The thought of what it would have been had this happened on the tail end of Convergence is pretty persuasive. I turned that book in literally on the deadline, with a lot riding on that date: miss your publishing ‘slot’ and a whole series can lose out, bigtime.
So…Black Friday sales, Home Depot…and a deal of fast research on generators.
I settled on Honda, who makes a motor many of the best ‘others’ buy to use their own product.
I settled on lightweight, because Jane and I together can’t get a 170 lb ‘whole house’ generator out of the Prius’ back end.
I settled on a generator-inverter, because it produces what the sales folk call a ‘pure sine wave’, aka power without the wobble produced by a generator alone. It converts AC to DC and then converts the DC to a ‘tamed’ AC that is pretty well as steady as what your house wall sockets offer from the electric company. If you’re running computer equipment or devices that use an internal microchip (and what doesn’t, nowadays) the ‘pure sine wave’ stuff matters. You can also connect two of these fellows together, if you turn out to need more power.
So Home Depot offered a Honda 2000 inverter generator, 45 pounds approx., runs 3-8 hrs on a gallon of gas, and produces 1500 watts of steady running power. We’ve got the propane for heat, we can use an ice chest for perishables, and that 1500 watts would let us charge the laptops, charge the phones, and then unplug and plug in the fish tanks for a number of hours, and by juggling plug-ins, keep the whole house going. The deal was 899 for the thing, which is 100 to 200 off the normal price. You can run the thing day and night for a couple of days for about the amount of gas you’d have on hand for a lawnmower, so you don’t have to store a mega-tank of fuel in anticipation. Honda engines also have a rep for starting, no matter the condition of the gas. I think it’s a good deal. Sure better than what we just went through, and losing over a week out of our productive year.
You may need to sink a ground rod somewhere near where you’ll keep the generator.
Does the generator come with the power cords, or will you have to furnish your own?
If you have to furnish your own, make sure they’re of proper gauge to handle the current draw (and of course, the resistance of the wire increases with distance more quickly on the thinner gauge wires – strange, AWG sizes are larger as the number is smaller – #10 is thicker than #14…..)
Also, I strongly recommend you find a sturdy cable that cannot be cut with bolt cutters and a case-hardened padlock to secure said generator to a permanent structure. In cases such as this past week where many people are without power, your generator is a magnet for thieves. Perhaps securing it will deter them, somewhat. You’ll need to put it somewhere it’s convenient to refueling, but also where you can run power to the house, and not get exhaust fumes inside, either. I hate having to route them through windows or doors, which is why I still want to get the auto-switch that allows me to connect the generator to the breaker box, or to a select group of breakers to power essential equipment. I’ve seen secondary breaker boxes that come off the main breaker box, and if you lose commercial power, you can hook the generator up to those secondary breakers which power the essential equipment. I suppose that a breaker in the main box would power the secondary box, but if you lose commercial power, you’d flick that breaker to “Off”, unless you had an automatic shunt, and then connect your generator.
Our amateur radio club has several of these little Honda generators, as well as a larger 5500 watt Honda generator that is attached to a bracket on the front of our tow vehicle (a converted ambulance).
Very much this. Before we moved into our house, the previous owner had a Honda generator secured to the back lanai in a cage of 2x4s. During the confusion of buying the house, neighborhood crackheads broke apart the cage and took the generator. Look for a couple of heavy plastic coated bike cables, and the mentioned heavy padlocks, maybe? You already know you have opportunistic thieves in the area and Shu can’t be everywhere 🙂
Er, Sei 😀
Sei to detect potential thieves, Shu to dispatch them…. 😀
Are Sei and Shu members of the Guild? If not, they should be; it would make things easier.
I doubt they are interested in such honorifics. I expect they’re totally indifferent. “I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. Get used to it!” 😉
Cats being cats, Paul’s probably got that exactly right. 😀
Though na Sei and na Shu as hani ship’s security officers or special agents…
Blackbreeches or blue-black with stars? Hmm….
By now, they’d certain sure have a couple of voyage rings apiece, aarrr.
I’m thinking a truck tow chain and a cutter resistent lock through the handle.
Most of the places that have had theft problems during the power-out were businesses, but there was some profiteering, exorbitant prices on generators during the crisis. The regular outlets, however, were being fair and trying to get more supply in.
You might make a wooden box to cover it, keeping both avaricious eyes and weather off it. 😉
I think that’ll work….I bought some chain at the local Ace Hardware, although it was cut with bolt cutters….hmmm….well, that should be a deterrent, though, since anyone walking into your back yard with a set of bolt cutters is automatically suspect…..
Great, I’m sure that will be much more convenient and safer than the Prius modification.
But…um…things with synchronous motors, like clocks, care about sine wave power. Computers don’t. Laptops really, really don’t.
