Stay Warm and Safe the Next Few Days

[philip964]

Houston has a boil notice. Pressure pretty low.

[Syntyr]

Houston has a boil notice. Pressure pretty low.

Same out here in the Richmond burbs. Still have power but it has sagged a few times this morning. Water pressure about 1/4 but we live in a municipal utility district so that has its own unique challenges.

My HOA is doing okay. Sent the rent a cop security guards home Sunday night. Opened the gates. I salted the bridge over the lake in our community. Still patches of ice. Exterior roads pretty clear but lots of power outages. Haven't evenventured out to a store yet. No need as we are stocked pretty well. Not even close to breaking out the MRE survival type food yet.

Better off than most. Prayers for my fellow Texans! Yes even the wacko libs in Austin!

[jrs_diesel]

League City under boil water notice now too.

[Grayling813]

City of Arlington issued boil notice after a water main break this morning. Now hearing that the city's water plant has suffered a "massive failure."

[Texas_Blaze]

Back feeding through a proper switch is perfectly safe. For example a mechanical interlock that couples the main shutoff breaker & the generator breaker. Use a proper inlet box for the generator power supply cord and NEVER backfeed through a suicide cord (male plugs on both ends) or through your dryer wall outlet.

All depends on how many heaters, and any other loads you want to run, like refrigerators, freezers, lighting, and any critical loads you have like a water well pump. But yes, you can run space heaters on a generator.

Most portable 120 Volt space heaters top out at 1,500 Watts, so if you want to run one space heater, you need at least that much in a generator. You add the Watts together of what you would like to run, and factor in some overhead, to figure the size of generator you want. Electric motors need extra to start rotating, and less while they are running at normal speed.

Generators typically have two ratings, the running rating and the surge rating. The running rating is for continuously running loads and is what the generator can support before being overloaded. The surge rating is what it is able to put out before undervolting (a bad thing for most devices) for a brief period of time, like when the compressor on your fridge first starts.

Example, if I wanted to run three space heaters, a fridge, a 42 inch TV, and a couple of lights, here is what I would need:

1,500 Watt space heaters x3 = 4,500 Watts
Typical fridge draws about 600-800 Watts while running, about 400-500 more for starting
42 inch TV is about 120 Watts
Energy efficient lights (like LEDs or compact florescent) draw about 5-15 Watts per bulb, lets figure 4 lights at 10 Watts

4,500 + 700 + 120 + 40 = 5,360 Watts. Add a little overhead on the continuous rating and in this example you'd want a generator with no less than a 5,500 Watt continuous rating, and at least 6,000 Watt surge capacity.

Portable generators tend to come in two flavors, the normal type, and the inverter type. The normal ones are cheaper and louder, but can put out more power than the inverter generators. The inverter types are more expensive, but a lot quieter, and tend to be limited to around 3,000 Watts in the larger models. There are also the whole home standby generators which can run off of propane or your natural gas utility if available. These are usually professionally installed and wired to it's own sub panel and automatic transfer switch to run some (but not all) loads in your home.

One thing to factor is fuel. The tank on portable generators will usually allow a runtime of about 8-12 hours depending on how much load you put on it. You'll need a supply of gas cans to feed one for en extended period of time, or to run the generator periodically in order to stretch your fuel supply while also keeping your food cold.

DO NOT backfeed your house with a portable generator! Is is not safe to do that at all. Very high risk of putting power back into the utility system, this has killed linesmen and utility workers thinking they were working on dead/downed power lines.

Hope this helps!

[philip964]

https://www.click2houston.com/news/texa ... le-energy/

Conservative commentators fuel false claims about renewable energy.

I’ll be looking at this in the future very carefully.

I have a New Jersey liberal Facebook friend all on her soapbox about how Texas refused to help New Jersey after Sandy.

New Jersey is along way away did we really refuse to help them?

[Paladin]

Texas Crisis

The links to photos and video of flooding due to broken pipes is jawdropping!

I've had issues with frozen pipes, but the PEX piping hasn't failed so far (cross fingers)

[Grayling813]

Texas Crisis

The links to photos and video of flooding due to broken pipes is jawdropping!

I've had issues with frozen pipes, but the PEX piping hasn't failed so far (cross fingers)

Unbelievable. I wonder if it’s worse in other states.

[RoyGBiv]

Back feeding through a proper switch is perfectly safe. For example a mechanical interlock that couples the main shutoff breaker & the generator breaker. Use a proper inlet box for the generator power supply cord and NEVER backfeed through a suicide cord (male plugs on both ends) or through your dryer wall outlet.

When I had to run a generator to the house after a hurricane (in NC) I took a heavy gauge power cord with a plug and wired it to a breaker at the other end (I forget what Amp, but it was appropriate for the generator output). I made sure to cut off the main at the breaker box before I turned on the generator. Worked like a champ. Was able to run the fridge, well pump (just barely), lights and ceiling fans for a week until power was restored. Not having AC in the Carolina heat was a bummer, but, at least we had water and food storage.

