If the Texas calamity came your way what would you do ?

If civil society breaks down, is the guy who steals my food/fuel/whatever to save his kids in the wrong? Am I in the wrong to let those kids starve by not letting my stuff get stolen? I suspect you'd get a lot of gray areas very quickly. It would start in the city, or wherever people are congregated the most densly, with the least food available, quickly move to the suburbs, and out to the country. Not sure you could get far enough away to avoid it. I hope we never live to see the day...

Edit: I bet a running generator would attract people like a moth to a flame. Not sure a person would dare run one, if it came to that.

 

It depends.. a quick search says that propane boils at -44.. so one might quickly think that as long as it’s above -44, then it’s okay,, problem is that the vaporization of the propane causes the liquid propane to cool down. It takes the latent heat of the tank to warm the liquid back up. The faster one uses propane, the colder the liquid will get until it reaches a point that the boiling of propane can not keep up with the demand.. of course, the colder it gets, the more demand there is by the heating system thus exacerbating the problem. If the tank is more full, this will be less of a problem as there is a greater mass in which to spread the heat loss. Putting a tank below ground reduces the swings in temperature caused by the day to day temp swings. Having multiple tanks instead of one large one, helps with more surface area to “warm” the propane more quickly after it cools.. just learned this stuff a couple years ago. Pretty basic physics but just never really thought about it..

 

Yes. It's not the zombies you gotta worry about.

 

Sorry to jump back a bit in the thread, but do you actually need a modified carb to run propane? I've seen some videos of guys running propane straight into the airbox of stock generators, and regulating the pressure of the propane until it runs well.

 

Propane is cool! I use a 500,000 btu weed burner on slash fires to start them. You know those little wands that sound like jet engines. So a full 20# bbq tank on a nice warm day I can freeze that tank to the ground it gets so cold from boiling off gas. It gets so cold that it almost stops boiling and then, get this, I turn the torch on the propane tank to heat it up so that it boils faster for more gas.

It’s never too cold (well above -44) to get some gas but the amount of gas produced can go way down as things get cold. This can happen on a buried tank too.

Propane tanks run at about 120 psi. Then lower pressure as they boil until pressure gets back to 120. This is why pressure gauges do not tell you how much gas is in the tank. CO2 does the same thing.

 

These are the thoughts and plans you need to make before the crisis. Even running our woodstoves could attract attention.

How rural do you need to be to keep anybody from coming to scavenge your stash? At what point do you shoot the neighbor’s cow and steal the meat? You’ve then become the scavenger (zombie).

 

My number one priority is my family, at any cost. If someone's stealing in that situation, they get shot. Whether or not they get a warning depends on the situation. On the other hand, I'm a generous person, and if someone were to come up and ask for something of me that I had plenty of so they could help their family, I'd give it to them. Personally, stealing is an absolute last resort for me, after bartering and begging, and then only in a dire emergency.

 

Hi troops.

I am normally hanging out at the pellet forum.
I live close to Newberg, Oregon
As some of you know we recently had a pretty nasty ice/snow event.

Not nearly as bad as far as snow depth as 2008....but a lot more ice and more power outages.
We heat the house with two pellet stoves that have custom controllers and we burn ground hazelnut shells (Have since 1992)

We have one more pellet stove that runs on pellets only...

During the recent event we fired up the small 4000 watt gen set and kept the pellet burner plugged in.
Sadly the gen set has got to run 24 hours a day to gitterdone.
We were only out of power 48 hours.....so this was no biggy.

We were able to get out to town and get more gasoline to keep the gen set running.

We have a 20KW diesel gen set that can be connected through the transfer switch to the house.
Big deal is that the fuel tank is old and we stopped filling it.

In the process of getting the deep well (800 ft 3 horse 240 Volt) connected to the main power house/gen shack so we can have water during an outage


Have 10 head of horses on site too....They do not understand conserve water.

The big gen set is a 4 cyl Kubota diesel powering the generator.

The big gen set is not something we can run 24/7 as the fuel consumption will kill us...
Bring the well online and charge the tanks....shut the gen set off.....

Tanks drop off to near zip...repeat the process.

We have portable lighting (Propane)
Running the pellet stoves take power 100% of the time.

WE are looking at a Wiseway gravity feed stove. ??????
Also looking at the Solar inverter units
My one dislike of the Solar units is they need to be charged.

