Power still out 3 days later :(

C

ctgoldwing

Getting comfortable
Nov 8, 2019
508
679
Beacon, NY
It sure didn't seem like much of a storm when it went through here on Tuesday. In the meantime the utility says they will have power 'substantially restored' by Tuesday 11:59 PM. Don't know what that means for us tho. . .
I have a 10kw diesel generator that we picked up at auction from FT Meade in MD (my son who lives in MD also got one). They were both completely reconditioned, put on new trailers, put in a warehouse and then auctioned off - only our government! It runs my entire house easily.
It has a 12.5 gallon day tank and burns a little less than a gal/hr depending on load. Since I have oil heat and 2 330 gallon tanks in the basement there is usually plenty of fuel available. When the tanks were installed I had a bottom outlet valve put in so I could get fuel to my 5 gallon jugs.
We are far from any visible neighbors or the street so I can't tell if the utility power has come back on without going down into the basement, into the xfer switch and putting a voltmeter on the street side. That got old pretty early on so. . . I took a light bulb base and 2 jumpers to connect to the street side. A simple R2D2 looking wireless camera is pointed right at it. Now I only have to look at my monitor to see if power has been restored.

1596815481545.png

With my broadband down I am using my phone as a wifi hotspot - though it keeps dropping :(
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Wow
Reactions: djernie, bigredfish, mat200 and 6 others
Just got our power back yesterday morning. We were lucky and were only out for a little over 36 hours. No generator here :(


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
  • Wow
  • Like
Reactions: djernie and mat200
  • Like
Reactions: djernie, mat200, sebastiantombs and 2 others
Old Timer said:
I added 2 LED bulbs to the commercial power side, so I can easily tell if I have power.
I like the camera idea, think I might have to add that.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I placed an old Amcrest IPM-721 (720p) P/T indoor cam in my garage utility room to look at the water heater's LEDs on its digital controls. It has a bad habit of letting powerline glitches that typically occur in a rural setting turn it off and we would find out with a shower that'd get suddenly cold half-way through...brrrr!
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: djernie, mat200, Old Timer and 2 others
I added a couple of NE2's, I'm old school, to the input side of things to keep an eye on whether power is on or not. Then my neighbor put in a whole house system with auto start. Now I can tell just by listening :)

My daughter lives over by the Jersey Shore, Jackson Township, off a small side road that leads into her development. They haven't had power since Tuesday and probably won't get it back until next Tuesday at the earliest. I took a spare window AC to her yesterday so she and my SIL can get a decent nights sleep. He did buy a generator, 5500 watts, but he flat out refuses to buy more than one five gallon gas can. I always ask him what he'll do if there's a major outage that prevents gas stations from opening, or a major snow or ice storm, but he's insistent that one is fine. I keep 50 gallons handy and we're right off the sub transmission lines for most of our area so we get power back first, although not always very quickly depending on the damage they get. We were out for five days with Super Storm Sandy and six days from a blizzard level snow storm a few years back.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ctgoldwing, Old Timer, djernie and 3 others
As an Amazon Associate IPCamTalk earns from qualifying purchases.
  • Like
Reactions: Old Timer, djernie and looney2ns
Geez i guess since you have the discounted generator i bought for you;), you get frequent outages that last for days? I have never been without power for more than 4 hours during any major storm. But since they refuse to upgrade the countries power grid, i should start looking into backup generators that can run solar and diesel, hmmmmmm. Hope you guys get back up soon.
 
An NE2 will light with one leg attached to a few turns of wire around one phase and the other leg of the NE2 grounded. Touchless delivery for these CCP Virus times.
 
  • Like
Reactions: samplenhold, looney2ns and djernie
sebastiantombs said:
An NE2 will light with one leg attached to a few turns of wire around one phase and the other leg of the NE2 grounded. Touchless delivery for these CCP Virus times.
Click to expand...
I first started seeing NE2's show up circa '73 when I got into my line of work for the next 31 years....as they aged it took more voltage to trigger and they'd flicker as the supplying 120VAC would dip & spike. I seem to recall a series resistor installed.

We had some analog inductive loop detectors that would detect vehicles (ferromagnetic objects) and they were installed on the PC board across the loops as some sort of a lightning-induced surge arrestor.
 
  • Like
Reactions: looney2ns and djernie
Yes, normally an NE2 needs a 1 meg "ballast" resistor to protect it from 120VAC or higher. They do age badly,but will still give an indication. Another use for them is checking a circuit for power. Touch one lead to the circuit and a finger to the other lead. If the NE2 lights up the circuit is hot.
 
