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melev

No power again

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by
melev
, 02-12-2010 at 04:05 PM (2854 Views)
Since 3:30am today, the power has been out to my home (as everyone else in the vicinity). As of now, it's been about 12 hours straight without juice. I was up until 6 a.m. waiting for it to come back on, then I finally fell asleep. I got up around noon, as my son brought back a hot chicken teriyaki subway sandwhich, which helped warm me up a bit. The house was 65F then. I'm glad I took a hot shower with the stored water in the water heater before I went to sleep.

I installed a second outlet in a entry closet to run a powercord in the livingroom and my office. It took a little while to find all the necessary components, but my garage yielded all the goods. Keeping the house closed up, we have some power without the fumes of the generator.

I'll have to take a bunch of pictures to document how it all works. My generator holds over 5g of gas, which runs about 12 hours. Right now at 3:00 p.m. the house is 62F, but the tank is 79F in the fishroom which is tightly sealed up.

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‎ Electrical

Comments

  1. waldend's Avatar
    Good luck. Good thing you live in TX. It's 5 deg out here last night.
  2. melev's Avatar
    Where are you located? That's darn cold!

    Still waiting for the power to come on. 17 hours and counting...
  3. Trido's Avatar
    Thats long time without power. Four years ago the PNW was hit with a major wind storm that knocked out power to tens of thousands all over the greater Seattle area. Some went without power for over week before getting it restored. I still hear stories about massive tank losses from that event. Its a good thing your prepared. Unfortunately, I'm sure you'll hear similar stories from club members in your area when its all over.
  4. waldend's Avatar
    I am in Indiana. It has been a cold year everywhere it seems. About 6yrs ago when I first got a small 10g with clowns and mushrooms we had a severe ice storm. I lost power for 5 days and the house was 45-50 degrees and the tank was the same. Everything survived and I still have both today.

    When I build a new house I plan on installing one of the whole house backup generators. They run on LP/natural gas and automatically switch over on a loss of power. They startup like every 2 weeks on their own to run and test then shut back off. I think Home Depot has the Guardian brand for like $2k to provide 100A. Less than what I always thought they would be and while not cheap could easily pay for themselves on a single tank crash. It would also give you power to surf Reef Addicts and play the latest podcast. Or in your case Marc keep your FBGFOTW happy!
    Updated 02-13-2010 at 11:44 AM by waldend
  5. melev's Avatar
    The power is on, the heater is warming up the house and the generator is off after nearly 30 hours of constant running. I'm going back to sleep!!!