In the PacNw it is gloomy in the winter with a low sun angle ...IF WE EVEN SEE IT.
During most outages...it is either a wind event or snow/ice event......The vast majority of advertising show the solar units in BRIGHT SUNLIGHT....
In November to Early March..bright sunlight to charge a battery pack is gonna be sketchy me thinks.

Our two pellets stove on the nut shells heat the 2300 ft ranch style house great...just gotta have some power.

"IF" we have a situation where we can't get out to get more fuel it will be an issue.
I do not keep large amount of gasoline on hand...10-15 gallons at most going into the winter.

The new tank for the diesel gen set is 175 gallon with a 50 gallon tank in the gen shack.

Has anyone used/own one of the "Solar generators" 4 patriots sells one as do several other outfits.

We are still thinking about the Wiseway gravity feed pellet stove as a backup plan.
Heat is a must have.....as is water.
Contents of the fridge can be put out in the car where it's freezing...or packed in coolers with snow (We did that during the recent storm)

We had plenty of nut shells stored up and ready to go.....I worry about the generators due to the fact that many gen sets are not sine wave output, and I do not want to chance screwing up the controllers on the the two main stoves....

The Old Quadrafire 1000 seems to do fine with running on the gen set...but it needs pellets to run.

I bought 10 bags of pellets.during the event...cost me about $60
That same $60 will buy us 3200 pounds of nut shells.

I do not mind having a supply of pellets for emergencies.....but I need to power the stove.

Solar always sounds great....until you dig into the nuts and bolts of it.
Ya gotta have sunlight....
The solar gen unit needs to be kept up.....

We are far better prepared than many folks.....but I am not completely happy about our ability to deal with a longer term issue.....we were out 48 hours and had heat and jugged water to flush the toilets.....

JUST AN FYI
Just had a new roof put on the house....NOT CUTTING A HOLE THROUGH THE ROOF FOR A WOOD STOVE......That will void my lifetime warranty....so the roofing company says...

Any input on some of the issues .......????

Mostly the Solar units are my biggest question....

Thanks troops

 

What if a chimney was already there when you had your roof installed? Would they not have given you a lifetime warranty? I would re-engage with them to see if they would, for a fee, recertify the roof install with a stainless chimney through it... nothing better than a heating appliance that doesn’t require any power especially when the sun doesn’t shine that much and during an extended power outage..

 

No existing chimney.

Our pellet stoves are Direct vent out the wall.
I can vent the Wiseway up...then out and up and not affect the roof.

The Cathedral ceilings and type of construction make getting through the roof sketchy.

The new roof is a two ply type...

Water and ice shield down first and then Architectural type over that.

The stuff is all fused together at this late date and getting a water tight seal is sketchy.

We already spoke with the roofing company about this scenario.

The Wiseway gravity stove seems like a plan.

I keep sniffing around the solar/inverter battery units.
The ads make them sound like the catsass....I am skeptical.

Anyone having personal experience maybe has input.

The UPS packs are great to do a short run of to be able to do an orderly shut down..

I have looked at building a deep cycle battery pack and adding a sine wave inverter...
The stumbling block is always recharging the batteries.

Not a simple issue to fix......

I am not the best when it comes to having to fuss with maintenance on things that MAY BE NEEDED in an outage.

WE had recently purchased the 4K gen set at Harbor Freight...BIG SALE WITH A 25% COUPON ON TOP OF THE SALE.
Seems like a great little unit....
Still it requires fuel.

Wind turbines have their own issues....Ask Texas...Ice on the blades and things do not work.
We have a neighbor that bought a big turbine....He was not able to lite off the turbine until the thaw came and the blades were clear of ice.

He had maybe 4-5 hours of Turbine up time before the power was back....
Not acceptable return for the big investment.

We may not see another outage/ice storm like this is years....then maybe next winter.

Last fall we had a dry weather freak wind storm in September that knocked out power for a while....no heat needed.....
Bigger worry was fires from downed power lines in tall dry grass.

Ahh yess
Decisions ...decisions.....

Still thinking about the wiseway...?????

A Solar battery inverter might be a good deal to take care of the Fridge....?????

Still gotta charge it...

But the Fridge does not require voltage all the time....

