The Ice Storm....

Mirac

Mirac

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what, nobody's started a thread yet ??

my work in RTP is flipping out.
We have 4400gals of fuel truck with the driver paid to be onsite for the next 24hrs.
And have a Crew of Building engineers on overnight standby to watch ~12 Meg of Generators start when the power goes out...
glad I just had them finished an upgrade on 2 Gens in a 3 Gen system in a Data Center Building today.
 
I got gas for generator, charged battery and started her up to make sure no issues.
unfortunately I have to be to work at 7am to cook breakfast/lunch for the greatest generation.
I figure they risked their lives for us so I guess I can risk mine for them. Hopefully won’t be bad.
 
Just got back from getting gas for the generator. Line at the pumps was.terrible seems everyone else had the.same idea.
Plenty of wood.
Fridge , freezer, and pantry well stocked.
I'd rather have snow than ice.
 
Yeah I have propane, gas burners inside, gas log fireplace. Tons of food that can be made without electricity. Enough beer, wine and spirts to last months. I think we will be ok.
 
Got parts ordered for the NCDOT motor grader in Bryson City. Gotta try and make it there in the mornin so they can clear the roads and pull out stuck plows. Providing the parts actually show up!
 
Mike Overlay said:
First I’m hearing of the impending doom. Should I panic now or do I have a few hours?
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At least it’s distracting from the impending doom we keep reading about in the news.
 
Mirac said:
what, nobody's started a thread yet ??

my work in RTP is flipping out.
We have 4400gals of fuel truck with the driver paid to be onsite for the next 24hrs.
And have a Crew of Building engineers on overnight standby to watch ~12 Meg of Generators start when the power goes out...
glad I just had them finished an upgrade on 2 Gens in a 3 Gen system in a Data Center Building today.
Click to expand...
They need to buy a Thorium reactor.
 
I have five cars in the BP fleet, all full tanks. Inverter generator 2K with ethanol zero gas, ready to go and the Generac Wheelhouse full if needed.
Nat Gas water heater, range and clothes dryer and up down furnace.
 
some_kid6 said:
I better not hear about a bunch of people dying of CO poisoning tomorrow! Don't be a Texan!
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Back in my VFD days it seemed like we had at least one call for our paramedics for CO problems each storm/power outage. We saw everything from gas and charcoal grills being brought in to cook on to using old propane heaters unventilated. Even worse were the fire calls for house fires from fireplace/chimney fires because people hadn’t maintained them or just didn’t know how to use them properly. Murphy and Darwin love events like this ... at home, on the road, etc ... be careful out there guys!
 
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Got the ole kerosene heater out of the attic, dusted it off, and fired it up in the garage, ready in case we loose power. Got 10 gallons of non-ethanol gas for the generators also. Not planning on going anywhere.
 
At bit more concerned than some. No fireplace or wood stove in the home we rent (otherwise would have had one, preferably the latter). Have a "Big Buddy" propane heater and a 20-gal tank (a year old) so we can probably keep one room warm for a few days if needed.

Not really looking forward to this.
 
GreatGazoo said:
At bit more concerned than some. No fireplace or wood stove in the home we rent (otherwise would have had one, preferably the latter). Have a "Big Buddy" propane heater and a 20-gal tank (a year old) so we can probably keep one room warm for a few days if needed.

Not really looking forward to this.
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Good luck
 
No humor this time. I’m not well prepared at all for a prolonged power outage. No back up heat source besides a lp fired air fryer and a giant torpedo heater for my shop that was acting up the last time i used it. If needed we’ll have to head south and stay in a hotel for a bit
 
We froze our butts off in 2002-2003 with a major ice storm and no power for 10 days.

17 years later wife doesn’t understand why I wanted a whole house generator. We have natural gas to the house and it’s a no brainer in my view. Still no whole house gen set.

After that ice storm I bought a couple of kerosene heaters. Sold those and bought some Big Buddy Heaters and propane. Now I’m in a house with gas logs and a gas stove so we’ll stay warm.

We are probably not in the path of the storm. Prayers to you who are.
 
Have about 20 2-liter bottles in the downstairs freezer filled up with water and frozen.

If the power goes, I’ll take a few of them and space them out in the upstairs fridge/freezer and the freezer downstairs. Figure that’ll keep things colder, longer and buy some time if the power stays out for a prolonged period of time.
 
