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Yaworski

Yaworski

Hawkeye
Joined
May 22, 2016
Messages
6,703
City & State/Province
Picksburgh, Pennsylvania
There was a big storm yesterday afternoon and power got knocked out throughout most of the county it seems. Been without electricity since about 5:00 yesterday afternoon. No end in sight. The power company's website doesn't even have an estimated time for when they'll be working on my area. Fortunately, the weather is mild today.
 
Generators are your friend. A whole house with an automatic transfer switch is best, but very pricey. But even a portable can save the contents of your fridge and freezer.

Being a belt and suspenders kind of guy with this stuff I keep a portable to back up my whole house.
 
Yaworski said:
There was a big storm yesterday afternoon and power got knocked out throughout most of the county it seems. Been without electricity since about 5:00 yesterday afternoon. No end in sight. The power company's website doesn't even have an estimated time for when they'll be working on my area. Fortunately, the weather is mild today.
Click to expand...
Well at least your lights aren't flickering.......
 
We have a Bluetti Solar Generator with several battery banks and panels. It has been a life changing investment. Well worth the cost
 
Yaworski said:
No generator. Longest power outage that I've experienced in the past was about 5 hours and that's in 40 years of living around here.

Might Now invest in a small inverter generator that's enough to run the refrigerator and power the furnace blower
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Same for us. I could live with 5 hours.

Then, just before Y2K I was talking with a friend and asked his opinion whether I should buy a genny. His answer was YES, but not for Y2k, you need one anyway.

I bought one, and Y2K came and I didn't need it after all.

Two years later I was out of town on Business and a storm hit. Talked to my wife on the phone and she said no power and the sump pump was at the top. Luckily I was driving and made it home just in time to fire up the jenny. She had been bailing for a few hours.

The power was out for days. My jenny saved us, but finally I ran out of gas. No local gas stations had power. Luckily I had a hose and sucked both car gas tanks dry.

A few months later we had a whole house genny installed. Haven't needed it yet, now 15 years later, but now retired we can go away with no worries. Best money I ever spent.
 
Living on the Gulf Coast we are subject to major storms each year. We installed a Cumins whole house generator two years ago. We have gotten to old to deal with a portable generator which we have had for years and it wouldn't run the HVAC. The whole house generator is great. But hopefully we won't need it often.
 
Yaworski said:
There was a big storm yesterday afternoon and power got knocked out throughout most of the county it seems. Been without electricity since about 5:00 yesterday afternoon. No end in sight. The power company's website doesn't even have an estimated time for when they'll be working on my area. Fortunately, the weather is mild today.
Click to expand...
If you mean the storm that hit Pittsburgh, this is from my daughter's page:

https://www.instagram.com/stories/_swampfoxcreations_/3622324524193222541?igsh=Y3R4d2sycGFteHpy
 
GypsmJim said:
Same for us. I could live with 5 hours.

Then, just before Y2K I was talking with a friend and asked his opinion whether I should buy a genny. His answer was YES, but not for Y2k, you need one anyway.

I bought one, and Y2K came and I didn't need it after all.
Click to expand...
Why is it folks think that just because a station has no power you can't get gasoline out of the tanks? I have a hi flow 12 volt electric pump ( I use it to transfer gas from my jerry cans to my Jeep gas tank. A few feet of hose and away we go. I don't even open my engine compartment. I just plug it into the cigarette (hey they were still called that in 1982) lighter.
 
We built our house in the country in 1996. We went for almost 15 years without a power outage even for an hour. Then the next 14 years haven't been so fortunate. Our longest outage was I think 5 days, but we have had a number of them for hours. We bought a portable generator after the first extended outage. It will run some basics, refrigerators, lights, our tv and small things but won't power the air conditioner. It will get you by but you have to get the generator out, fueled, and run extension cords all over the house. Things that are not fun for an 80 year old guy to do in the middle of the night.
 
Jeepnik said:
Why is it folks think that just because a station has no power you can't get gasoline out of the tanks? I have a hi flow 12 volt electric pump ( I use it to transfer gas from my jerry cans to my Jeep gas tank. A few feet of hose and away we go. I don't even open my engine compartment. I just plug it into the cigarette (hey they were still called that in 1982) lighter.
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That post was the one today that made me laugh the most.

