Looks like a car hit a power pole down on Boulevard; I rode my bicycle over to see, wire arcing on the ground, cop directing traffic around it...
I realize if I can power the Surfboard modem, my wireless internet will be up. Having the batteries to do so (Lawnmower, car etc) I hooked one up and viola - here's I am. Laptop battery says 10 hrs, modem takes 1.5A on an 18 AH battery - with a second one adjacent - 24V lawnmower.
So what could you still listen to, say, if the power goes out?
I could power one of the class D amps with another 24V battery pack, use my phone to stream the Jazz Groove or something. Ah, wife just yelled the power is back on!
I gotta go undo a couple things...back in a bit ;')
I realize if I can power the Surfboard modem, my wireless internet will be up. Having the batteries to do so (Lawnmower, car etc) I hooked one up and viola - here's I am. Laptop battery says 10 hrs, modem takes 1.5A on an 18 AH battery - with a second one adjacent - 24V lawnmower.
So what could you still listen to, say, if the power goes out?
I could power one of the class D amps with another 24V battery pack, use my phone to stream the Jazz Groove or something. Ah, wife just yelled the power is back on!
I gotta go undo a couple things...back in a bit ;')
I have a couple of car batteries and a 300W inverter... I can listen to music or watch TV for a while...
We had two huge storms in NJ which left us w/o power for 7 and 10 days respectively. I got a 20kW gennie when me and mamselle downsized.
Last year we gave #3 son in NorCal a similar gennie with dual natgas/lpg. PacGas was notorious for shutting off their electric when the temperatures were in the high 90's
Last year we gave #3 son in NorCal a similar gennie with dual natgas/lpg. PacGas was notorious for shutting off their electric when the temperatures were in the high 90's
62 years in south Florida taught me that power outages were a common summer experience. Some were extended, up to a week or more after a major hurricane. Andrew left us without power for 7 or 8 days, but a "small" hurricane named Wilma ripped out a good deal of the transmission lines, and trashed most of the distribution lines for pockets of South Florida. We were without power for 22 days.
I ran a 6 KW generator for several hours a day subject to gasoline availability to keep the cold food cold, and the frozen food frozen. It also charged two deep cycle marine batteries which fed a 700 watt inverter and a 200 watt inverter. The neighbor across the street had a gas stove, so she was in charge of cooking. We supplied the food and set up tables, lights and a TV in the front yard. I had never upgraded my wire line analog twisted pair phone to digital, so I had the only working phone in the neighborhood. Some times there were 6 to 10 people waiting in line to use it.
We used the 200 watt inverter to power a fan and a small light all night long. We lived in a high crime neighborhood where there were no lights for miles in any direction. Bad things happen in really dark place, especially when everyone has their windows open, or they are missing. There were a couple of home invasion robberies, and dozens of burglaries.
I ran a 6 KW generator for several hours a day subject to gasoline availability to keep the cold food cold, and the frozen food frozen. It also charged two deep cycle marine batteries which fed a 700 watt inverter and a 200 watt inverter. The neighbor across the street had a gas stove, so she was in charge of cooking. We supplied the food and set up tables, lights and a TV in the front yard. I had never upgraded my wire line analog twisted pair phone to digital, so I had the only working phone in the neighborhood. Some times there were 6 to 10 people waiting in line to use it.
We used the 200 watt inverter to power a fan and a small light all night long. We lived in a high crime neighborhood where there were no lights for miles in any direction. Bad things happen in really dark place, especially when everyone has their windows open, or they are missing. There were a couple of home invasion robberies, and dozens of burglaries.
Yeah, I have a 3KW gas generator, did its yearly maintenance startup earlier this summer, bought some gas reserve for it today after yesterday's outage. Interesting the Comcast internet works IF you can connect to it; guess they have to battery back it for the IP phone service.
3 weeks is a seriously long time to be w/o power. I think the longest I've ever endured was ~2 weeks. Had a different gas generator then; temporarily wired the water heater elements in series so it could take the load. An hour run would make the water just right for one morning shower. It ran the well pump too.
3 weeks is a seriously long time to be w/o power. I think the longest I've ever endured was ~2 weeks. Had a different gas generator then; temporarily wired the water heater elements in series so it could take the load. An hour run would make the water just right for one morning shower. It ran the well pump too.
At least it wasn't for a month in January in a province where most people use electric heating.
