...About A Hundred Years After Rest Of Country Came To The Same Conclusion.
All kidding aside, my thoughts are with everyone in the area getting hit by Sandy. They can cope -- pick on NYC and the coastal states (PA counts, too!) all you like, but they've proven they dig in and deal with it when the chips are down. This will be the worst they've seen in decades and recovery may be a lot longer than anyone in the brainless media expects. (Look for whining on the network morning shows, along with brave promises to "hold out as long as the better hotels and network cafeteria remain open." OMG, Matt, they're out of your brand of bottled water.)
Here in the Midwest, all we are getting so far are very high winds -- and with most of the local power utilities having sent off emergency relief crews to the East, that could yet be a problem. (H'mm, the modern "efficient and lean" arrangement of keeping maintenance crews small and moving them around when needed may not have taken really big event into account. I may yet be wishing I'd bought a little genset.)
After 9/11, I was impressed with the way New York City rallied towards a common goal. Of course, the devastated area was much smaller, but the fact the supposedly cold-hearted city came to life with goodness and hope was notable.
ReplyDeleteI hope this brush with nature only reinforces my belief that good can prevail over evil and reporters aren't nearly all as dumb as a box of rocks.
Here in the People's Dem. Rep. of Md., things are....interesting. Not as bad as hurricane Isabelle a few yrs. back, but Balto. Gas+Electric has about 195,000 outages here in Anne Arundel Co., of which we are one. lost juice abt. 9pm, but the Coleman stove and oil lamps still work. Got coffee, food + water and books. No worries. Our local Dear Leader, Gov. Martin O'Malley, was blathering on the radio about wanting to reduce power usage by 15%, & global warming making storms worse and putting "a boot up the backside " of the utilitiy co.'s and yada yada. S'okay. A country boy WILL survive, and help folks too.
ReplyDeleteRoberta:
ReplyDeleteIs your furnace a forced air or a boiler? If it's forced air then running the blower probably precludes what I've done, but if it's a boiler, I'm sure you've thought of the same.
We've got a boiler feeding radiators in our house, and I've rigged up a back-up power supply for it. I had an electrician come in to put in a new circuit down the basement, so at the same time I asked him to put in a small box with a double-pole/double-throw toggle switch on the furnace power supply. I had bought the box, switch, and a 6-foot 115VAC plug pigtail with doing it myself in mind, but I don't mind paying a professional for this.
Now with a deep-cycle marine battery and an 800-watt inverter I can run the furnace if the power goes out. Just connect the inverter to the battery, plug the pigtain into the inverter, and flip the switch (which isolates the power input to the furnace from the rest of the house), and it's good to go.
The only power used by the furnace is the damper on the exhaust (just a 10-second load) and the circulator pump (a 1/25th horsepower...draws very little current). I figure if I run the furnace for 1/2 hour at a time to keep the house warm, the battery will last about 3 days.
I've got a solar trickle-charger to keep the battery topped-off, and a solar 5-watt panel to charge it up if the sun shines. If worse comes to worst, I can always charge it up by running the truck.
Here in Minnesnowta I'm mostly worried about ice storms and the occasional blizzard. There's nowhere to put a fireplace or woodstove (gee, they were so PROUD of central heating back in 1901), so keeping the furnace going is really the only option to keep the house from freezing (bad for pipes and other small creatures).
BW1: It's forced-air, gas-fired, and I need to come up with a big-enough/good enough genset to run it without freaking out. Better still, it and the (small) fridge. In an emergency, that would be enough.
ReplyDeleteCHECK "THE YELLOW SHEET" BOATS &HARBORS
ReplyDeleteTHEY HAVE LOTS OF GENSETS AND OTHER PARTS EQUIPMENTS AND NIFTY GEAR NEW AND
USED AT AFFORDABLE PRICES THEY PUBLISH 3 TIMES A MONTH
WWW.BOATS-AND-HARBORS.COM
931 484 6100
FAX 931 456 2337
PO DRAWER647
CROSSVILLE TENNESSEE 38557-0647