 

If you're happy with the small generator, I'd convert it to propane, and have a large tank. You can get a carb kit, or I've seen some people just run a line into the airbox. Another thing that I've been looking into is gasifiers. You can build one out of scraps if you're handy, and if you have plenty of dry material (which it sounds like you do) you can burn it to run the generator, so you can burn stuff inside. Seems like an extra step, but a 4k generator should be able to handle a well pump and maybe hot water as well, if you hook it up right.

 

The 4K gen set is 120 volt only....Bummer.
Well needs a 30 amp feed of 240 Volt single phase to do the job..

 

Well that's a bummer.

 

Not really.
I bought that little HF gen set because of the super price.
My daughter and Son in law got one to use camping and it works great.

It ran 2 pellet stoves for the outage and never missed a beat.

I bolted it to a HF furniture dolly to make it easy to move around.....

The plan is to get the big diesel 20 KW all set back up with the new fuel tank and the Underground power line in so the gen set can power the well.

Using the big gen only for the well will greatly extend the time we can run with the fuel we have on hand.

No simple one size fits all answer...

 

You need a small inverter genset. The Costco one is 349$ right now for 2000 watts. Very quiet and reports say 12 hours per gallon of gasoline doing something like running your pellet stove, lights and fridge. Really, the ideal solution is a big genset for those intermittent high load duties as you have and then a small efficient quiet inverter genset for constant duty.

15 gallons could last a week of 24/7 running. Then you figure out how to get more gas from cars, mowers, etc. or go to the big genset until it runs out of fuel.

If you need more than one full week of 24 hour running then there are propane conversion kits that can let you hook up to a huge tank for essentially unlimited running. These things have low oil shutoff so just run them.

I think you could probably leave the genset off over night and reheat the house in the morning. Would save lots of runtime and fuel.

 

Just what I was going to suggest...2-3000 watt inverter genny...solves the fuel consumption problem (when in economy mode) and is safe for those sensitive electronics...they're pretty dang quiet too.
Save running the big dog just for firing the well pump up.
And personally, I think I'd spend a little more and get a Honda though...my 2 cents.

 

I am interested in one of those small inverter sets....

The fuel consumption is a sweet deal.

2300 ft ranch style house....once it cools off it take a long time to get the place back up to temp.

An outage in moderate weather due to wind or ??? maybe.
I sub freezing temps we need to keep the temps up to at least 65 F.

It's not just the air in the house....it's all the furniture, walls, floor...Everything cools off and just takes forever to warm back up.

The 4K HF gen set is a fuel hog....10 hours of constant running on a tank full....5 gallons.
But it did the job like a champ.....
Not terribly noisy either.....

Are any of the small inverter gen sets from HF any good ???
The 4K unit seems to be pretty decent.

 

I think they have decent reviews...my only issue with HF is supporting the chicoms...have a burr under my saddle about that these days...personally have been trying to purchase USA products, second choice is something at least made on this continent, 3rd choice would be anywhere else but china...but obviously with certain products, its almost impossible to avoid...

 

The HF units get really good reviews. Costco units have Costco’s warranty. You can buy 3 of them for the price of one Honda. Honda’s and yamahas have a long earned reputation for great stuff too. I’ve owned two champions and would happily buy a third. Everything is from foreign countries and I’m okay with that.

I’m using a champion 2800 inverter for backup power now because it will also run my RV’s air conditioner, or will run my microwave at the house along with all of the refrigerators cycling and everything else. 9 hours per refill of the smallish gas tank. I keep 20 gallons of gas on hand plus the full small engine tanks and a car.

I heat with wood 100% and know about houses cooling off when the fire dies and fridges warming up overnight but this is an emergency. Just overheat the house a few degrees before bed and then run the stoves a little harder in the morning to catch up. If you can’t pull this off without excessive discomfort then perhaps it’s time to consider insulating your home better?

You can buy several small inverter gensets that are manufactured to be dual fuel. Propane and gasoline. A cheap propane tank from Home Depot can run that genset continuously longer than any power outage that has happened during my lifetime.

 

I like the idea of using the LPG
Carburetors do not get skunked up from the crap gas.
I try to use non ethanol premium if I can get it for all the small engines.



Our house is a 1992 Vintage triple wide Mfg home that we mounted on a full daylight basement. Basement has 1000 ft apartment that was my folks back in the day.
6" Exterior walls and pretty good insulation for this area.
Let the temp drop into the teens or lower and if the fire is off you can watch the temp drop pretty quick.
Not an easy trick to add insulation.....