January 1998 North American ice storm - Wikipedia
January 1998 North American ice storm - Wikipedia
I somehow doubt your modem is actually pulling 1.5 amps. Is that on the label? It might be a small overhead & also max current in worst case scenario 😛
Even with gas you can't run a modern forced-air furnace! OTOH, we have a gas fired gravity hot water system that can be run without the benefit of electricity in our Ohio place.
George -- did you ever hear Condoleeza Rice recall stories of her father and his shotgun?
I live in a Tourist hotspot in Buenos Aires where old Mains setup was designed for >120y.o. wood and corrugated sheet tenant homes and 25/40W lamps, 1 or 2 per room, which literally *explodes* , not kidding, you should see the fireworks every Summer, thanks to the 250 Tourist souvenir shops and 5 restaurants they added to original 60 or o just in my block, when most turn AC on.
So I got a US made 5500W IC (Industrial/Commercial) rated gas generator, guaranteed to run 24/7 with no problems .... except it´s a gas guzzler so I turn it on 3 or 4 times a day for 1 or 2 hours, as needed.
A car battery straight drives a couple 12V Led lamps (so no need for converters) and in Summer a couple PC fans (not kidding), to at least *move* air around my body, asleep or awake.
Runs forever, or so it seems, because idle current/power is very low.
Natural gas takes care of heating/cooking so that´s not a problem.
So I got a US made 5500W IC (Industrial/Commercial) rated gas generator, guaranteed to run 24/7 with no problems .... except it´s a gas guzzler so I turn it on 3 or 4 times a day for 1 or 2 hours, as needed.
A car battery straight drives a couple 12V Led lamps (so no need for converters) and in Summer a couple PC fans (not kidding), to at least *move* air around my body, asleep or awake.
Runs forever, or so it seems, because idle current/power is very low.
Natural gas takes care of heating/cooking so that´s not a problem.
The air handler and peripheral electronics don’t draw *that* much power so a genny or battery backup will get you through. Electrical inspectors might not like to see the air handler plugged into the dedicated switched outlet in the attic with a 5-15P on a pig tail, but it makes switching over to backup power about 100 times easier. It can go back to “normal” when we sell the house - but it STAYS through this winter. Even the gas did go out in TX last winter but I’m on a propane tank.
I have heard some of her stories. Lets just say that I held a concealed carry permit when I lived in Florida, but never carried nor ever fired a weapon outside a shooting range or the Everglades (less than a mile from my house).
I vowed to leave if I the area where I lived got bad enough to need to carry.
Hurricane Wilma came in 2005 and rendered about 1/3 of the homes in my neighborhood "unlivable" but the code enforcement nazis only forced people out of homes that were truly dangerous. The problems arose when they said that these old 1970's houses would need to be brought up to current building code standards before being made livable again.
This was the beginning of the great south Florida real estate collapse where those who were upside down in their mortgage simply walked away leaving the banks with many unsellable empty houses. That brought the squatters, and the thieves who would rip apart empty houses for the copper and other sellable material. At least two empty houses were set on fire by arsonists.
To combat the empty houses the banks made a deal with the city and state to turn them into HUD homes for the homeless and those who were displaced in other neighborhoods. Some tiny 2/1's and 3/2's had two and three families in them. These people however were usually NOT the source of all the problems in the area. They were glad to have better housing than they came from for little or no money.
It got pretty nasty from around 2006-2009. Let's just say that I had a weapon within reach when in my house, especially when it was dark. My wife no longer wanted to take our evening walk. Some residents openly wore their weapons in their yards, and after a while we knew who the criminals in the neighborhood were, but the cops couldn't seem to catch them in the act.....until one of the gangs decided to hit a cop's house.
Another famous incident making the news involved a couple of thugs robbed a Subway restaurant at closing time by knocking down an elderly customer then putting a gun to the only employee's head. The elderly customer was a carrying ex marine. Two shots, two dead. That was a legal shoot in Florida, no more robberies in that area while I lived there.
By the early 2010's all the empty land in south Florida had been developed forcing the home prices up again. When my career ended in 2014 I sold the dumpy house that I has bought in 1978 for $38K for $215K The new owner polished that turd up real nice and flipped it for $335K.
No, I don't miss the old neighborhood, though I drove through it every year on vacation until Covid ended my visits to the site once known as the Motorola plant where I worked.
Thankfully, we don't have nearly as much of a problem with that here although it's still pretty bad in places.
