Storms and power failure. Were you prepared today?

[jsharmon7]

Their house did get hit. No fire but the wires are burned up from the south end of the house to the north. He said they have to cut the drywall and replace it. Ouch!

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Their house did get hit. No fire but the wires are burned up from the south end of the house to the north. He said they have to cut the drywall and replace it. Ouch!

Ouch indeed.

 

[MontereyC6]

Of all the damage I have seen in Speedway today, I have not heard of one person that was hurt as a result of the storm. I don't know if we were just lucky, or just by the Grace of God. Pesonally, I go with second.

 

[Vamptepes]

My parents have been without power for almost 24hrs now. Luckily dad bought a genny last year.

 

[Bennettjh]

We went about 32 hours without power. Had a generator for the fridge and deep freeze. Had to keep our side of beef frozen. Everything else is secondary.

No damage to property. Very thankful.

 

[lovemywoods]

Power out from 2200 hrs Monday until 1430 Tuesday. Got the portable generator out and strung wires around the house. Pain in the tush.

We have quite a few power outages in Brown County. Looking into a whole-house generator system now.

No damage. Just a few sticks and limbs down that need to be picked up.

 

[jblomenberg16]

Glad to hear those of you with extended outages were prepared with generators. LMW...there are some good (but pricey) whole home units linked a few pages back in response to Rhino's question. PM me if you have any questions.

 

[Vamptepes]

Parents still without power. Ipl says late Friday. Hoping it's sooner though.

 

[jblomenberg16]

Speaking of generators...our local Wal-Mart was more or less at ground zero for the first wave to push though that took out power. They are still down and of course lost a huge amount of inventory in the frozen and refrigerated sections.

It surprises me that a franchise that large would not have some sort of back-up power sufficient to maintain that inventory. The inventory lost in just one outage like this would more than have paid for a backup generator.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Speaking of generators...our local Wal-Mart was more or less at ground zero for the first wave to push though that took out power. They are still down and of course lost a huge amount of inventory in the frozen and refrigerated sections.

It surprises me that a franchise that large would not have some sort of back-up power sufficient to maintain that inventory. The inventory lost in just one outage like this would more than have paid for a backup generator.

Does that inventory belong to Walmart or to some vendor? If it's the later, I could see why Walmart might be less inclined to install such a facility.

 

[jblomenberg16]

Does that inventory belong to Walmart or to some vendor? If it's the later, I could see why Walmart might be less inclined to install such a facility.

Good point...if it was VMI, Wal-mart really never owns it and just gets a mark-up on the transaction. Given the amount of "Wal-Mart" branded items I have to think they do own at least some of the inventory.

I'm sure they've done the math and perhaps inventory loss on an annualized basis must be less than the cost of generators. Still bizarre to me.

 

[lovemywoods]

Glad to hear those of you with extended outages were prepared with generators. LMW...there are some good (but pricey) whole home units linked a few pages back in response to Rhino's question. PM me if you have any questions.

Thanks for the reference jblomenberg16. I went back and looked a the product info. Very nice units! I didn't even know Cummins had offerings in the residential line. I like their control panel functionality.

One factor that surprised me with any whole house system was the cost of operation. At 2.0 gallons/hour LP gas x $1.469/gallon (my current contract price which is low historically) x 24 hours/day = $70.51/day to operate. At my highest historical cost of LP, it would be $120/day to run.

The longest outage we've experienced here is 3.5 days. That would have been expensive. (Not as expensive as a lost freezer of meat though.)

I'm just starting to educate myself on generation systems. Thanks for helping me get started. INGO members are the best!

 

[1DOWN4UP]

I am getting here late, I have a small 5500W and I only run it to draw water,(well),power the freezers,One recpt.in living room,and all the kitchen.I run freezers till they shut down,light the hurricane lamps,and shut the gen off.The kitchen stove is gas,and there is a small ventless gas heater in the middle of the house.I would never hook a newer furnace(high tech electronics) to a portable gen.,because the Sine Wave is not smooth. No A/C ,No big TV. I can make 5 gallons of gas last almost 2 days. Also,for 350.00,you can make it run on Nat gas also.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Good point...if it was VMI, Wal-mart really never owns it and just gets a mark-up on the transaction. Given the amount of "Wal-Mart" branded items I have to think they do own at least some of the inventory.

I'm sure they've done the math and perhaps inventory loss on an annualized basis must be less than the cost of generators. Still bizarre to me.

I guess when you have that many stores, a loss like this, here and there, is probably just a rounding error.

 

[Indycar:v1.1]

I bought 24 glass prayer candles when the BG Kroger closed a few years ago. They're perfect for illuminating a kitchen with a couple, a bathroom with 1. They don't smell, are cheap and last a long time. Our power was out from 1Am To 10Am Tues. Propane camp stove provided coffee and hot bath water.

 

[jblomenberg16]

Thanks for the reference jblomenberg16. I went back and looked a the product info. Very nice units! I didn't even know Cummins had offerings in the residential line. I like their control panel functionality.

One factor that surprised me with any whole house system was the cost of operation. At 2.0 gallons/hour LP gas x $1.469/gallon (my current contract price which is low historically) x 24 hours/day = $70.51/day to operate. At my highest historical cost of LP, it would be $120/day to run.

The longest outage we've experienced here is 3.5 days. That would have been expensive. (Not as expensive as a lost freezer of meat though.)

I'm just starting to educate myself on generation systems. Thanks for helping me get started. INGO members are the best!

That is a great point. What ilooking at those costs does do is help you make some priority calls on what you really 'need' to run in a power grid failure. Those costs go way down as you start to drop demand.

The really nice thing is that a whole home set in the 12 to 20kw range will be able to run the HVAC system in a typical home, which is an important consideration in extreme hot and cold weather during extended outage.

If you have other heating and cooling options you can typically get by with a much smaller set.

 

[bwframe]

I'm certainly jealous of some of you with the nice whole house automated systems. That said, I've tried to gear my lifestyle, hobbies, prepping, survival sort of stuff to not be so terribly affected by short term power outages. I'm continuing to research and practice ways to be comfortable and content without power for short outages. Less dependency on refrigeration, lighting and electricity required cooking has been my focus.
When the power goes out, I STILL really, really miss the microwave. I'm working on it though.

I'm not the calculating engineer that LMW's is, but I figured a while back that it's quite costly to self-power. On top of that fuel storage is a whole other issue, or bunch of them...
I really need to take that two year old generator out of the packing crate though.

 

[rhino]

When I install a generator, it's going to have to be pretty substantial. I need it to run air conditioning. I'll eat Cheerios and cold canned foods indefinitely before I'll live without A/C in the summer.

 

[wabash]

a 2kW generator could provide the basics: AC and TV.

iirc, a small window air conditioner uses about 1 kW, and one should keep a couple rooms comfortable.

close off the AC rooms from the rest of the house.

 

[Slawburger]

I wonder what sort of generator the Amish use to survive 24 hour power outages?