Winter+is+Coming+meme.png
 
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Dale Gribble said:
Have about 20 2-liter bottles in the downstairs freezer filled up with water and frozen.

If the power goes, I’ll take a few of them and space them out in the upstairs fridge/freezer and the freezer downstairs. Figure that’ll keep things colder, longer and buy some time if the power stays out for a prolonged period of time.
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We have ice ready to go in the freezer if needed. Have to keep the good stuff from thawing out.
 
oetkb said:
We froze our butts off in 2002-2003 with a major ice storm and no power for 10 days.

17 years later wife doesn’t understand why I wanted a whole house generator. We have natural gas to the house and it’s a no brainer in my view. Still no whole house gen set.

After that ice storm I bought a couple of kerosene heaters. Sold those and bought some Big Buddy Heaters and propane. Now I’m in a house with gas logs and a gas stove so we’ll stay warm.

We are probably not in the path of the storm. Prayers to you who are.
Click to expand...


Call it foresight or whatever, but something told me to buy one of these when we were building our house back in 2003. It's powered by a 2.5 liter Ford engine that runs on natural gas piped directly from the Piedmont Natural Gas meter. We had this thing wired to both circuit breaker boxes and have an Eaton Cutler automatic transfer switch that handles the switching from Duke to generator when the power goes out and back to Duke when it comes back on. Although I'm capable of performing the maintenance on the engine portion of the unit, I let Clarke Power come to the house twice a year to do the PM's on it.

Only trouble we have ever had with it was a stuck thermostat one year and the starter went out on it last summer. The computer will shut the unit off automatically if it detects a problem with the engine. That time the thermostat got stuck, it was running it's weekly exercise program and the computer detected an increase in coolant temp and shut it down before the unit overheated.

I paid around $9K for it back in 2003. Of course that doesn't include installation and I'm not sure what that was since the installation, wiring and gas line install, was all integrated with the cost of building the house. But it's definitely a lot less expensive to plan for and install one of these while the house is being constructed vs. doing so after the fact.

This unit has paid for itself many times over the years. The longest it ran non-stop was when we had a two week power outage sometime shortly after we moved into the house back in the mid - 2000's. Purred like a kitten and the Piedmont gas bill only went up about $100.00 that month.

This is an internet picture but mine looks just like this one:


1613612562058.png
 
oetkb said:
We froze our butts off in 2002-2003 with a major ice storm and no power for 10 days.

17 years later wife doesn’t understand why I wanted a whole house generator. We have natural gas to the house and it’s a no brainer in my view. Still no whole house gen set.

After that ice storm I bought a couple of kerosene heaters. Sold those and bought some Big Buddy Heaters and propane. Now I’m in a house with gas logs and a gas stove so we’ll stay warm.

We are probably not in the path of the storm. Prayers to you who are.
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That was a bad one. 7 days here. Only had one kid then and she was 2. We took our mattress to the living room and the three of us slept there in front of the gas fireplace. We melted Ice to flush the toilets.
 
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Qball said:
Call it foresight or whatever, but something told me to buy one of these when we were building our house back in 2003. It's powered by a 2.5 liter Ford engine that runs on natural gas piped directly from the Piedmont Natural Gas meter. We had this thing wired to both circuit breaker boxes and have an Eaton Cutler automatic transfer switch that handles the switching from Duke to generator when the power goes out and back to Duke when it comes back on. Although I'm capable of performing the maintenance on the engine portion of the unit, I let Clarke Power come to the house twice a year to do the PM's on it.

Only trouble we have ever had with it was a stuck thermostat one year and the starter went out on it last summer. The computer will shut the unit off automatically if it detects a problem with the engine. That time the thermostat got stuck, it was running it's weekly exercise program and the computer detected an increase in coolant temp and shut it down before the unit overheated.

I paid around $9K for it back in 2003. Of course that doesn't include installation and I'm not sure what that was since the installation, wiring and gas line install, was all integrated with the cost of building the house. But it's definitely a lot less expensive to plan for and install one of these while the house is being constructed vs. doing so after the fact.