  • Like
Reactions: djernie
Yippeee!!! woke up this am and checked my 'light bulb monitor', it was on!
5 days and we have power and broadband back
The generator was great. My wife & I were discussing what we would have had to do if it wasn't here. Board the dogs (hopefully find a place), empty the refrig and freezer and then find a motel.
This is a pix of the MEP-003A
1596979750386.png

The circled box I added when I installed it. There are 2 digital ammeters on the opposite side that monitor the current in each leg of the 230v. Those 20' long SS hoses are the exhausts. When the army uses this generator for a mobile laundry in a trailer they use the hoses for venting. I found a pair on Ebay. I didn't want to penetrate the garage wall permanently with a large hole and the diesel exhaust isn't exactly clean. The little bugger weighs 1300 lbs. The only thing I had to do to it after I installed it was get 2 12v batteries. The 24 volt charger is sitting on the battery box. I charged the batteries the day before.

By far this is the longest I have ever had to run it.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Wow
Reactions: Arjun, aristobrat, Jessie.slimer and 4 others
sebastiantombs said:
I keep 50 gallons handy.
Click to expand...

Here I thought I was prepared with the 14 gallon fuel caddie I just bought! I assume you cycle through that tank to keep it fresh?

I have a 8,000 watt generator I rigged up to auto start with a transfer switch. It’s electric start and fuel injected so a few relays and a raspberry pi was all it took to setup auto start and transfer! It powers most of the house but you can tell it’s working hard when the AC kicks on.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
  • Like
Reactions: djernie and sebastiantombs
Glad you got your juice back, I know how much that sucks.
We lost power for 7 days back with hurricane Irma. Ran the generator 5 of those days almost constant for 110 hours. With 90 degree heat and Fla humidity I cant imagine not having it. (8000/10,000 Generac). I keep 45 gallons of fuel and the nice thing is it got around 12-13 hours per 7 gal tank.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ctgoldwing, samplenhold, djernie and 1 other person
@th182 I cycle through them faster than I'd like to, but I also add a good quality stabilizer to them prior to filling the 5 gallon cans. I've been doing that for a few years and have yet to have a problem related to "stale" fuel. I make sure they're all full when I know there's a storm coming, but they also supply the lawn tractor, chipper/shredder, rototiller, string trimmer, chain saw, snow blower, leaf blower and a partridge in a pear tree. I'm planning on a new generator, 10-12KW, and will probably add another 20 gallons, minimum, when I do that.
 
  • Like
  • Haha
  • Wow
Reactions: looney2ns, ctgoldwing, samplenhold and 4 others
Years ago in our old house I picked up a 35kw gasoline generator from a job. Although it was an old Onan it had very few hours on it as a standby unit. The question was for me, how much gasoline was I comfortable having in the garage. 2 5 gal jugs didn't go very far on that Ford V8 in there. Eventually I found a marine company ready to throw out a 80 gallon aluminum tank which they gave me.

You hit the nail on the head about recycling the gas. pia even with stabilizer. I used a small pump to recycle it through the cars. no more gasoline gensets for me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: djernie, aristobrat and sebastiantombs
sebastiantombs said:
but he flat out refuses to buy more than one five gallon gas can.
Click to expand...
I've been there. I live in coastal VA. Every two or three years we'll get the remnants of a CAT 1 hurricane that made landfall in OBX that motors up and may knock the power out for an hour or so. It's been 15 years since we've had a hurricane that caused a wide spread lengthly outage, but having lived through that without a generator, I don't want to go through that again... but I also don't want to store a bunch of five-gallon containers for something that happens so infrequently.

I settled on two five-gallon containers + a siphon system that will let us easily enough pull gas from our cars if needed. I keep one of the five gallon containers always ready to go (with stabilizer) for anything unexpected. Two days before a storm is supposed to hit, we'll fill up the other 5 gallon container and top off the cars. We're using a 3800/4500w inverter that's decent on gas... it's rated 18 hours/3.5 gallons of gas at 25% load, which is about what our house runs at with lights + electronics + ceiling fans on.

Bought all of this back in 2018 and have done a few dry runs, but it wasn't until Isaias last week that I got to really use it. We lost power for five hours. Was able to dig out the window A/C when the power came back on.
 
  • Like
Reactions: looney2ns, ctgoldwing, samplenhold and 2 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom