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Lessons from Sandy

With no load 10 gallons will last a while. Put the AC on and it will last about half as long.

Reply to
clare
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Gravity furnaces. Still a few in use around here - along with "floor furnaces" with only one heat outlet - like a space heater in a hole in the floor. Don't step on the grate bare-footed!!!!!!

Reply to
clare

When's the last time you saw a "quality" 150 watt inverter??

Reply to
clare

And MOST of them have a lot of that nasty asbestos on them as well - in it's worst form (wool)

Reply to
clare

The NEC does not say anywhere that a furnace blower needs to be hard wired. It is the manufacturer that says that. The only NEC reference is 110.3(B) that says things need to be installed per manufacturer's instructions. If I had a furnace, it would have a cord and plug connection to the blower, thermostat transformer and igniter

Reply to
gfretwell

Indeed. Fortunately here in the high desert..we use swamp coolers, evaporative coolers..so a small one with a 1/4hp or 1/2hp motor will cool one or two rooms nicely when run on a genny.

My normal genset will run my big swamp cooler with its 1hp motor nicely..but when the fridge kicks in while an electric skillet etc is running..it tends to dim the lights for a few moments. Im running pretty close to its max at that point. Fortunately..we never lose gas..so I always tell the family to use gas when cooking rather than electric Stuff.

Gunner

-- "President Obama is not going to lose. He will be re-elected. It is those of you who have these grand fantasies of that pip-squeak Romney actually having a chance at winning the election that will have to wake up to reality the day after the election. I hear there is plenty of room in the rest of the world where you can reside and establish new citizenship. Kirby Grant,

Reply to
Gunner

I called him and he said he hogged up a tach with a servo arm to pull or release the throttle. He breadboarded it a couple times till it served him properly and he then etched a board and built the final unit(s) several actually. He built gensets for his inlaws and brothers and sisters. Handy guy to know.

Gunner

-- "President Obama is not going to lose. He will be re-elected. It is those of you who have these grand fantasies of that pip-squeak Romney actually having a chance at winning the election that will have to wake up to reality the day after the election. I hear there is plenty of room in the rest of the world where you can reside and establish new citizenship. Kirby Grant,

Reply to
Gunner

I was thinking that a lot of vehicles with TBI and FI use a little servo on the throttle body and those should available from any junkyard or parts house. The things were designed for automotive use and adapting them to your own controller shouldn't be a problem. Heck, I was looking at commercially available electronic governor units and they're designed to interface with a number of different manufacturers gensets. The electronics don't require microprocessors to regulate the speed and frequency of the genset, simple analog electronics will do just fine and are easier to repair in primitive conditions. When I was working out in the middle of The Pacific back in the 80's, the 20kw GM Delco diesel genset on our crew boat failed and it turned out to be the voltage regulator. I took it to the island's TV repair shop and replaced a bad FET on the circuit board with one for a TV set and got the genset back in operation. If it had been a microprocessor control unit, I would have been SOL. O_o

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

You mean the furnace panel insulation or the house too. Most of those old houses had/have no insulation in the walls. ^_^

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

We had them in our home in the 1950's and my younger siblings often wound up with waffle brands on various parts of their bodies. Ya know, the things we survived around as children are not allowed anywhere near kids today. O_o

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

$foa$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

If you can do it, the best solution is a small wood burning stove and some wood in store. The gas can go off too you know. You can get stoves with a hotplate to cook on. You can always get more wood if the outage turns out to be a long one, getting more petrol/gas might be difficult. That is what I have, along with a five year stock of wood.

Saw all the long queues for petrol on the box over here. Those folks should have bought and stored a bicycle.

These sort of things are going to become more frequent. Their houses will be near worthless now after they have rebuilt them. They could and should flood proof them. I wonder if they have the wit to do it?

Reply to
harry

innews:k76ccf$foa$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Some places..there is no wood. Seriously. Burning 2x4 scraps ..they burn fast fast fast.