So, you know all the bricks that power laptops and this and that? And, of course the power supply in a desktop computer? Those are switching power supplies. Here’s what happens. The AC power, which kind of looks like /\/\/\ gets converted (rectified) to a bumpy ^^^^^^. A capacitor, which is kind of like a reservoir, evens out the power. If the output starts to get too high, the input power is switched off; when it gets too low, the power is switched back on–thus a switching power supply. The capacitor keeps the power pure DC, which looks kind of like ——. So, the 12V to your disk drives stays at exactly 12 volts and so forth, different components needing different power levels (it’s not just 12V and 5V any more). A laptop’s battery acts like a huge capacitor, keeping the power very flat.
Analogy. Imagine a barrel with a bung hole. You want exactly the right amount of water flowing out of the bung hole. We all start dumping buckets of water into the barrel. When the water coming out gets to be too much, you tell us to stop, then when the water pressure drops too low, you tell us to start again. You switch us on and off, and the outflow remains just where it’s needed.
Switching power supplies used to be a hard thing, but now they’re so cheap everything uses them. So we have all these little bricks around our homes. And 120V LED lights? The base contains a switching power supply to get the voltage down where it’s needed–LEDs are pretty low power. It’s actually the power supply that generates most of the heat and is heat sensitive in an LED light (why they can’t be used in some places incandescent bulbs can).
Honda’s a good brand. I’m sure it will serve you well.
I think you may well already have a ground rod. The issue is where it may be, whether you have to connect right to it, and how close you’d have to be. It might be worth looking for. (I’ve heard of some for concrete-floored houses that were right in the middle of the slab–where it’s least likely to dry out and increase resistance!)
I agree with Walt, you may need to hunt down your “vampires”, devices that aren’t OFF when they’re off. TV’s are a real good example. So are modern computers! Switch off everything you can (find), and go out to the meter and see how fast it’s turning, as compared to normal use. I’ve heard/read advice to put “power bars” wherever electronics are plugged in and use their switches to turn the electronics OFF.
Yep, my house has a ground rod. Had a niggling recollection, so I just went out to the garage, and there in the floor between the furnace and water heater, next to the water main shutoff valve, and wired to it, was the top 2″ of a half-inch rod buried in the concrete. It should be copper coated and 8′ long. Plumbing is generally, if not always, electrically grounded.
My parents had a small Honda generator in their house in west Texas. It was for running a couple of lights, the sump pump, the garage door opener, and whatever electricity was needed for the furnace and water heater (gas fired).
It sat in the garage, between the two roll-up doors, and the exhaust pipe went through the outside wall. (They also had a cutoff switch so the generator wasn’t trying to power the world.) Probably about the same size as yours, I suspect.
But will it power that Mr. Fusion generator for the house or the Prius Time Machine?
Good luck with the generator.
—–
A few weeks ago, when NASA made the Water on Mars announcement, I clicked a YouTube link, innocently enough, thinking it was news commentary or other interesting stuff. Oh, boy. Instead, it was one of the milder bits of pseudo-science and speculation that people do. OK, entertaining, in its own way.
But for a couple of weeks afterward, I got some really, truly way-out-there YouTube recommendations. I checked a couple of these and left most way the heck alone. One that I’d thought would be mild, amusing, or a historical overview started out well enough, but then went off the deep end. Another, maybe my favorite crackpot theory, was that Mars is just totally made up, some image, and it doesn’t really exist. Um…telescope, much? Not even on the level of a Hollywood set. Somehow, those folks think Mars is like a matte painting up in the heavens, or somehow hoaxed by world scientists for centuries. Yeah, very special brand of wacky conspiracy theory, there. Wow.
Tonight, I see a YouTube recommendation that’s really something. The title claims there are Secret Cities on Mars! And something about a coverup by NASA et al. I didn’t click it. Part of me wants to think it was created by someone for a laugh, just to get hits/views. But I think, like the other one, there are people who actually think there are secret cities on Mars, complete with Martians.
If so, the Martian space program must not be in any better shape than the Earth-based space programs, you know? Just…wow.
As a kid, I remember we went to the movies for speculative pseudo-science fun stuff that was presented as much more plausible, if far-fetched. There were several like that showing in movie theaters in the 1970’s. Now, I look back at them as fun and mostly harmless, speculation, and maybe tools to develop critical thinking. One on the Patterson Bigfoot film was interesting. The two Boggy Creek movies back then were also interesting later on, though I was a bit young with an overly low spooky, runaway imagination when I first saw those. (I saw them a few years later and wondered why I’d been so skittish.)
I’ve seen really fine YouTube videos on all sorts of things. Some are fun or funny. Some are serious and thoughtful and on important topics. Some are just unusual, but kinda neat.
