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Xtrmwakeboarder

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After a sixteen hour outage the power is back. It's 48 degrees in our house, and the five gallon jugs of water in the garage are frozen solid.
Going to be a major issue with the elderly tonight....
 

nowski

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It's called weather
Call it what you want but this is one of those once in a lifetime storms for many (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas etc.) especially this late in the season. Granted your ski resort towns get plenty more snow but these areas are geared for the heavy snowfall where as many Texas towns aren't...
 

4Waters

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Call it what you want but this is one of those once in a lifetime storms for many (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas etc.) especially this late in the season. Granted your ski resort towns get plenty more snow but these areas are geared for the heavy snowfall where as many Texas towns aren't...
Yup, 100 year or 500 year storm
 

Dkahnjob

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.. I have three generators at my house in North Hollywood ...A 6.5 gas generator on a rolling cart in the garage... A 6.3 propane in my fifth wheel trailer and a 2.6 propane in my Lance camper ...well the power went out last summer when it was 117° and not one of the generators was operating at the time...
...The 6.5 in the garage I finally fired it...it works perfectly hasn’t run in five or so years...The 6.3 in the fifth wheel trailer has some sort of issue as does the 2.6 in the camper???...Might be a good idea for me to get 10 gallons of gas and put some stable in it...for the 6.5..,
...The 6.3 and the 6.5 went for the same amount of time without being run... the 6.3 in the trailer was more exposed to the weather than the 6.5 in the garage... the 6.5 actually fired on the five year old gas that was in the carburetor... 6.3 apparently he has developed some sort of issue because of not being started for five years...My fucked up neck kept me from starting any of them...I am probably going to be paying the price now as repair bills on Onan’s can get a little out there???...


If you put AV gas in the generators it lasts a very long time, 3+ years life expetency
 

Sleek-Jet

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You really should run a standby generator once a month for about an hour. Load it up if you can. Most permanent installs usually have a schedule to run once a week built into their automation.
 

rrrr

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The power was just shut off again. It was on for 30 minutes, just long enough to raise the indoor temperature from 50° to 62°.
 

rrrr

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Since regaining power between 3:30 and 5:00 AM, we've had electricity for two periods today of less than an hour. It just quit again around 4:00 PM. I was taking a nap, I'm exhausted from dealing with three houses (ours, Mother-in-law's, and rental). I had shut down the generator and my CPAP was operating on utility power. It takes a minute or so for me to wake up gasping for air, it's a very unsettling feeling.

My tenants had a baby last week, so the situation with them was critical. I have a 4 kW portable I used to power some lights and a couple of 1.5 kW space heaters, but the temperature in the house just kept falling.

They're staying at her mom's house now. The rental house is an elevated pier and beam structure with a corrugated metal exterior on the crawl space. The water lines under the house appear to be insulated PEX, a lot of it just laying on the ground.

I'm going to call the plumber I use in the morning and get on his schedule. It could be a couple of weeks before he can get to it.
 

rrrr

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You really should run a standby generator once a month for about an hour. Load it up if you can. Most permanent installs usually have a schedule to run once a week built into their automation.

I always told my data center customers that unless they opened the facility's service disconnect and allowed the genset to ramp up, stabilize, transfer, and run under load, they had no guarantee the system was operating properly. Simply starting and running the generator with a weekly exercise program did nothing to prove the system would successfully operate during a power failure.

The same thing was true for the UPS system batteries and the machine's transfer capabilities. Opening the utility feeder was the only way to know the unit is capable of performing it's intended function.
 

Drew

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So Texans is it true the reason for the rolling blackouts is because the windmills froze up. Or shut down because of ice?
 

buck35

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So Texans is it true the reason for the rolling blackouts is because the windmills froze up. Or shut down because of ice?
I find that odd if true since those eyesores are all the way up into the arctic, and all over the mountains in Washington.
 

Drew

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I heard reports of it today. Just wanted to know the truth.
 

toto

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The power just went off. I checked with Oncor, and my entire zip code is down. Their website says "Due to the weather emergency, we are instituting rolling shutdowns of 15-45 minutes in certain areas. Your power will return as soon as possible."

Right now it's 6°. I'm worried about the pool equipment.
No Shit - This has been crazy and I was without power for 12 hours. Pipes are frozen and down to 1 of 3 toilet's. My cabin in Big Bear doesn't even freeze like this. It has been one cold SOB out here. We stopped all field work until Monday. Oh and forget about going shopping
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Xtrmwakeboarder

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Ace in the Hole

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I find that odd if true since those eyesores are all the way up into the arctic, and all over the mountains in Washington.

very fine mist freezing rain.

