a power outage. Power has gone out in the winter before, but never for long.







I like to run each generator for a few minutes once every two or so weeks. "Once the universe knows a generator I need doesn't run (even though I think it does)... then the power will go out"... well, sure enough, when the power went out this past August and I realized I was going to have to run the refrigerators, I pulled out that 3500 watt shown above and started it up only to see gasoline pouring all over the place... the cheap Chinese fuel line had disintegrated (even though it was fine a week or so earlier). Luckily, I had another fuel line of the right size that came with a different Chinese generator carb kit (intended for a 6000 watt generator that I didn't get around to replacing the needle and seat in, oops).

The next portable generator I get will be a dual/tri fuel generator. One that can be ran off gasoline and propane (and natural gas if you get a tri-fuel one). I'd probably only ever run it off propane. They're not cheap to run off propane and typically have a lower power output when ran off propane versus gasoline, but you can store propane practically indefinitely so you don't need to worry about stale gas.



I have an inlet installed on the outside of the house (a picture of it is somewhere on my phone, need to find it).



Receptacles for the separately derived system are installed in the furnace room, one on a basement wall, a few above the drop ceiling in the basement for easy connection to the basement refrigerator and cable internet modem (God forbid we go without internet), and a receptacle in a kitchen cabinet to hook up the TV, a lamp, and the kitchen fridge if needed.





I installed an inlet on the gas furnace for easy cord and plug connection to the generator. Using a 3 way switch as a transfer switch. Fortunately, I have yet to need to use it. We also have a gas fireplace that was originally a wood burning fireplace that I can use as a heat source if need be.




In addition to all of that, I have a couple of these installed in some lamps. This one will come back on automatically if the power goes out, and you can turn it on and off like normal. Special considerations need to be made when using these, you cannot install it in any fixture that has more than one bulb on the same switch, or on digital wall timers, motion sensors... Mechanical timers will work fine, assuming you will need switch the timer on yourself to turn it on if the timer wasn't already in the "on" position when the power went out. You also want to use it in a lamp that gets turned on for awhile each day to keep the battery charged.



There is another version of these that have a little button on the side to manually turn it on when the power is out or when the lamp/bulb is disconnected (you could unscrew it and use it like a lantern or take it camping, etc). The bulb will work like a normal bulb, just won't turn on automatically if the power is out. These can be used in fixtures the automatic ones wouldn't work in (such as lamps with more than one socket on the same switch, etc). I bought the first one a good ~3 or so years ago, it still works and lasted over 3 hours that night in August. I bought a few more earlier this year, including a few for my elderly cousin whose power always seems to go out in storms. Bob, you should get a couple of these if you don't have any yet.

In 2009 we had an ice storm that deposited between 1.5" and 2" of ice. Everything went down -- electricity, water, roads were blocked, cell towers toppled, wooded areas looked like a war zone. I could stand on my porch (I live on the outskirts of town) and it sounded as if loggers were dropping trees everywhere. Because the entire town lost all power, all utilities were off. You could not get fuel of any kind locally since the pumps and registers did not work. Many folks traveled about 20 miles south and out of the damage belt.

There was some prior warning and I had prepped for food, water and kerosene. We cooked on a Coleman stove, used Coleman lanterns and a kerosene heater. Since it was obviously cold, I just put the fridge contents in containers on the back porch. We were down 5 days. My in-laws who lived in a rural area were out of electricity nearly 4 weeks.

We don't have a good appreciation for those electrons until they stop moving.

Thanks Jacob, I will look into those battery powered lamps. I hadn't seen them before and sounds like a great idea. You have back-ups to your back-ups. Another great idea.

Stopped for kerosene this morning. I thought 20$'s for my four gallons, nope $28.49. Gas only $2.78 per gallon.

Enough of this, I'm having a whole house Generac installed with a transfer switch. I have read that of all the developed countries the U.S. has the most power outages. I'm not sure if it's true, but here in West Virginia we are averaging about three outages per year. In our 35 years living in Florida we had none, that includes tropical storms and hurricanes. Soft sand, easy digging results in underground wiring. Here in WV, ledge and shale prevents that, therefore ice laden trees fall on exposed power lines taking them out. "Wild but sometimes not so wonderful West Virginia."

rsv1cox wrote:
Enough of this, I'm having a whole house Generac installed with a transfer switch.

I'm going to install a transfer switch when I eventually replace the main service panel in this house. I'd like a Generac whole home generator, but the power never went out frequently enough and long enough to justify it. Should probably get one more sooner than later as there becomes more and more of a push to follow California and ban new natural gas installations and new natural gas appliances.

Admin wrote:Should probably get one more sooner than later as there becomes more and more of a push to follow California and ban new natural gas installations and new natural gas appliances.

Have more to say having worked in the industry and these pushes going back 20 years ago, but best reserved in private.

GallopingGhostler wrote:

Admin wrote:Should probably get one more sooner than later as there becomes more and more of a push to follow California and ban new natural gas installations and new natural gas appliances.

Have more to say having worked in the industry and these pushes going back 20 years ago, but best reserved in private.

It all becomes academic when Putin shuts down our eletrical grid, and we his. I would think that we both have developed the comuter programs necessary to do so. But two/three days of propane in the tank isn't going to help much powering a generator.

Just how bored did I get with those five days of electricity depravation.........

After reading myself silly, books, magazines, etc.  I just gave up and watched the birds raid the feeder.  Then I thought......the puzzle that the kids gave my wife hoping that it would help her cope with Alzheimers.  It did.  

I have never put a puzzle together in my life that I can recall. Waste of time.  In desperation I got it out.  Edge pieces first, formed an empty rectangle. Hey, WOOz can be kinda fun.

It was right in the middle of constructing this puzzle that I heard a slight whirr.  Electricity back on, my wife saved me once again, she was good at that.



I don't like things uncompleted so I went back and finished it.

Hey Robert! Glad that you made it through my good friend! Lynne and I will be seeing some very high winds (50-60 mph) coming through this area (Northern Rhode Island) toward the end of this week. Outdoor temperatures during this period are forecast to be unseasonably mild at 50-60 degrees F. but are said to plummet to well below freezing soon after.

If there are widespread power outages due to high winds; then we may have no heat if and when the temps plummet. That will not be good.. as we have no back-up heat source.

It's to the point now; where I can justify the cost of a back-up power generator installation. When I make that decision, it will be a whole-house capable system powered by liquefied petroleum as opposed to gasoline.

My neighbor has a 100 gal. LP tank just for her oven.. but if she loses electricity, she can't use it. She would be a good candidate for a LP powered generator.. because the fuel is already in place.

An LP power-option for an internal combustion engine-powered generator is favorable, when compared to gasoline... because of the "cleaner-burn" which equates to zero-fouling of spark-plugs, extended engine life due to the lack of carbon-deposits. Motor oil service intervals are hugely extended.. especially for synthetic grade oils. If you've ever had a job where there was an LP-gas-powered fork truck.. then you'll certainly understand how dependable they are. They have to be.