But wacky topics, like Secret Cities on Mars! or saying Mars is totally imaginary, or that there were warring races on Mars that were Biblical angels and demons, or other way-over-the-deep-end stuff? Oh, come on! And apparently, there’s one about giant vampire aliens on Earth…. And they’re serious, not parodies or SF&F stories. There are people who really believe that stuff. :: shakes head ::
I was so struck by the oddball secret cities thing, and by how close two of those theories are to, ahem, someone stole the idea from John Carter of Mars, that I thought I’d share the weird incongruity here. — I didn’t mean for it to come off as a rant.
CJ, if my post seems inappropriate / insensitive / intolerant, I understand. If you feel it shuold be deleted, feel free. I’d understand.
I’m just…I thought I could be naive and gullible sometimes, but those take the cake. Wow. — Well, presented for amusement or bafflement value. Humankind is such an odd critter.
Well, now you’re in the twilight zone! Thing is, Google, which owns YouTube, gives you the results it thinks you want to see. If you click on flat Earth links, you’ll get more flat Earth links, until nothing you see will violate the flat Earth belief. Some politicians have gotten so caught in their bubble they were honestly surprised to lose, when anyone with a neutral view knew they didn’t have a chance.
I think deleting all Google and YouTube cookies should restore rationality to the recommendations. I have my browser delete all cookies, except a few whitelisted cookies, whenever the browser closes. Also, I use NoScript to block Google and others from taking information in the first place, but it’s a pretty hard to use add-on.
Ah, thanks, Walt. I’ve also found that ignoring YouTube links I don’t want to see eventually tells their algorithm that I’m not interested in that, and of course, it prefers what I do click instead.
I think I must’ve been in extra curmudgeon / fuss-budget mode when that irritated me and I posted last night. Not quite so bothered today, and when I logged into YouTube to check if subscriptions had new posts, thankfully, it had gone on to other recommendations.
It does, however, assuredly know I like science, science fiction, and LGBT-related topics. This, I don’t mind.
Heh, falling for one’s own press and preferences? Very bad idea for a politician! … Though if one were to judge solely by the current crop in whatever parties… Whew.
A generator is a good thing to have! Happy to read that life is returning to normal. Sometimes the mop up and getting back to routine can be as time consuming as the actual disaster. How are the fishies, indoor and out doing?
Toes crossed that in the middle of all this you managed some sort of Thanksgiving celebration!
We haven’t bothered to get a generator as Proge’s dad lives a half mile down the road and has several in various sizes fro his days in construction. We do have a 600 watt power inverter we run off the auto. It’s enough to power the small refrigerator, lights, chargers etc. If we don’t run everything at once we can watch dvds of which we have many.
P.S. As you can see, I figured out how to change my avatar. I went to gravatar.com as you suggested, Ben, and proceeded from there!
The new bowl of poppies is lovely.
You’re welcome, smartcat! Glad it worked. — Your new avatar looks great. Very pretty and a reminder of spring eventually.
I need to change my costume late tomorrow for the coming month. No prizes for guessing what it will be!!! 😉
An elf-guin.
Which is somewhat like a Peng-LeGuin.
Gingerbread Penguin?
Though cranberry might look quite good with your basic black and white tuxedo look, there, Mr. Penguin. 😀
I like Tommie’s suggestion of an Elf-Guin also. But what sort of elf, Christmasy or legendary?
Paul will probably surprise us with something altogether different. Which could be quite fun.
Surprized? No, I thought not. 😉
Oh, alright, maybe this one.
I like this new Santa with the Christmas tree.
If you get the pixels aligned just right you might make out the “Merry Christmas” on the sign. I had to go in and do some pixel editing to clarify it even this much!
Absolutely gorgeous plate, Smartcat!
Excellent. Even though I have a Yamaha (with inverter), rather than the Honda, that decision was based solely on what the local place had in stock and could more easily support. Both were nearly identical in price, features and quality. And both had one very important feature. They’re QUIET.
Fortunately, theft is a non-issue here, but by all means if you’re where it could be an issue, chain it down. Also, I recommend keeping it with just enough gas in the tank to run for an hour or so, and with a spare gas can nearby with more. Then if you don’t have to run it for months and months, you don’t end up with a full tank of stale gas. Just a little. And the spare gas goes into the Prius every quarter or so and gets replenished with fresh.
Of course, now that you have the generator, the odds are you won’t have a major power outage.
I didn’t know gas could go stale! It’s been underground a few million years, how does it get stale once it’s in a gastank, and what are the symptoms by which one knows it’s stale?
And if it’s stale, can one still use it?
Your advice reminded me of something someone once told me, that it’s safer to keep a gastank full, because the more airspace there is above the level of the liquid, the more gas can evaporate to fill that space, and gas vapour is much more explosively flammable than the liquid is.