I would never have even considered a suicide cord. A regular wall outlet isn't made to stand up to that craziness.

[powerboatr]

well crap, i had a post written and it freakign went off to warmer climates i guess

but in summary i have two mini splits heat pumps one is 18k btu and the other is 24k btu, daikin and samsung respectively
when it was 1F-3F we still had plenty of heat, no heat strips, just clever thermodynamics, my heat pumps go through a defrost cycle if ice is detected on the outside units. they do some magic and go into what i call an A/C cycle in the freezing weather, they shut off the fan and start drawing heat from inside and use this to heat up and melt the outside ice, takes 5 to 10 minutes
we have roughly 3200 environmentally controlled space, one main space (1600sq ft) is 6" of spray foam and r19 batts walls, ceilings and only two triple pane small windows.
the other is the RV garage it has the 24k unit, it has been keeping this huge space, 26x 46x 16 foot ceiling, with a 12x 13 foot super insulated door and a 7x8 super insulated garage door, walls are r19 and ceiling is r 30. big doors are r19. we have kept this space at 62-67 f with a setting of 66f
this wild weather showed me were i need a bit more r value in the rv garage,
the little space is set at 51 to 53F and cycles on about once an hr, as the space gets hot and stays warm for long time, in fact to long. in summer we can turn ac off for days and it stays 72 to 75F, after its been cooled off.
we are upgrading r values in the rv garage this spring to further hit energy use, its also my reloading space
but last five days my kwh for both unit is a follows, 12 feb 59.2 kwh 13 feb 60.4, 14 feb 54.7, 15 feb 70kwh, 16 feb 73.6,
funny thing is total kwh to run the whole house on monday was 134 kwh (this includes hot water, lights, freezers, 2 fridges, one oven for 2 hrs of cook time, electric dryer doing 3 loads and a washing machine)
last year is a hard one to gauge, but we are still using 1/2 kwh daily than we did last year with older ac units.
as bad as this week has been it does have some silver lining. hopefully we can all take a step and look around to see how and what cost us the most to heat. we just got a cost increase for power.
I do have a 36k btu propane forced air heater as a backup, but haven't used it in long time other than yearly system checks
we also have a 1800watt 30 year old honda genny and a 8000 watt diesel genny in the bus that can and has run the whole house.

but why did the power generation stations have to get federal approval to ramp up to max output? seems very weird

[Take Down Sicko]

Jrs_Diesel, That is indeed very helpful to me. It gives me a great starting point on what to look for. I'm hoping to find what i need at Home Dopey if they havent sold out. One thing i forgot to ask is how long of an extension cord can i use on something like the refrigerator and heater. Thanks for all your helpful advice.

Glad to help You should size an electric cord for what you intend to run, and how far from your power source (generator in this case). Space heaters will be the biggest draw (window unit A/C in the summer would have a similar draw). 1,500 Watts @ 120 Volts is 12.5 amps.

Cord length is typically in multiples of 25 feet, up to 100 feet max. The gauge of the wire (wire thickness) is another factor. With heavier loads you want a heavier gauge wire, as thinner wire runs the risk of overheating the wire. Wire gauge numbers work just like shotgun gauges, where thicker wires have smaller numbers. 14 AWG (American Wire Guage) is a common cord size, 12 AWG is thicker, 10 AWG s even more thicker. Bigger cords cost more though. Your bigger loads you’ll want on a 12 or 10 gauge cord depending on distance (use a thicker cord if going 75 or 100 feet). The fridge can run on a 14 gauge cord if near the generator, but I would feed it with a 12 gauge cord if over 50 feet.

Also with the larger loads, use one cord per device so you don’t overload the wire (fire hazard). Splitters can be used with light loads like phone chargers, smaller TV’s, energy efficient lighting, etc. Coffee pots are big loads, as they usually run about 1,200 - 1,500 Watts, and that is for both regular drip machines and the Keurig style machines.

ok...i'm taking notes so i dont forget what to look for. Thank you so much for all your help.

[Ed4032]

We have frozen ponds here in Plano. Never thought that I would ever see that in Texas.

[03Lightningrocks]

We have frozen ponds here in Plano. Never thought that I would ever see that in Texas.

I have lived in Plano 46 years and have never seen temps this low for so long. I just went almost 24 hours with no electricity interruption. It is a MIRACLE! After the 48 hours before this, I am finding myself just waiting every minute for the power to go off.

[03Lightningrocks]

My son and DIL live in Pearland. They were without power for 17 hours. It came back on at 1:30 AM... Crazy!

[Sidro]

Daughter lives in Wichita Falls, was without power at her house 60 hrs. Back on now and no damaged pipes so far.