We had a lot of winds come in yesterday late afternoon and lost my power last night just before midnight still out as of now. 14 hrs so far Good news, on a propane fired whole house generator. 100 gal. tank should last 4 days or better with minimal use. Repair crews are not allowed to go up in the bucket until winds die down which could be at least late tomorrow
I believe ol' Test Dummy is in a similar situation. Had quite a storm last night. Lost trees. power still off, etc. He said he's fine but dirty.
Just got power, and phone, back after 17 hours of outage. It was crazy. Sounded like a train at times. On the bright side, 80% of the leaves were stripped from the trees in a few hours. I cleaned them and probably only have to blow them into the woods one more time, instead of the usual 5-6 times.
That's crazy. We lost power for 3 days back in 2009, after a blizzard that dropped 26" of snow, and the temp dropped to 0°. I was ill prepared for that and learned a lesson. I'm good for at least a week now, summer or winter. After that, I start killing the neighbors and eating their food.
There is talk of being out until Monday or Tuesday, Oh well that's life in a rural area they have their priorities for more populated areas. Hope the fuel lasts!
Have to give my local propane supplier credit. When we have tornados or other nasty events they personally check on their customers and top off everyone's tanks then bill for the fuel later at a discount rate. Have seen them chainsaw their way into places way before the electric line crews even got close. In this area it is prudent to have heat and cooking ability independent of electricity. It also pays to have a huge reserve of fuel, I keep two one thousand gallon tanks for that reason. My big Onan genset can eat one hundred gallons of propane easily in four days if I don't watch what all is accidently left on line. Pare things down to just essentials and one hundred gallons will last nearly a week. Getting grazed by tornados here for five years in a row makes you pay attention.
As soon as the generator kicked on I ordered a top off and is scheduled for delivery on the trucks next in area route which could be Monday or a week from Monday. I can order it critical at an extra cost. Your Dealer is a good one to keep treat them nice. My 2 priorities are heat ( hot water baseboard) house set up is not good for wood or pellet stove ( needs a separate chimney) and water (on a well ) Need electric for both to run, have a separate tank for cooking Heat is a must it can get to -20 to -30 F in the dredges of winter
Hang in there 65restomod, I'm sure every supplier is overwhelmed right now. We had 7 days without power out here in 2014 after a huge snowstorm. We're lucky to have a natural gas water heater and a woodstove, so we had hot water & heat. Lights & cooking were handled by candles, our Coleman lanterns and cookstove, and freezer items were iced down in a couple of big Coleman coolers. My wife & I have done a lot of camping in our day, and at some point the peace & quiet that is missing from everyday life seemed kinda nice. Of course, the first thing we did after power was restored was turn on the TV...
48 + hrs out I would hook up to NG but it is not available in this area. Went to bed and got woken up by something and found out the gen.was off and no power from the grid. Got dressed found a flashlight (which was pretty dead)checked on the unit, it was off. I thought it was out of propane but it still had 20% left, looked at the message center on the unit and it says "low voltage" did a manual restart and kicked on and then switched over to auto. So.. that's where I'm at right now I went through the big hurricane Sandy Oct 22,2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy We were out 7 days+ (no gen.) and lived 35 miles inland from the major impact zone, lost a freezer full of food but was able to cook what we could save on the outdoor grill, (had electric stove) and ate a lot of sandwiches , was quite dirty and could't get to work for 4 days. I had 2 120V sump pumps that needed to keep working, one unit had a 12V back up and I had a spare 12V pump , so to keep the basement dry.One 12v pump was hooked up to my garden tractor and the other one was hooked up to my truck which also charged up the deep cycle pump battery and I sat with them to monitor them. Yea, I'm used to it
Got an 11KW generator on a trailer that runs off a tractor pto. Works like a champ and I can back feed the whole place from an out building so it and the tractor are in the dry. Did an experiment to see how much fuel it took to run the place like normal. Didn't take long to decide that was not going to work as the tractor consumed 8 gallons of gasoline per hour under that load. Never tried using a diesel tractor but I expect it to have similar results. I think propane is cheaper.
Really Sean ? You'd wait forty days before appropriating their dwindling larders ? Most folks don't even have a week's worth of provisions stashed. The ones who do have a stash will be obvious, especially if there is a generator running in their compound. Funny thing about those places with live generators, you'll still have to work to get to the stash because you will have to face the inevitable arsenal that was purportedly lost in a tragic boating accident. Where you live now the natives can make Detroit look like Sunday in the park if they get threatened.
Hey, all's well. Sometime this morning power came back just in time. there was only had 10% fuel left. May have to rethink fuel capacity, longest we've been out since we moved here 6 yrs. ago.
Good to hear. When I first bought my shop building it was heated with propane, a single 100 gallon tank. I added a second, and the following winter I added a third. Finally had the ability to heat the place for 3 months continuous. Remember, it costs nothing to have an extra big bottle (or 2), it only hurts to have to fill them.
I am able to heat my extra 2 car garage /workshop radiant floor off the house oil fired boiler. the other garage where the" ordinary" vehicles are is not heated but well insulated . Keeps them 15 to 25*F warmer that ambient temp. Have a separate propane tank just for the Genset. Another tank for cooking and 2 gas heaters. I am going to call my supplier tomorrow to see what my options are.
What do you think of radiant floor heating? Do you prefer it over a traditional forced-air furnace? Just curious. Joseph