Wayyyy back in my college days we were low on gas and were trying to get home at 3AM. You know most gas hoses have a little bit left. We moved the car from pump to pump and drained all the hoses. The cops came and we got arrested.

When a gas station is closed because of no power, and all the employees are at home, trying to suck gas out of their tank is most assuredly illegal.
 
wproct said:
We built our house in the country in 1996. We went for almost 15 years without a power outage even for an hour. Then the next 14 years haven't been so fortunate. Our longest outage was I think 5 days, but we have had a number of them for hours. We bought a portable generator after the first extended outage. It will run some basics, refrigerators, lights, our tv and small things but won't power the air conditioner. It will get you by but you have to get the generator out, fueled, and run extension cords all over the house. Things that are not fun for an 80 year old guy to do in the middle of the night.
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Got a 220 receptacle? Just kill the main breaker to disconnect you from the grid and back feed the panel. Limit amp draw by just shutting off stuff you don't need.
 
Bought a natural gas generator Feb. two years ago with the firm belief I would never need it. That's always the way things work for me.... last real power outage of any kind was back in the Winter of 2008 for 6 days and my wife and I made out just fine with gas & wood heat and I ran my computer and the TV and Satellite receiver off of 12 volt batteries and an inverter.... kept our food cool with the ice sliding off the roof. but I figured since I bought this thing I should at least make a way to quickly hook it up... both to our gas meter and the outside disconnect panel. I even went to the trouble on Sept 26th of pulling it out and prepping it.... knowing it was a waste of time... we've had many a 'hurricane' come up from the coast and there never was much of a problem.....that generator ran for 6 days straight and I still can't believe they got our power back on in that little of time.... neighborhood was totally decimated.

So, a back up generator should be like insurance or a smoke / CO alarm something you plan to never need but have anyway. In fact a gun is the same....
One of the things that really bothered me about the aftermath of Helene was a fellow member of our fellowship offered to let folks come there so they could charge their cell phones with his generator..... I mean really? people don't have a charger for their phone in their car? Must be me but even if I lived in an apartment and did not even drive I would have battery backups for just about everything.... but that's me I guess, I was a Boy Scout but never got even close to eagle.
 
Day before yesterday around 3pm we got high wind preceding intense but short T-storm that brought a huge Maple tree down across power lines/cable/internet. Snapped two power line poles, closed the street. 10 hours no power/internet & landline. Spectrum cable is stringing cable to our house right now at 2:25 AM. They got our internet hooked up a couple hours ago with lines down on ground.
 
Our local electric coop just spent several hundred thousand $ to clear power lines. Unfortunately, enough overhanging trees were missed that problems still exist. :mad:
After the fire here, I bought an interim generator thinking the insurance would pony up within a reasonable time. NOPE still in limbo so I'm looking at a more suitable generator in the 10-12KW range that will satisfy current needs. The 'whole house' hardwired option has lost a lot of appeal over the past two years as I read more and more sad reviews.
 
My longest time with out power was during the 1998 ice storm that hit the north east in January. Most of New England was without power for days. I didn't have it for 13 days. We were lucky that the temperatures didn't drop below freezing for the whole time. I had a 5000 watt generator and about 30 gals of gas. I had the generator set up to be able to back feed power to the whole house including 220v. When we saw how bad the damage was we knew that there wasn't going to be any power for a long time. We have an old wood burning cookstove in the kitchen and had a combination oil/wood furnace for the whole house. I had a good supply of firewood in the celler, but it was too long for the cookstove. I had to take pieces outside to cut in half with the chainsaw. We did all our cooking and heated water on the cookstove.

I had a kitchen timer that went up to 99 min. 59 sec. at night I would set it to 99.59 and go to bed. When it went off I would get up start the gen. for heat, set the timer to 60.00 and go back to bed. When it went off again I would get up shut the gen down, reset to 99.59 and back to bed. During the day we would run it only enough to run the water pump and keep the fridge and freezer going. I stretched that gas out for over a week until the roads were re-opened and a couple of gas stations on the main road re-opened.

Now we still lose power a few time each year for up to 4 days at a time. This is usually wind storms the take a few tree down and car accidents that take out a pole. I've upgraded to a 7500 watt gen and keep 50-60 gals of ethanol free gas on hand at all times. All my gas cans are numbered and have tags on them so that at least once a year the gas gets dumped in my truck and the cans refilled with fresh gas.
 
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