And I remember a detective story in which an insurance scam was exposed, when the man who torched his moped said it went up in flames when his cigarette fell in the open full gas tank, and the fire expert said liquid gas is more likely to extinguish a cigarette than explode from contact with one. It sounds very dangerous to me, not something to try out; and a detective story is probably not a reliable source of information.
The combination of information does have me wondering, now.
gasoline isn’t a single substance, it’s a blend of different volatiles. When some of the volatiles evaporate out of the blend, then what’s left can become sticky and gummy, and will clog carburetors, foul plugs, etc.
You can buy a gas stabilizer at power equipment stores, such as Sears, and perhaps Lowes/Home Depot/Menards, etc…..I don’t know what it’s called in each store.
I think Mythbusters did at least one segment on the full tank/half tank theory, but that was with a bullet. If I recall, gasoline ignites at a significantly higher temperature than a lit cigarette generates. Fumes, I don’t know, but if you dropped a lit cigarette into a container of gasoline, it would go out, because the cigarette isn’t hot enough to ignite the liquid gasoline. I’m not about to do a hands-on experiment and see if it would ignite the fumes……
Yup, I’ve used the stabilizer, it appears to work. But honestly, this Yamaha just starts. Even though the battery is currently dead and I’m not going to deal with putting a new one in until it gets serviced in the spring, the thing still starts on the third pull, every time. And the pulls aren’t hard, even my DW with a bad shoulder can do them.
Condensation is potentially an issue, as Paul points out. But it’s already as cold as it’s going to get here. And I’ve actually filled it all the way up because it’s the _start_ of the season for it, not the end. I’ll run it every three or four weeks even if we don’t have a power outage. Of course, only one winter has that had to be done since we got it 8 years ago. There’s always several. Though it has been better since BC Hydro got brutally serious about tree trimming.
We got to 21.5°F this morning–woke me up about 5:30 so I had to get up and boost the thermostat a bit. The low Thursday is predicted to be 41°F. And it’ll freeze again, I’m sure. Here abouts we affectionally call it “our old gray blanket”.
What’s in the ground is crude oil. It varies in consistency, but generally is thick and black. It’s distilled into various fractions by “boiling”/condensing in refineries. One of those fractions is CH3-CH2-CH2-CH2-CH2-CH2-CH2-CH3, called “octane”.
There is a reason for keeping your tank full, but it’s not that. There’s a vent to let air into the tank as you drain it. That air contains variable amounts of moisture. If the tank gets cold it can condense, and water in your gas is generally a bad thing!
There’s a word-meaning difference involved: “Natural Gas” is often called simply, “gas” in the US, and yes, has been trapped underground for millions of years before being used for water heaters, stoves and ovens, other home and business uses. “Gasoline” (petrol elsewhere) is also called “gas” in the US, and is used for engines and generators and so on. It’s a blend of components. Then there’s propane gas, used for other forms of heating, cooking, and fuel. It’s usually called propane here. Likewise, diesel fuel is usually called diesel.
(Petroleum) oil and (natural) gas are related fossil fuels. Gasoline / gas / petrol is too, but is a combination of things. That’s the source of some of the confusion. (Americans generally know by context which “gas” they’re talking about.)
With the internet, though, give us two or three generations, and English will probably end up a single language with a little less variation in local dialects; or with a single standard for world use and local dialects for local or family use. I’d expect other world languages (and English) will borrow more from each other if the contact remains steady. That’s already been happening in the 20th and early 21st century, so it’s likely to keep going, increasing, in the rest of the 21st centuray and into the next. Er, provided some successor to the current internet stays around, and provided nothing drastic happens in world politics, economics, or environmental change.
What am I saying? It’s nearly 50 years since we landed on the Moon and we still haven’t made it to Mars. So who knows what will happen, with languages or the internet. Gotta like this internet thing, though. Global communication, limited mostly by how people are awake and asleep.
FWIW, natural gas is also a mixture. It’s mostly methane, but depending on the deposit there are also variable amounts ethane, propane, (iso-)butane, hydrogen sulfide, etc. Even helium!
Always something to learn around here. 🙂
When she’s writing SciFi CJ always tries to get the Science right and at least plausible.
Thanks all for all the kind words about my avatar. These are little pieces I do as warm ups and design tests.
Generators! Out here in rural life every home should at least have a power inverter.
Neat avatar, Paul!
OK, this brings up the inevitable question — how does one go about creating/changing one’s avatar on this site? I can’t see anything in my profile that lets me change it. And it’s certainly not one I chose.
On the left side of the page, about halfway down, are instructions on how to personalize your avatar through Gravatar. You can upload an image of your choice.
Thanks, that fixed it. I had read that bit before, but misunderstood them to mean if you didn’t have a Gravatar first, you were stuck. So thanks for the pointer.