Colder here. What's your temp? What ya burnin?

Not really cold here this morning, but keeping the fire going with red oak.

 

29f right now got ash and maple going for now

 

Yep. That's the one. Power went down Friday morning and came back late afternoon Monday.

We had installed a Hotblast wood furnace 2 years earlier when the old oil furnace kicked. Since it was located in the cellar of the old farmhouse, I had to rig up a way to get the blower running without running the genny 24/7. I had 2 brand new deep cycle batteries so I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a 450W power inverter. Set a battery next to the furnace, hooked up the inverter and plugged the blower into it. I had no idea how much power the blower would draw but figured it would be less than the capacity of the inverter. Should have checked that first. Thankfully I was right. It only drew about 80W. The battery lasted about 14 hours. When it drew down far enough to shut down the inverter, I hooked up the other battery and fired up the genny to charge up the depleted one as well as cool down the fridge and freezer. Rinse and repeat for the duration of the outage. Interesting learning experience.

 

Well, at least you are not suffering too badly then with day- to- day stuff.

Our limit when using the generator is the electric dryer; the generator will run it but it turns slowly and drops the voltage in the system so low that the few tungsten bulbs we have glow orange and very dim. So no clothes dryer. We also have an electric stove and can use ONE burner at a time but not more. Still, far better than no generator at all, or the smaller one we have only, which is 115 volt only.

Brian

 

Burning some old ash and persimmon at night. Both were sitting awhile in the woods when I found them last winter. The persimmon still puts out amazing heat being as old as it is.

 

yeah things that would be nice light in bathrooms washing machine and not going out in dark 430 to gas uo both generators so can shower and make coffee same time
not having 9 extension cords up stairways
55 dollars a day in gas expense is after 12 days but hotels are not in my area.. and without me here to run generators and stove pipes would freeze but Insurance company seems to not hurry much

 

It was around -10 c (14 F) last night before bed, which warmed to -5 C ( 23 F) at the moment. Poplar chasing the chill away.

 

Beavers to blame for Saskatchewan power outage

When I first heard that beavers were to blame, I thought it was some kind of Canadian joke.

 

30 degrees in the shade about 12:45. Ash burning in the boiler. Almost time to switch back over to Pine since I'll be home for a while now.

 

38°F light rain , half a load of ash n maple in the Republic

 

OFFTOPIC:

I do not want to veer too far off-topic here but my generator is in the un- attached garage, which is wired to the house with 100 amps of 230 volt power for the welder that is in the barn behind the garage (the barn is a three- wall building built against the back of the garage so they share passages). So I run my generator in the closed garage, and it is plugged into the welder's outlet, which in turn feeds both legs of the house after the main breaker in the house is opened. So it kind of works out in a totally accidental way that I end up in a house that is powered normally when using a generator as long as we are aware not to use too much power. But we can walk around and turn all lights on / off as always, watch TV, use computers, etc. as normal, and we (and the neighbors) cannot hear the generator running.

I also came by the generator I have by accident: we lost power for several days some years ago and a friend of mine offered his old generator for us to use. He had purchased a bigger Honda generator and still have the old one, a Vantage 5K watt machine in like- new condition, sitting in his garage. So I used it for a few days and when i went to return it, the thought struck me that he might want to sell it; we struck a deal and I got it for 1/2 new price, which we both thought fair. I was not burning as much fuel as you though, it sounds like you are using a lot more power.

This year it is running a tad lean though and I had to use it with the choke on 1/2 way. I disassembled the carb. and cleaned all the jets, emulsion tube, and passages but it still runs lean. It is a fixed jet carb. so I cannot adjust it; I will drill out the main jet two thousandths at a time until it runs correctly. A PITA but the EPA is 'helping' us until it hurts a bit.

Again, I hope you get power restored quickly!

Brian

 

Once you get it running right, I'd try and find some non ethanol fuel for while it' in storage. I get mine at a somewhat local municipal airport. It's around $4 a gallon, but worth it. I hadn' started my old crappy generator in over a year before this last storm. I set the choke, and it fired off on the first pull.

 

25ish right now and suppose to go to low 20s overnight. When moving wood today we separated out some small BTU scraps and I now have some Ash and Cherry uglies burning in the boiler.

 

We had 25 this morning so we had another pine fire. Since one of our inside wood racks was getting down we put in two small loads of pine.

It looks like the warmer weather will hold for another week so we'll stay with the pine.

 

Yeah, I know a lot of people complain about it but to my knowledge, I have had no problems with ethanol laced fuel. I run everything I can dry, including the generator, and so no fuel sits in the carb. bowl, lines, etc. The fuel in the tank was 9 years old (!!) and it ran exactly the same as the new gasoline after I ran that stuff off.

There is a local airport but I do not know if I can get anywhere near the pumps or if they will fill a plastic container or not. The local OPE store has pure gasoline but it is $46 / gal.

Brian