My dad bought a house in 1986 for 150k$. He'd get 1.2M$ if he sold it today but where would he go?
My dad bought a house in 1986 for 150k$. He'd get 1.2M$ if he sold it today but where would he go?
I gave lived in the same place for about 25 years.
The record outage for my house in Denver is four days roughly. I have a cottage house on the same property that lost power for about three days instead. They are on different transformers fed from different sides of the property.
We have seen smaller outages usually in winter. I keep a few extra gallons of water in the freezers for brief outages.
As far as internet goes though, the Comcast device for my house is fed from the other pole so when the cottage power blips or goes out, I lose internet.
Happened a time or two last winter where I would retain power but the internet dropped when the cottage house lost power.
I have a gas boiler so I could at least hook an inverter to the gas control and get some heat if needed.
Luckily I have a gas stove that can be lit manually if needed. No oven though.
The record outage for my house in Denver is four days roughly. I have a cottage house on the same property that lost power for about three days instead. They are on different transformers fed from different sides of the property.
We have seen smaller outages usually in winter. I keep a few extra gallons of water in the freezers for brief outages.
As far as internet goes though, the Comcast device for my house is fed from the other pole so when the cottage power blips or goes out, I lose internet.
Happened a time or two last winter where I would retain power but the internet dropped when the cottage house lost power.
I have a gas boiler so I could at least hook an inverter to the gas control and get some heat if needed.
Luckily I have a gas stove that can be lit manually if needed. No oven though.
The Comcast service here seems to have stayed alive through all but one power outage. I have a UPS on the modem and the distribution amp so that internet, phone and WiFi stay alive. When the UPS starts beeping, I plug it into the generator for a while.
A Cyberpower 1000 VA UPS from Newegg will run it for 3 to 4 hours. A similar UPS on this PC gets me 30 to 45 minutes. Most of the drain is from the 43 inch TV that I use for a monitor.
A Cyberpower 1000 VA UPS from Newegg will run it for 3 to 4 hours. A similar UPS on this PC gets me 30 to 45 minutes. Most of the drain is from the 43 inch TV that I use for a monitor.
My ipod, but it's a quad sdxc card conversion with 400 gb and a 200mAh battery usually good for 30 hours.
I can actually use my cars batteries now, there's a 230v outtake that can dish out over 3kw and the battery is over 70kw so... Guess I should get a generator just in case, but we've not had power outs longer than a few hours for the last 10 years.
I usually buy the music that I like listening to and have it all on two separate computers as a failsafe. Streaming services like spotify is not the thing if you actually want to support the artists you like, most get next to nothing from streaming so that single tune or album sold actually makes a little bit of a difference.
Edit:
That last bit is not a sales pitch, just FYI. If you find music you like, support it, if you do not support music from alternative artists it will hurt diversity to an exponentially higher degree in the coming years.
I usually buy the music that I like listening to and have it all on two separate computers as a failsafe. Streaming services like spotify is not the thing if you actually want to support the artists you like, most get next to nothing from streaming so that single tune or album sold actually makes a little bit of a difference.
Edit:
That last bit is not a sales pitch, just FYI. If you find music you like, support it, if you do not support music from alternative artists it will hurt diversity to an exponentially higher degree in the coming years.
Last edited:
Very interesting to know about the US electric network service and violence in the US.
I am amazed to see how bad that is.
However I have not suffered that extend in West Philadelphia where gangs made the local news in the seventies and none of that later in Boston suburbia neither Chicagoland.
In France, we rarely have power outages and it lasts at most a couple of hours.
We had a big one in the seventies, none since then, as far as I remember.
The grid is interconnected all over Europe.
I am amazed to see how bad that is.
However I have not suffered that extend in West Philadelphia where gangs made the local news in the seventies and none of that later in Boston suburbia neither Chicagoland.
In France, we rarely have power outages and it lasts at most a couple of hours.
We had a big one in the seventies, none since then, as far as I remember.
The grid is interconnected all over Europe.
And the single phase voltage is also between 220-240v, much more sensible than that 120v stuff IMO.
Sorry for saying this but here goes anyway: The U.S. of A. : where even the cables are thick.
Such a waste of good quality metal, not to mention that grid loss would probably be close to halved.
Sorry for saying this but here goes anyway: The U.S. of A. : where even the cables are thick.
Such a waste of good quality metal, not to mention that grid loss would probably be close to halved.