Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Hmmm didn't attach to the post for some reason.

 

Never doubted you.

 

Cooked about a 150 chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles. Both stoves will be running tonight as the temp is dropping fast

 

Lost power about 2 hr ago. Oddly our Fidium Fiber internet is fine (and its all on poles not underground). Generator running, temp has only dropped to 36, local tv says some snow squalls coming thru in a bit. The reviews of this Harbor Freight genny (9000w peak, 7250w running) said you'd easily get 9+ hrs of run time on a 50% load ( has a 8gal tank). Currently fridge, P43, ONT & modem, a couple lights, laptop and the well pump when needed only things drawing power. So far over 100k people in NH w/o power.

sam

 

Yeah power just came back on.

sam

 

I was wondering as I looked at all the rain and flooding in my yard . So glad I cleaned mine last weekend!

 

I cleaned my stove to get ready for a busy weekend. It was filled and ready to go, so last night I went down and hit the button, walked away. Woke up this morning a little chilly. I forgot we lost power for a short while yesterday, so the stove reset to the 1 heat setting. The basement was just barely 60 degrees, and the mini splits upstairs had the house at 65. On the bright side, I only burned about 20 lbs of pellets!

 

65 isn't too bad all things considered. I have made much bigger mistakes.

 

The weather gods have smiled on us.....USUALLY when we get temps in the teens F and then a warm front comes in and the freezing rain....we can almost depend on a power outage..... We are 36F now. Power never even blinked

This area has a lot of trees and they always shed limbs ......This time we had an inch of snow pellets followed by a very thin glaze......Then the rain quit here....Just showers was all..

We had some wind at maybe 20 mph.....Up Portland way they had much higher wind speeds and trees coming down....And lots of ice

With almost nothing on the roof (Snow) the two nut burners were having a tough time keeping the shack warm.....About 68F was all they could do when the temps dropped into the low Teens F

Had to run the big Quadrafire off and on to Gitterdone........

That Quad 1000 really huffs out the heat......Back in the early days when we first built....The Quad 1000 was all we had......It would handle the house by itself.....Hungry sucker though.....

Glad to see the weather warming up......50F this afternoon.....55F next week

Lots of rain....maybe 3" or more..

Sure glad we did that last shell run when we did.....Weather was beautiful then (Week ago yesterday)

Weather this season has been screwy......Warm and dry into late Sept/Early Oct.....Then blam.....wet and wild.....

 

What kinda Genny you running?

 

Well that was a treat...

First it snowed, then rain, then wind but so far so good ...until later yesterday...

Torrential rain and frozen ground produced copious runoff from surrounding forest that flows into the yard, and eventially around the house which of course started coming in. Half the basement is finished so it's never a good thing. There is a sump pump for such things, but for reasons unknown to me it was put on the entirely wrong side, so water does not reach it until there is 1-1/2" standing water on the opposite side of the basement. There are yard drains with manhole covers, but there was just too much water for hours.

Bring out the floor squeegee and 16gal shop vac, but there is no winning until the source (rain) stops and the ground itself drains down.

After (surprisingly) not losing power all day, early in the evening a enormous no rain thunderstorm blew through that brought very high gusting winds, just long enough to knock the power out. Start the generator, flip the transfer switch and continue cleanup.

Got to sleep about 11:30 and my alarm alerted me the power was back on around 4:30A .

With warm pellet stoves and hot coffee in hand, the worst is now over. The rivers in the yard have dried up and the yard drains are now carrying the leftover runoff away. Temps have dropped to the low teens overnight which has been freezing the ground and puddles and the water coming is is reduced to a trickle until the unfrozen ground exhausts itself of excess water.

Runoff is usually reserved for spring thaw, but that was more water than I've seen yet! Busy day for sure and a nap will be on the schedule this afternoon.

 

According to their outage map (and I have no idea how frequently it gets updated) NH has 54,430 out, eastern MA 2,847, CT 32,275. Hope people get power restored quickly.

sam

 

I found a guy on FB marketplace that was selling the Predator genny's (3500 & 9500 inverter's) new in box CHEAP. Sold my 2 3500's, bought the 9500.....what a beast. Runs the whole house including the electric stove. My neighbor (licensed electrician) said it probably will run the central a/c in the summer too if not much else is turned on. If I spring for the soft-start kit for the a/c, probably will run that & most other stuff too.

 

Hope all my FHC friends are warm and with family. Have safe & Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

 

Merry X mas

 

Merry Christmas to all.....

Above 40F now and still warming up.....
Just shut off the little stove......76F in the house now.....The big stove will handle the load at this point...

Gotta head down in a bit and pack up some shells for the evening.

Looks like we have 4 empty 5 gallon buckets to fill......

At least it's not 15F outside........