April Foolishness, 2023


 
J

JKalchik

TVWBB Emerald Member
The only prank here is the one that Mother Nature has played on us.

From Thursday night through Friday, we got better than an inch of rain, then the temp dropped through freezing and we got about 6" of nearly fully saturated snow. Took me & my g/ two & a half hours to clear the slab, along with getting downed tree branches out of the way. I'll have most of a trailer load of branches to haul down to the village brush yard in May. We do have one branch on the roof over the garage, I think that it was a light enough hit to not cause any damage to the root that was put on in September (will call the roofer this week to ask him to put a quick inspection on his schedule once the roof is clear again.) Oh, and 8 separate power flickers (big UPS are wonderful things....) betwen 6:00 PM Friday and 5:00 AM this morning. There are significant outages up in the Twin Cities and the surrounding areas.

How'd everybody else fare in this region?
 
I do need to contact a coworker who lives about up in Duluth, and see how he's faring.

I've been contemplating a whole house generator, every since we've bought this house back in 2009. Outages due to weather have only been up to about 2 minutes and even when a transformer blew itself out near by, we were only out for a couple of hours. Much as I'd like a generator, I just cannot justify it at this point.
 
We live just west of Belvidere by about 6/7 miles. We saw that mess coming. Weird storm. Lighting was continuous. Sky was constantly lit. No single claps of thunder. It just never stopped. Then everything went dead calm. Then sirens started. What a ride. The of course just a couple minutes later, the twister hit the Apollo theater in Belvidere, hurting a bunch of people and killing one.
This was a photo taken by son in law at KRFD airport. He works for UPS I also have video of the storm approaching us just before it hit Belvidere. I will have to upload it to YouTube to share the link
338402122_1157161404946608_1426621167500897447_n.jpg
 
Scary stuff! Here just cold and windy, we don't get much of the hard weather that the mid west and west coast gets.
Got a 6000 watt generator for back up for the freezers and fridge and lighting. Going to see if I can have a power access installed for the furnace that I can access in the garage as the furnace is in the attic and not easily accessible.
 
@LMichaels, neat pics...... as long as I'm indoors and sheltered.

For anybody listening in and contemplating generators.... please, ensure that your generator is completely isolated from the mains before starting it up. This is a major safety issue for lineman out performing repairs. If you backfeed into the mains, you may unknowingly electrocute a lineman who's already tested for a dead line.
 
Lighting is kinda rare up here. We get cloud to cloud but not much cloud to ground. About three years ago the neighbor three houses down had lighting hit his roof, Scared Barb and I half to death. The whole house jumped.
It blew a hole in his roof about four feet wide. Took out his TV and fridge. Fortunately, no fire or injuries.
 
JKalchik said:
@LMichaels, neat pics...... as long as I'm indoors and sheltered.

For anybody listening in and contemplating generators.... please, ensure that your generator is completely isolated from the mains before starting it up. This is a major safety issue for lineman out performing repairs. If you backfeed into the mains, you may unknowingly electrocute a lineman who's already tested for a dead line.
Click to expand...
I always unplug what I'm going to power up with the generator and connect it directly to the generator. So, no back feed can occur.
 
Rich Dahl said:
About three years ago the neighbor three houses down had lighting hit his roof, Scared Barb and I half to death. The whole house jumped.
Click to expand...
My sister's house had a direct strike a year or two ago. Huge amount of electrical damages. And because the house itself was struck, whole house supressors have minimal effect.
 
Rich Dahl said:
Scary stuff! Here just cold and windy, we don't get much of the hard weather that the mid west and west coast gets.
Got a 6000 watt generator for back up for the freezers and fridge and lighting. Going to see if I can have a power access installed for the furnace that I can access in the garage as the furnace is in the attic and not easily accessible.
Click to expand...
Maybe consider an interlock switch or a transfer switch?
 
I have my gen setup done kinda cheap and "dirty". 30 amp gen plug on back of house fed directly into breaker box. Then simply turn off the mains, flip the breakers to run only what needed and fire up the gen. We so rarely get an extended outage, plus I have nothing health and well being critical running on electrical. So if I had an extended outage in the cold, I could run my furnace, fridges and freezer along with some lights and such off the gen. If not extended outage I have battery backups on my internet/network and tv setup. My fireplace is actually designed to operate without AC power and is 85% efficient and capable of easily maintaining a pretty warm house if needed.
Unlike say my oldest and her hubby who's house is well and septic and without power they're kinda DOA so they have a big genset. NG fed, auto startup/switching and so on. Has a 4cyl Ford engine. I think it could supply half my neighborhood LOL.
I've tested my setup, and with my 3500 running watts genset, I can run nearly my entire house. Thanks to having switched everything to very energy efficient stuff. All lights are LED, furnace operates on just a few watts thanks to PWM DC motors.
 
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