We rarely have lethal weather, at least for humans. Quakes happen every once in a while, as do snowstorms, but so far most have provided personal entertainment rather than terror. Electricity was off for a number of hours while they spliced the mall across the street into the system. Cable has been out longer than that. Biggest nuisance is the goddam Rose Parade, which lasts for DAYS.
SoCal for 65.
I have a couple black ones but I have some upscale colors and a couple trimlines plus a pay phone out in the pool bar.
Good qustion. But I think they are referring to times that something like a hurricane is predicted, and people can do last minute preparations before it hits.
Jim Yanik wrote in news:Xns98E2ABC5DFFFEjyanikkuanet@64.209.0.84:
I forgot to add that a propane camping stove or gas grill would be very useful.
I wonder what's in all those towers that look like giant golf balls. If the outage is bad enough, will gravity stop working?
Don
Years ago, I used to have this Sony cordless phone that had two identical batteries: one in the phone, and one in the base. The charger was in the base, so the idea was that when the phone battery gets low, you swap them. This had a number of benefits:
(1) You don't have to hang up the phone when the battery dies. The phone was actually built so it would hold the call for a good 30 or 60 seconds while you switched batteries out. (2) With the old NiCd batteries, the memory effect was still significant and you wanted to discharge batteries all the way whenever possible. This made that easy. (3) When there was a power outage, the battery in the base could power the unit and you could still talk in style on your cordless phone, unlike all the suckers that had to revert to using an old-fashioned phone with a cord.
Of course, like all Sony products, one day it just stopped working for no apparent reason.
- Logan
The subject line of this thread is "Preparing for Power Outages", so I guess that implies you have advanced notice. :-)
- Logan
Regular size golf balls.
No. That's why the driving ranges keep operating.
Now, where do I sign up to have the power company give me notice? LMAO!
Of course no matter how good the batteries or the design, a cordless phone won't work in an AC power failure. The battery powers the handset, but AC powers the "base station".
This is why God gave us wires.
That version on Sony and some of the Vtech phones would use the battery in the base to power the base station. In my Vtech the base battery is only good for about 4 hours.
Those "elephant balls" as they're known as around here are mainly fire protection reservoirs for industrial and commercial sites. At a few thousand to a few hundred thousand gallons' capacity, they're but a drop in the bucket compared to the demand of even a small town. Serious water storage tanks capable of supplying days worth of water are measured in the multi-million gallon capacity. Our little town of about 50k people recently built two 10 million gallon tanks that are advertised to hold enough water for a few days. These tanks are perhaps 50 ft tall and large enough in diameter to stage a dirt track race in.
What elephant balls that aren't associated with fire protection are basically surge tanks, designed to lengthen the cycle of pumps that supply the water and help stabilize water pressure. One generally doesn't want large pumps to cycle more often than once every couple of hours, hence the surge tanks.
From very rusty memory, seems like the planners here use 500 gallons per day per person as the design criteria for the water system. 500 or 100, can't recall which but I think 500.
John
I assume you meant lights such as shake or crank lights that don't require battery replacement. Let me expand a little on that.
Shake lights (the ones you shake back and forth to charge either a small battery or a super capacitor) are the rage now but once you try to use one for any length of time you grow to loathe them. Shake til yer arm goes numb for a few minutes of light.
The crank lights - lights that have a hand-cranked generator - are much more practical. Wal-mart stocks a nice little LED crank light that sells for under $10. It is similar to this one:
I'm somewhat of a flashahaulic so I bought one just to see how it worked. I'm impressed. Three 7mm white LEDs in the front with an alternating switch that turns on either 1 or all three LEDs. A minute's worth of casual cranking produces >10 minutes worth of light. Probably closer to 20 minutes but I got bored timing it :-)
I've put one of these in each of my vehicles, by each door and in my bedside table. This is in addition to my other more sophisticated lights.
For my regular lights I've converted over to either HID (expensive) or rechargeable lithium powered LED lights. This is my favorite and the one that stays on my hip at all times.
Here are the batteries:
One note of caution - This store is in Hong Kong and stuff is shipped directly from there. They have no warranty service that I can tell, as they quit answering email when I tried to get a bad cell replaced. OTOH, products are so cheap from here compared to US prices that for me it's worth the risk. There are several other Hong Kong companies on the net selling the identical product but I don't have experience with them.
The light that probably gets the most use is a 3 watt Luxeon LED headlight from Amandotech.
This is a superb light. Pure white light with a very well defined spot. It beats the socks off my miner's light with the huge belt mounted battery in brightness and with an extra set of batteries, in battery life.
If you need to light up the whole end of the state, look at this:
It comes set up to throw a long narrow beam of light. For general close in use over a larger area, a trick is to adhere some Saran wrap to the lens. This diffuses the beam nicely.
What all of these lights have in common for emergency situations is that the batteries have very long shelf lives. The lithiums will hold most of their charge for 10 years, so it's claimed. I know that I can't tell the difference in a just-charged battery and one that's been in the light for a year. The SLA type battery in the HID light is known for its long charge retention - several years at minimum. Plus the light can be plugged into its charger and left that way indefinitely.
John
70's style avocado green, coiled cord to the handset but hard wired, not modular. Also hard wired to the wall connection. Installed by The Phone Company when we got service to the place in 1972. Still working like it was brand new. One does have to remember to tap the microphone occasionally to loosen the carbon granules or else the sound gets low and muffled. Other than that, yep, it'll still be there after the Big One goes up.
I also have one of the stand-alone touch-tone pads for when that is necessary. Also made by Western Electric, these were add-ons for dial phones during the transition to touch-tone. Like the phone, it still works perfectly.
I was once told by a Western Electric engineer that the design life for these phones was 80 years. I believe it.
John
Per Frank:
Deregulation.
The primary purpose of electric utility companies is now maximizing profit.... period.
Per Edwin Pawlowski:
Gas log in the fireplace.
Generally small generators will start fast with propane (from an unlit torch) in the intake.
Yep. Now repairs, etc., are underfunded because of profits, whereas before it was underfunded because politicians did not want to tick off their constituents so the Utility Commissions never raised rates.
Gravity works just fine. But if they can't fill those tanks they don't help much. Here in Eastern Oklahoma we have had 2 major ice storms in 6 years. Many towns lost water for several days at a time. Then water became a jewel beyond price. It isn't fun living without lights, heat, and water.
Lights tend to come back on much later than water. My brother-in-law didn't get his lights back for 11 days.
Bill Gill
Anyone care to discuss the advantages of various lighting methods (a bright light enough to read a book by which would last for many, many hours) using kerosene, white gas, batteries...
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