Texas Cold Weather Discussion

[jelenko]

I don’t believe those advocating melting snow for water has ever done that. You’ll never bring in enough snow to melt and flush a toilet.

Never say never. Several years ago we were without power for a couple weeks. Melted enough snow in front of our fireplace to flush toilets several times.

 

[FAF1947]

May I know, ballpark, what that cost for you? Our $11k quote excluded the cost for the propane company to run a line to the generator and do their connections. And the generator guy said, ideally, we would add another propane tank instead of relying on the 250 gallon one that's already in the ground. Ay caramba.

Don't know the cost now but about 5 years ago we had a 22kw Generac installed with a 500 gallon propane tank and it knocked the heck out of a $10,000 bill. My son & his wife are getting bids now but I hadn't heard any numbers yet. Generac now has 23kw air cooled unit, to get larger I think you have to go to a water cooled engine. In our area of Deep East Texas it is hurricanes that usually knock us out of power for days or weeks.

 

[jackieschmidt]

Never say never. Several years ago we were without power for a couple weeks. Melted enough snow in front of our fireplace to flush toilets several times.

I have been doing it for over 4 days now. I have big 30 gallon plastic containers I fill up. Bring them in to a big pot on the stove. You get about two flushes out of that 30 gallons of icy snow.

it’s work, but I have two women in the house, I tell them to go at the same time so we get two for one.
I just step out back, so mine doesn’t get used that often.

We had a Generac 20 Kw at our old house. We put it in after Hurricane Ike several years back. We were without power for 15 days after Ike. In 12 years, it never came on once because of a power outage, even during Harvey we never lost power. I was planning on having one installed before Hurricane Season in our new home.

We have only been here 4 months, we have been doing a lot of their upgrades. I just didn’t count on this.

Since the one in the old house never came on because of a power outage due to wind and flooding in all of those years, I figure if I buy one for my house here, it will never freeze in Tomball again.

 

[jonbearman]

I have been through this myself , I went 5 days with no heat except the wood stove and kerosene heaters. No lights no nothing. I had to put every spare blanket and foam on the freezer and fridge.I dint lose anything ,but one more day would of been it.

 

[geraldgee]

God Bless you friend. I hope you find relief quickly

 

[243winxb]

Hope the power is restored soon.

We have been snowed in for a week years ago. Bought this back in the 1970 . 18,000 BTU Kerosene heater. I cook on the top of it. Still works.

 

[ReedG]

Sorry to hear about your situation, Jackie. I trust your wits and smarts will get you through it safely, if a bit uncomfortable. God be with you all there.

 

[M-61]

In 1997 went 8 days without power. No heat (February) no water, no refrigerator.
No water was the biggest problem. Lugging 5 gallon pails of water from my stream up a hill was worst. Last time for me. Then in a few years the electric stove went in the garbage replaced with a gas one.
Summer came and I purchased a propane fired generator. No worrying about gasoline going bad.
Long time ago but never forgot it.

 

[338 dude]

Jackie, we had an outfit come to our place during the summer to quote us for a 'standby' generator (from Generac, Kohler, etc.). But the price put us off, because chances are we would never use it. Or so we thought at the time. The best quote we got was $11k installed, for a 22Kw system, plus a couple hundred bucks a year for regular service. It would have run on propane, just as heats our water and stove and nothing else.

We've been real lucky. Our power was out for 10 minutes yesterday. That was it. But I'm going to pursue having a transfer switch installed (as we had in New Hampshire) so we can connect a generator through it and power things in the house instead of running extension cords and power strips. I called 4-5 electricians this year for that service, and not a one of them was interested -- which royally pissed me off. We have a 9,000 watt generator that would easily get us through the typical outage, and traipsing through some snow or rain to turn the thing on is -- to me -- worth $10k for the few times that might ever happen.

Josh in Kerrville, our former neighbors in Fredericksburg have been out of power for 3 days, and several households have moved into the Peach Tree Inn. Had a call a few hours ago and they said the Wal-mart is out of beer, bread, eggs, and milk. (Beer, ha, I guess it's a staple for some!) A buddy in Schertz said the H-E-B there was only going to be open from 12p to 5p today, and they got there at noon and the line to get in was more than an hour wait! And some people in line were indeed wearing shorts.

Look up backfeeding it is dangerous and a redneck work around but eliminates the need for any electrical extension cords

 

[22turborimfire]

Backfeeding can have the potential of being very dangerous . I would not recommend it unless you are familiar with what you are doing. Retired lineman from Va.Power.

 

[BigJohnson2]

It cost 16K for the generator and I had a 500 gallon propane tank installed in 2017. Despite also installing a gas range I have not yet used enough propane (generator runs 20 minutes a week) to refill. Propane company is not happy.

here they make you downsize the tank if you don’t use it up within a year.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

Backfeeding can have the potential of being very dangerous . I would not recommend it unless you are familiar with what you are doing. Retired lineman from Va.Power.

Itll assure youre the last one on and get you arrested these days

 

[Dub]

here they make you downsize the tank if you don’t use it up within a year.

yes they have hounded me about it. I asked for a price to purchase the tank outright a year ago. Have never heard back from them on that.

