Jump to content
  • Member Statistics

    17,606
    Total Members
    7,904
    Most Online
    ArlyDude
    Newest Member
    ArlyDude
    Joined

February 4-5 Snow, Ice, Sleet, Rain Obs


Ralph Wiggum

Recommended Posts

I lost power AGAIN yesterday until it came back on last night around 4am. Everyone moved out and was staying at a relatives or hotel, moved back in, then people started leaving again because they were sick and tired of it but it's back on. I've never gone more than 12 hours without power so almost 4 days was an experience for me. I hope they have the power restored to Abington and up through Bucks County soon. Chester County still has over 29,000 people without power. It seems like overall, over 60,000 people still don't have power throughout the suburbs. Once the crews from out of state got in, the number of outages finally started to shrink rapidly. Since PECO didn't seem to have enough man power to handle this storm, I'm glad those other crews drove to the area to help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 553
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Still no power. So i move some wiring so the generator gives me hot water only to find an oil burner issue. Get that repaired so we have hot water. After my wife and i get showers the pump tank alert goes off. Tomorrow either brings power or another rewire to get the sewer tank pump to run. What next????

 

Ideally you should have a transfer switch but this is how I get my backup power. Once the power goes out I throw the main breaker and put a lock-out tag on it with padlock.  I have a 220v 30amp inlet box in my detached garage that I hook the generator to. This powers the sub panel in the garage which powers the main panel in the house. 

 

Depending on the size of your generator you could send 220v to the entire panel and then switch on breakers one by one to see how much capacity you can get (if you don't know the amp draw on each circuit). Worse case is you could run the sewer pump as needed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sad PECO is like the former LIPCO on long island . Those bums got tossed out and a new company manages operations is my understanding. You pay so much but all you get is excuses why it takes time to fix minor issues.

Seems PECO has no plan for the big ticket event.

 

I'm not defending PECO in any way but can you comprehend the size of the outage? No power company would be able to deal with this size of an event "in-house" which is why outside companies send crews to help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's hope power stays up and we get a little melting off before what looks like a significant snow event for NW Chesco come Wed into Thursday which should end as some ZR and maybe some rain - but I am not optimistic we ever get above freezing. This has the look of heaviest and all snow spots being well inland like MDT and AVP getting the heaviest amounts

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's hope power stays up and we get a little melting off before what looks like a significant snow event for NW Chesco come Wed into Thursday which should end as some ZR and maybe some rain - but I am not optimistic we ever get above freezing. This has the look of heaviest and all snow spots being well inland like MDT and AVP getting the heaviest amounts

Gonna be the paste type which really sucks.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's hope power stays up and we get a little melting off before what looks like a significant snow event for NW Chesco come Wed into Thursday which should end as some ZR and maybe some rain - but I am not optimistic we ever get above freezing. This has the look of heaviest and all snow spots being well inland like MDT and AVP getting the heaviest amounts

12Z GFS is high and dry next week

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Power back up as of 11 AM. 104 hours without it.

 

SP - for heat I have two wood stoves and my house is passive solar. Friday was sunny and 70 degrees inside. Saturday was cloudy and 60 inside. At night it got down to mid 50's.    I have a transfer switch off of a 4000 watt generator. I got the generator about 4 years ago before a tropical storm was coming in. I run the freezer,  fridge, oil burner for hot water, garage doors ( in and out over 30 times during the storm for fire calls), computer, a few lights and well pump. 

 

My problem is 4000 watt is too small to run my air handlers off the oil burner.  I should have a 7500 or more.  I would have got it, but Home Depot and all others were sold out of anything bigger.

 

Ready for spring. !!!!!!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Power back up as of 11 AM. 104 hours without it.

SP - for heat I have two wood stoves and my house is passive solar. Friday was sunny and 70 degrees inside. Saturday was cloudy and 60 inside. At night it got down to mid 50's. I have a transfer switch off of a 4000 watt generator. I got the generator about 4 years ago before a tropical storm was coming in. I run the freezer, fridge, oil burner for hot water, garage doors ( in and out over 30 times during the storm for fire calls), computer, a few lights and well pump.

My problem is 4000 watt is too small to run my air handlers off the oil burner. I should have a 7500 or more. I would have got it, but Home Depot and all others were sold out of anything bigger.

Ready for spring. !!!!!!!!

Good to hear you are back on the grid! Sounds like a good setup you have. My hunch is you might have enough wiggle room to run one air handler, the key is power up and manually managing so you do not have the three high draw motors kick in at the same time. The only problem I discovered with my larger generators 5500/8500 is their efficiency. Post Sandy, gas supply for the first week was stressed, let alone commerce in general. So what you had on hand was what you had, same for Irene. Big difference between 4000 clean watts at 2 gallons per full run cycle (7-8 hours) and say 5500 watts for a similar runtime. I keep about 20 gallons on hand, refresh it every 30-45 days. Any more than that becomes work or too dangerous. I was thinking about installing a second tank and pump on one of the trucks but never got around to investigating the idea.

Check out Weis for generators.....as well other web distributors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...