Can you get wet from milk? Lemonade? Orange juice? Iced tea? Mayonnaise? Butter? Where’s the line?
And if “covered in water” is the definition of wet, does that mean that the lower half of a glass of water is wet? It’s covered in water. What about the single-molecule-thin second layer down? Is it wet because it’s covered by the first layer? How many layers does it take to become “wet”?
Is the glass that holds the water wet? It’s covered in water, but which part of the glass is “wet”?
Can dirt get “wet”? If it does get “covered in water” which makes it wet, by your defintion, doesn’t it become integrated with the water and therefore just become dirty water? That’s like milk, right? So milk is essentially just wet fat, right? Mmmm, yummy wet fat…
Curious how much gasoline it burns and how it works. My new-to-me house came with a generator that kicked on during a medium-length power failure this fall. Was nice but VERY noisy.
Automatically? That would be nice. I’m happy to have gotten a notice, so I could wheel this 200lb contraption to the backyard (after installing the wheels, etc.)
Not on for the day yet, but yesterday it was pretty loud.
I have loaded another 2.5 gallons this morning (5 total in it right now). I hope the power goes on exactly when the gas runs out, so there is no extra (which might “go bad” before the next outage. It holds 7.5 gallons and that is expected to last 11 hours.
My electrician friend installed a 4-prong intake that is connected to the breaker board. The Breaker Board has a secondary “master breaker” (I’ll wait for the punks in the back to stop giggling) that can be turned on (electricity from generator flows through special 25ft long cord) when the primary master breaker is turned off.
When I shut off the primary, I also shut off the breakers to the major appliances: AC, washer, dryer (though I could probably use them), back patio heaters, electric oven, pool equipment.
It’s 6500W.
The cost of this ($800 or so) beats a backup battery pack that would fill up quietly (just takes power from the grid) during off hours, but I haven’t done the math on how much battery I would need for a scheduled 8-hour outage, or for anything longer. Way cheaper than solar-plus-battery, though that would be used daily, and I’d save fives of dollars daily.
After the last power outage where we had to throw a whole lot of spoiled food, we bought an electric power station that can run our refrigerator. We have a gas stove and gas fireplace for cooking and keeping warm, so keeping the refrigerator going is the only think we really need electricity for.
When it needs to be recharged, I have a power inverter that hooks up to the car battery. Or you can also buy solar panels. But bright sunny days isn’t the kind of weather that leads to multiple day power outages.
Which one did you buy? I looked at the Anker ones a while back, we’ve had several outages here, the worst was something like 30 hours. And we also have a gas stove plus a wood burning fireplace, I really just need to run the fridge and a few lights and we’d be ok.
Also, when the electricity is out, your internet may or may not also be out. During the last outage, we had cable and no internet, but my neighbor had fiber and a generator, so they had internet. And they graciously let all the neighbors use their wifi.
So, when your power is out, if you have an alternate power source, try plugging in your router. You might still have internet.
Or, alternatively, use the power outage as an opportunity to disconnect from your devices for a couple of days.
Yeah… it comes on automatically if it detects that the power has been out for 60 seconds. It runs on natural gas so I don’t have to do anything with it except pay someone to do maintenance on it. I’m not sure what that will cost… I think maybe a lot. Plus of course I’m paying for the natural gas.
It also turns itself off when the power comes back on.
One of my neighbors has a generator but theirs was running for several hours after the power came back on. I kind of wanted to text them & tell them to turn it off but it was late.
I’m not sure how old it is or what I want to do with it when it needs replacing. Like do I go top dollar and get another one just like it? Get something less expensive that is less automated? I think it’s kind of old. Several neighbors came over to charge cell phones. Which is fine. I’m happy to be neighborly. But obviously this has been the routine for a while.
Yeah, I will not know when the power goes back on. I’d have to switch the secondary breakers off and the primary breakers on to see. Now, I’m supposed to get a notification, but they seem to have only one machine calling each number individually. I usually get a notification a few hours after the power goes back on.
Was supposed to go off an hour ago.
Dumb question… can you just run the generator when the power is on just to use up the gas? Will the power it generates reduce your electric usage such that you’re getting actual value for that last bit of gas in the generator?
I mean, it’s a noisy and probably expensive way to power your home, but compared to throwing the gas out unused it might be better???
Also is there anything bad about running it to empty?
I think I will probably get another natural gas generator when this one goes since the plumbing is already in place and it seems a lot easier based on your description. So that’s mainly just curiosity.
Breaking news: While I wrote this, the power went off.
OK, three.
I could. But paying for gas to create electricity costs a lot more than the power straight from the E-company. It would suck if it was off for only one or two hours. I’ll try to find out how long gasoline lasts. I recall Lucy worried about her C-Max’s gasoline. Others with plug-in hybrids can chime in.
[quote=“twig93, post:2165, topic:5515”]Will the power it generates reduce your electric usage such that you’re getting actual value for that last bit of gas in the generator?
[/quote]Not really. 5 gallons here costs about $22. I’m not worried about it for this one-time event. The generator purchase was a bigger decision.
It is quite the toss-up, listening to it now. Probably could use a good muffler. Throwing out the gas might be problematic. How do I get it out, how do I dispose of it, etc.
I concur. My issue with this house is that the gas comes in on one side of the house, the electricity from the other.
If anything, solar and battery back up would be for me, with this house (faces south-southeast, at 34 degrees N). But I don’t have $50K to spend, and special installation required over Spanish tiles.
I count about ten steps, more if I have to wheel it from the garage (which would require opening the garage door (electric) and move the car.
It has a rope-pull mower-styler starter. Not a lot of force required. Others have electric start, but, you know, the electricity is out… (yes, it has a battery, which sounds to me like another thing to worry about when something isn’t used frequently.)