 

[BigJohnson2]

yes they have hounded me about it. I asked for a price to purchase the tank outright a year ago. Have never heard back from them on that.

if I ever build another house on propane I’ll buy an underground 500 gallon and have my excavator bury it. I’m on nat gas and right now nat gas is pretty cheap.

 

[cdhbrad]

May I know, ballpark, what that cost for you? Our $11k quote excluded the cost for the propane company to run a line to the generator and do their connections. And the generator guy said, ideally, we would add another propane tank instead of relying on the 250 gallon one that's already in the ground. Ay caramba.

If you can get a gas line run to the generator, instead of relying on a Tank, that is the best option. I have a 12K generac that I run off a 125 gallon tank.....that lasted about 15 hours last Hurricane we had here in FL before I had to ration it. I now have a separate Gasoline powered generator that I can also run through the same switch. Our needs here are different, once the Hurricane goes by, the sun comes out and it gets hot again. Last time, Hurricane Irma, we were without power for 8 days.

 

[Twicepop]

We used to have periodic power outages most every time the weather would get nasty. The power company (Co-Op) replaced a lot of the old wire, some of it had been in place since it was first put up, and cut down a lot of trees that would drop limbs on the old wires every time it stormed. Since the up grades we have only lost power a couple of times both due to accidents that knocked down poles and broke wires. That last major power outage we had lasted for about four days back around 2002 (?) from an ice storm. Right now we've got about 15-18" of snow on the ground and when I got up this morning it was -3 degrees, but at least we haven't lost power (yet).
This isn't unheard of for this area, back in the week around Christmas of 1993 we had a one night temperature of -30 degrees. A few years before that summer time temps went as high as +112 degrees, wild temperature swings are kinda the norm for this area. Several years back the Science Channel had a series of programs about the global weather patterns. The one that sticks in my mind was one where they were talking specifically about the Great Lakes Region. They said that Toledo, Ohio was the second (2nd) cloudiest place on the planet. It was/is the convergence point for three different weather patterns. One, the great lakes create their own weather system, the heat and humidity from the Gulf of Mexico and the cold and wind from the Artic all converge at this point on the map. I live about 60 miles south of Toledo, so I'm in the path of all of these systems. We get lake effect snow from Lake Erie (nothing like Buffalo NY), we lake effect snow from Lake Michigan both of these mixed in with Gulf humidity.
All of you in the south not used to this, try and make the best of a bad situation. Probably doesn't help much now, but you'll get better weather long before we will. (I have a pile of snow in my driveway that is taller than the roof on my daughters JEEP Commander.)

 

[butchlambert]

Propane ain't cheap. Doesn't help when the electricity goes out as propane doesn't work without electricity to run the fan. I have a 750 gal tank and have 2 units ob it with one cooktop and 1 of our water heaters. Our other in home a/c heat unit is a heat pump with elec heat as back up. My shop has 2 heat pumps that are electric only. We have satellite only for TV and internet. When the black out occurs every 15 minutes, it takes both of them 7 minutes to boot up. It was 6 below yesterday morning.
We lived in Alaska for many years and only lost power one time.

 

[jackieschmidt]

If you have a generator that does not disconnect the main power automatically, you must go ito your breaker box and disconnect the main feed leads.

The. young couple that bought our old house on the east side called us this morning and told us how happy they are with the home generator we had installed. They said it had been running for 4 days now. It came on automatic just like it was supposed to.

 

[jr600yd]

I’ve been through this before. We lived in Florida and lost power for three weeks because of three hurricanes that came thru one right after the other. Found a whole new use for the swimming pool but that’s another story. Now in central Texas (just N of Austin) another severe storm system hit. About a foot of snow on the ground, everything covered in ice, Texas doesn’t know what as a snowplow is, rolling electric outages, cold, rain and sleet, no internet or cable, can’t drive on the roads, did I miss anything?

The WORST part of this is BOREDOM!!!......can’t go out or do anything! Found myself sitting in the kitchen looking at a lightbulb waiting to see if the electricity was on or off. Now I know what cabin fever is.

 

[ronsatspokane]

Hang in there folks. Most of us who live up north feel your pain., We've been there and done that. It will pass and be the subject of stories to enthrall your grandchildren with.

When I lived in the Seattle area we would loose power at least once every year. Installed a Gentrans to hook a small generator to the house. Enough power to drive the gas furnace fan, kitchen circuits and some light circuits. It worked. One time following a wind storm it was over a week before power came back on. When I first fired up the generator the neighbor complained that my generator was noisy (and it was). By the end of that power outage 80% of the houses in the area had generators.

When I moved here to snow country I was not going to get caught out. Picked up a 6.5k generator, installed Gentrans on the house and the well pump panel. 6.5k was enough power to drive the well pump, gas furnace fan, kitchen and a decent number of other circuits in the house. Went 15 years without an outage of over an hour or two. For years by the time I pulled the generator out of the shop and got it set up and plugged in the power would come back on. After a number of years I didn't even bother to set it up. Just waited for it to come back on. Then it happened, big wind storm took out power across the region. We were out of power for over a week. What looked like money wasted 20 years earlier turned out to be a good investment.