Crenshaw just put out a statement regarding Natural gas lines freezing, a nuke plant going down, and several natural gas plants that were down...they couldnt fire them up if they wanted to over the gas issue. Our power is back on, I'm hoping they can restore more of it...the videos of entire neighborhoods of people in their cars to stay warm is insane.. I'm betting the property damage claims due to freezing will be unprecedented.
 

pronstar

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I'm betting the property damage claims due to freezing will be unprecedented.

Our house was 40 degrees at night, and I think we dodged a bullet for inside water pipes.

My biggest concern is my pool equipment. No power for several days means I couldn’t run my pumps, and now everything is frozen solid.

We’ll see how things are looking when we have 80 degree temps next week LOL


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

Cole Canadian

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The power went out so there is no way to turn on the pump. It's been below freezing since last Wed.
Ran a tow truck up here at 40 below, used to keep a hibachi with briquettes going at all times.
If they really needed it to go and the oil pan wasn't to filthy, just put some cardboard around the bottom to block the wind and put the bbq on the oil pan and 15min later fire it up.
Dos he have a fuel stabilizer or winter diesel in it? Summer diesel iffy past negative temperatures.
Wish him luck.
 

rrrr

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The neighbor across the street from my rental property and shop in Farmersville, 30 miles from Plano, built a small RV park about six years ago. There are about 30 spaces, all rented to full time residents. These are not high buck deals, it's people living on social security or near poverty. I called her yesterday to see what the power status was, she said it's been intermittent like everywhere else.

She had to turn off the water supply to the park spaces on Monday night, and that's when the power outages began. Her renters without generators were able to operate their furnaces on battery power for another 12 hours, but now the RVs are dead. Every one of them will probably have some broken plumbing, unless the residents were able to drain their water systems before they froze.

I'm really feeling bad for these folks. I can't imagine having my home dying, without the ability to do something about it. Where did they go when it became impossible to stay in their frozen RV? They probably don't have insurance or the money to repair the damages.

There must be tens of thousands of people in the same situation around the state. This is a huge disaster, with much more suffering yet to come.
 

buck35

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Been thinking about you're valve situation rrrr. Hope all is well for you to. Sad deal all around and the moneyed folks are feeling little or no pain....
 

rrrr

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Been thinking about you're valve situation rrrr. Hope all is well for you to. Sad deal all around and the moneyed folks are feeling little or no pain....

We're OK. The generator got us through the worst, we had gas hot water and cooktop, and a big pot of chili. Yesterday my wife took the trash out in the alley, and heard running water from the house across from us. She went into the backyard, and there was a waterfall flowing from the second story above a porch area. She ran back to our house to tell me.

I had earlier placed a small bucket by the front door that held a water meter lid wrench and a pair of Channellocks, just in case one of our pipes broke. I grabbed the bucket, ran across the alley, and went in the unlocked back door. I was yelling for Alan, my neighbor, and figured out he was upstairs holding a rag over the broken pipe while his 16 year old daughter was trying to call a plumber.

I ran outside, dug around in the snow for a few seconds to find the meter, and shut it off. Alan had returned home from a trip about 30 minutes earlier and found the broken pipe. Since then he had been trying to stop the leak. The water must have been running over an hour, it had flooded both floors of the house.

So, yeah, we are fortunate. A lot of people haven't been so lucky. I've heard stories about broken pipes, and the residents didn't have the special wrench to open the meter cover. They had to let it run until someone showed up with a key or pried the lid off with a crowbar.

Thanks for your concern.
 

buck35

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We're OK. The generator got us through the worst, we had gas hot water and cooktop, and a big pot of chili. Yesterday my wife took the trash out in the alley, and heard running water from the house across from us. She went into the backyard, and there was a waterfall flowing from the second story above a porch area. She ran back to our house to tell me.

I had earlier placed a small bucket by the front door that held a water meter lid wrench and a pair of Channellocks, just in case one of our pipes broke. I grabbed the bucket, ran across the alley, and went in the unlocked back door. I was yelling for Alan, my neighbor, and figured out he was upstairs holding a rag over the broken pipe while his 16 year old daughter was trying to call a plumber.

I ran outside, dug around in the snow for a few seconds to find the meter, and shut it off. Alan had returned home from a trip about 30 minutes earlier and found the broken pipe. Since then he had been trying to stop the leak. The water must have been running over an hour, it had flooded both floors of the house.

So, yeah, we are fortunate. A lot of people haven't been so lucky. I've heard stories about broken pipes, and the residents didn't have the special wrench to open the meter cover. They had to let it run until someone showed up with a key or pried the lid off with a crowbar.

Thanks for your concern.

Ain't nothing better than a good neighbor. :cool: hats off to you sir!
 

shock22

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Closed on our new home at Cedar Creek Lake Wednesday have not been able to stay there yet no power or water hopefully by this weekend things will work out
 

rrrr

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Closed on our new home at Cedar Creek Lake Wednesday have not been able to stay there yet no power or water hopefully by this weekend things will work out

When can I come spend the weekend to go Crappie fishing?
 
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