This unit has paid for itself many times over the years. The longest it ran non-stop was when we had a two week power outage sometime shortly after we moved into the house back in the mid - 2000's. Purred like a kitten and the Piedmont gas bill only went up about $100.00 that month.

This is an internet picture but mine looks just like this one:


View attachment 305249
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It’s about $10-12K to get a 20-22 KW Generac installed now. They are smaller in physical size.

We also went without power after Hurricane Fran in 1996 for 10 days when wife was 8.5 months pregnant. Hot as hell after the storm blew through.

My wife thinks I am nuts for wanting a whole house gen set. WHAT?!??!!11!11!!!!

I think she is a Stepford wife. Looks just like the one I married. Sounds like her, but...

smh
 
oetkb said:
It’s about $10-12K to get a 20-22 KW Generac installed now. They are smaller in physical size.

We also went without power after Hurricane Fran in 1996 for 10 days when wife was 8.5 months pregnant. Hot as hell after the storm blew through.

My wife thinks I am nuts for wanting a whole house gen set. WHAT?!??!!11!11!!!!

I think she is a Stepford wife. Looks just like the one I married. Sounds like her, but...

smh
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With the tank and first fill we were right at 12k a couple years ago on ours.

After the remnants of hurricane Michael passed right over our house and knocked out our power for 3 and a half days my wife said she didn't care how much it cost, call the man.

So I called the man. Took 2 and a half months to get an install date because of how busy they were.
 
Yeah I’ll be installing a whole house generator this year. Tired of going without power when we get hit. Not soon enough to do any good this winter though.

I’ve got propane space heaters so we won’t freeze to death and already have the sump Hooked up to a generator.
 
RR said:
With the tank and first fill we were right at 12k a couple years ago on ours.

After the remnants of hurricane Michael passed right over our house and knocked out our power for 3 and a half days my wife said she didn't care how much it cost, call the man.

So I called the man. Took 2 and a half months to get an install date because of how busy they were.
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Current wait time is 7 months.
 
Chdamn said:
Current wait time is 7 months.
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Yeah I should've said it was 2 months to get a call back and get the guy out here to give me a quote, plus another 2.5 months to install.

And three others were so busy they never called me back.....

Electricians in general have more work than they can do right now.
 
I have a 12kw dual fuel Duromax. It will very nearly do the whole house. On generator, I heat with gas logs and I shut off the hot tub. I also toggle well pump and water heater so they are not on at the same time. Otherwise it is life as usual.
Plumbed it to the LP tank. It has never seen gasoline.
 
RR said:
Electricians in general have more work than they can do right now.
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In my limited experience as a commercial landlord of small properties they are the hardest to find and highest paid of the trades.
 
Chdamn said:
Yeah I’ll be installing a whole house generator this year. Tired of going without power when we get hit. Not soon enough to do any good this winter though.

I’ve got propane space heaters so we won’t freeze to death and already have the sump Hooked up to a generator.
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We had decided to move forward with getting a whole house generator this year, we here we are one ice storm passed looking at the possibility of another. I’m sure the demand and price are high right now, so I’m shooting for late spring to pull the trigger, but it will happen this year. Glad to have the portable unit but tired of cords and flipping breakers, Plus I ain’t getting any younger.
 
oetkb said:
It’s about $10-12K to get a 20-22 KW Generac installed now. They are smaller in physical size.

We also went without power after Hurricane Fran in 1996 for 10 days when wife was 8.5 months pregnant. Hot as hell after the storm blew through.

My wife thinks I am nuts for wanting a whole house gen set. WHAT?!??!!11!11!!!!

I think she is a Stepford wife. Looks just like the one I married. Sounds like her, but...

smh
Click to expand...

Ha! I’ve tried to tell my wife for years we need a generator. So last Spring when all Covid hell broke lose she asked me if we should buy a generator. I laughed and said the time to do that is when things are good and they are actually in stock. We had a short, terse discussion. That has not been repeated since. 🤯
 
CZfool68 said:
Ha! I’ve tried to tell my wife for years we need a generator. So last Spring when all Covid hell broke lose she asked me if we should buy a generator. I laughed and said the time to do that is when things are good and they are actually in stock. We had a short, terse discussion. That has not been repeated since. 🤯
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Lightweight.

I just kickstarted that argument in my house ten minutes ago.

Still not winning.
 
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