Wooden Satellite

Pretty cool.

Are you out of harms way over there?

Yeah. I used to live in Pasadena, and the area I lived in was evacuated. It was not damaged, however, since the winds were blowing the Eaton fire to the west/southwest into Altadena, parts of which were hit pretty hard. 70-80 mph wind gusts would blow embers for miles. I used to hike Eaton Canyon weekly in the 80's, very rugged mountainous terrain.

The winds prevented any air support (water drops), which exacerbated the damage.

Other friends were evacuated from the La Canada/Flintridge area, but that seems to have escaped any damage. Pacific Palisades looks to have very significant damage.

I'm about 350 miles north of there.

Good to know you are safe. As you probably know, like hurricanes here in Texas, it is reported all over the world that California has been burnt to a crisp, brizillion's of acres gone. Your governor is not looking good, politically, along with LA's mayor.

We had a small hurricane back in July and the local utility Center Point is still catching hell over power lines going down and people being with out power. That in it self is to be expected, I recall being with out electricity for 11 days after a 2008 hurricane, Ike. But people these days are ill prepared for any deviation in their life styles because of mother nature events.

Meanwhile in the Midwest, we had an ice storm, 22 hours no power. The house got down to 57F. I have put down about 90lbs of salt and now it is snowing a light snow.

Our ISP replaced the fiber to coaxial node, so then I blow up two modems due to 14.5 Vdc at the back of the modem.

In reality, the total burn areas sum to less than 100 square miles (64,000 sq acres) at this point - while the entire state is 163,000 square miles in area.

The media's mantra is, NEVER let the facts get in the way of a good story.

IIRC the outage three years ago was caused indirectly by ERCOT which resulted in gas trasmission lines for several power plants to be shutdown.

"During the February 2021 winter storm, transmission companies inadvertently cut power to parts of the natural gas supply chain when ERCOT ordered the utilities to reduce power demand or risk further damage to the grid."

"At the same time, some wells were unable to produce as much natural gas due to the freezing conditions."

There was no indications that it was related to any increase in population, regardless of the source.

Texas is also it's own power grid. We are connected to a coop, when we moved down here they were just opening the most efficient coal plant, in Marrissa IL, all coal mined and processed on site that was in 99.

Still makes me consider a backup system.

On Jan 24, 2025, Markem618 wrote (in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com):

In the past year I installed a 22 KW Generac generator. It included a 500 gallon propane tank, buried because SWMBO didn’t want it to spoil her view out the window 😵‍💫

That whole process is not cheap! But like life insurance, it’s something you do, and hope you don’t ever have to use it!

Joe

What are the inspection requirements for that underground tank ? I recently considered purchasing a separate dedicated propane tank for a proposed standby generator but was told that it needed a minor inspection every 5 years and a major inspection every 10 years. My existing tanks are rented, so I've never had to worry about it. John T.

So just rent another tank??

They aren't keen on renting one that may be filled only every 5 years or so .. understandably. John T.

put a set of valves on to allow you to rotate tanks so they get to fill both at least once every 18 months??

The problem is the location of the existing 2 tanks is at the furthest corner of the house from the electric meter. < where I'd like the generator located >

... it's a long & tricky run to bury the propane line, but I expect that is what I'll need to have done. I'm also trying to avoid disturbing the somewhat newly refinished basement. John T.

Would it be easier to colocate the generator with those tanks, and run the electrical line from the generator to the transfer switch?

Not a lot of difference - in running buried propane line or buried wire. I'm not keen on running either up and through

We installed a whole house generator in the summer of 2022. Too late for the power loss during the big freeze. ERCOT underestimated the demand compared to previous big freezes. The population in Texas shurged significantly in the last several years. Shocking how many moved to Houston during Covid. But after the hurricane in July last year we had

Kind of a coin toss. The lions share of the cost to bury copper wire or copper pipe is the labor. We were extremely lucky as there was no extra charge to run the pipe and cable to our meters. The generator is behind our 3rd stall of our garage and the meters are located on the side of that 3rd stall. It was all run above ground attached to the brick.