On Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 5:13:35 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 09:57:32 -0800 (PST), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 11:20:01 AM UTC-5, Dave in SoTex wrote:
On 2/18/2021 8:14 AM, DerbyDad03 wrote:
We haven't heard from you in a couple of days. I hope the weather hasn't impacted you too severely.

Let us know.
Leon may be w/o power or internet service or both. Much of
Houston's power has been restored. Just saw that there "only" about 45k
still w/o power vs. the high of 1.2 mil.
My NW-Harris-County power has now been on uninterrupted since 9:30
a.m. yesterday after 55 consecutive hours w/o. Night before last it was
52 degs in the house with but a puny gas log fireplace and some of the
gas stovetop burners for heat. I've had a Little Buddy propane heater
running on low in my well pumphouse continuously since Sunday.
Life seems almost back to "pandemic normal."

Dave in SoTex

"Just saw that there "only" about 45k still w/o power vs. the high of 1.2 mil. "

How many have homes that have been ruined by burst pipes? That's mainly what
you saw on the news but I don't recall seeing numbers on how many are in that
situation. Getting the power back on is great, but if the flooding damaged any of
the mechanicals or power equipment, they could still be in trouble heat wise.

Of course, it begs the question as to why they didn't let the water run before the
pipes burst. Ignorance, I guess.
Some did. Didn't help. The pipes froze anyway and it didn't help at
all when the had no electricity to the pump. I also heard that some
communities were without water. No electricity, no water.
We had a few ice storms in my area, the worst being back in the mid-80's. Five
days without power. Luckily, the temps hovered around 40, so it was cold, but not
dangerously so. Gas still worked so the stove provided some heat.
I've been in ice storms at both ends. One where it got back into the
50s and 60s. Everything in the freezer thawed. Another when it went
to zero and we froze.

Using the stove for heat is pretty dangerous. Not as bad as some
using their cars but...
Worst part was that I had just upgraded my furnace before that winter. The old
furnace had a manual valve that allowed the furnace to operate without power
as long as you adhered to a strict duty cycle. Code doesn't allow that these days.

I added a transfer switch and inlet a couple of years ago so I can use my generator
as long as I can get gas.
It doesn't take a lot of electricity to run a gas furnace. My father
was going to do it by putting a plug on the blow. He did know what he
was doing (an EE professor - power specialty) but code, and all that
rot.

I almost did the plug thing. Well, I thought about. Not sure if I ever would have actually
done it.

When I decided to shop around for a generator, I was going to go small. Just enough
for the furnace, the fridge, freezer and a few lights. We can live pretty simply when
we have to. We both grew up that way, so it's no big deal.

I considered putting a single receptacle right near the emergency shut-off for the furnace,
and running a short cord with a plug into the emergency switch box. If there was a power
outage I could just unplug the furnace from the receptacle and plug it into an extension cord
from the generator. Definitely not code compliant during normal operation, but simple and
safe during an outage.

Lo and behold, I got a really good deal on a bigger generator so I went fully code compliant
with an interlock, inlet, properly rated generator cord, etc. I traded a couple of emails with
Fretwell (from a.h.r) just to make sure that I was doing everything right and that it would pass
inspection if it ever comes to that.

It's a pretty nice set-up that I'm fully confident with using.