So Cal is a perfect example of No Wood. The stop and robs occasionally sell a tiny bundle of manzanita or mountain oak for something like $11 for folks to take to the beach or burn in a fireplace for "accent" when the chicks come over.

Most of those houses that were damaged/destroyed..were built in the

30s-50s..as summer cottages. Boarded up in the winter and only opened in the spring-fall. Living in them year round..was not in the design criteria 50-70 yrs ago.

Gunner

-- "President Obama is not going to lose. He will be re-elected. It is those of you who have these grand fantasies of that pip-squeak Romney actually having a chance at winning the election that will have to wake up to reality the day after the election. I hear there is plenty of room in the rest of the world where you can reside and establish new citizenship. Kirby Grant,

Reply to
Gunner

innews:k76ccf$foa$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Didn't something like Sandy happen back in the 30's which has been forgotten by the majority of the public. I suppose I could research it but I seem to remember the New York City area being torn up by a storm back in the last century. O_o

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I am planning on doing that. Thanks for your opinion. I will use it as reference (grin). {We plan on being carried out of the house, feet first, toes up. No sale of the house will happen before then}

Reply to
Han

Gunner wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Apparently, the inverter didn't mind, at least with the car engine running it did not ...

Reply to
Han

Very possible, the earlier storm. I remember that in the late 1960s, there was a north east black out that crippled NYC for a couple days. I want to say

1967.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

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Didn't something like Sandy happen back in the 30's which has been forgotten by the majority of the public. I suppose I could research it but I seem to remember the New York City area being torn up by a storm back in the last century. O_o

TDD

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

The Daring Dufas wrote in news:k78cva$6be$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

I'm sure someone can calculate the odds of a storm like Sandy. There are extra high tides twice a month (sun, moon, earth alignment). High tide lasts only a few hours each time. Then you need a storm with sufficient strength and the right location and directionality to push up the water into a funnel like that formed by the Jersey shore and Long Island. Make those fairly unlikely events occur at the same time as happened with Sandy hereabouts, and you found the recipe for disaster.

The same thing happened, resulting in 1,800 or so deaths, on January 31,

1953 in Holland (google "watersnood 1953"). The Dutch then made up their Deltaplan, which was highly successful, though with some ecological hiccups requiring changes in the original plans. They are continuing to fiddle with the systems since sea levels will continue to rise, plus Holland keeps sinking.

A similar approach in the NY area seems unlikely for a variety of reasons, but there was an article in the NY Times this weekend about different approaches to protect more of NY/NJ. Today there is an article about the really bad shape of some buildings that were flooded in lower Manhattan.

Reply to
Han

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote in news:kdde981nb52os17ik6cj7ncm36p0vv1dar@

4ax.com:

Quality or not, I bought this thing last year, didn't use it until last Friday.

Newegg:

1 x ($24.99) Inverter 150W Rosewill RCP-E150C
Reply to
Han

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote in news:kdde981nb52os17ik6cj7ncm36p0vv1dar@

4ax.com:

More:

Reply to
Han

Our family farm is on top of a mountain in Northeast Alabamastan and I don't remember tornadoes ever threatening the farm although its high mountain location does expose the buildings to high winds every now and then and forest fires are easily controlled with fire breaks. I don't remember any huge weather calamity outside of a few ice storms affecting the area for a long time. I survived The Blizzard of 93 that paralyzed Birmingham while those Damn Yankees laughed at us over all the problems we had dealing with a few feet of snow. We have severe thunderstorms and tornadoes but with all the damage those weather events cause, it never seems to put us out of business for very long. I really feel for my cousins in the coastal areas of the country when the ocean decides to visit because it seems to wipe out everything on a much larger scale than even the floods caused by The Mississippi river showing its power to destroy. It looks like the only folks with a really safe home are those who moved into the old missile silos. ^_^

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

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