Gunner Asch wrote:

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:25:11 -0600, "Pete C."
wrote:


Wes wrote:

Ignoramus10200 wrote:

Sounds about right. On the other hand, it does not need to run
continuously. In a terrible emergency, I would ration fuel, in a small
emergency, I would just buy more fuel when I run low.

Keeping food cold, water to flush and drink, power to run furnace blower. All those
things can be cycled.

You hook up power to the fridge, wait for the thermostat to kick out, turn off generator.

Pick an interval for powering generator.

Being able to watch tv and other stuff doesn't matter. Light a colemen lantern and read a
book in the mean time.

Okay, charge your laptop, recharge the ups running your dsl router so you can stay
connected between generator starts. Maybe charge the iPhone too.

Power off a bit too long, get your AK out.

Rationing fuel is ok if you have reason to expect a really long outage,
but for the more normal day or so max it's easier to just run the
generator full time and get on with your life as if there was no outage.

But do you know if its going to come back on in an hour, a day, a week,
a month and so forth? Or is it simply "hope"? G

My power was out Friday night..er..Saturday morning at 2:18 and stayed
out for 10 hours.

First rain of the season did it. As it always does here in the desert.
Transformers etc etc dry out in the summer and the first wet we
get...poof..

It was between 5 and 15 seconds from the time the rain started to Poof!
Took out about a 1/4 mile radius best as I can tell..about a 1/2 mile
"square". I simply fired up a Coleman lantern..put it in the bathroom
for the ol lady..and used two more and worked in my reloading shop for a
few hours before going to bed.

Didnt bother firing up the genny..gas is in short supply at the moment.
Shrug

The places I have lived have had pretty predictable outages. With no
inclement weather and outage was usually from some idiot hitting a pole
and lasted a couple hours at most. With heavy rain and lightning,
perhaps an 8hr run at most. With a noreaster ice storm snapping stuff
left and right, a few days at most.