Hiding in the basement ~ Weather radio squawking

[Melensdad]

Well it was hot and humid all day, drove home from the hospital with Melen and the radio said there might be rain.

Looks like more than rain

Tornado Watch
Severe Storm Watch
Thunderstorm Watch

Then some alternating WARNINGS instead of WATCHES. Warnings light up a yellow light on the radio and the warnings are announced in medium volume. Watches light up ua red light and are announced loud enough to wake you from a sound sleep.

So now what do we do? We have a kid fresh home from the hosptial who had major back surgery and is walking S_L_O_W_L_Y but is walking. So rather than panic later if/when something really bad does hit, we retreated to the family room to watch some DVDs as a precaution.

This is the Sangean radio we have, its a model CL-100 => http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003QHXZM4

It takes some effort to program, but once its programmed its a great warning device.

VIDEO REVIEW => http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=relmfu&v=p158sjz6ZOA

 

[EastTexFrank]

That sounds like a good, well thought out precaution to take.

I have two weather radios, one in the bedroom and one down in the basement. I think both came from Radio Shack. I do wish they would make those things easier to program though. I screwed up the one in the bedroom when I first got it. It would go off in the middle of the night loud enough to wake the dead for storms in Florida and the Carolinas, etc., etc. It took me a couple of attempts to get it right.

We'll check with you in the morning to see if you're still there.

 

[Melensdad]

Still here. Popped our heads up and the world still exists too.

 

[LamarBowers]

Well it was hot and humid all day, drove home from the hospital with Melen and the radio said there might be rain.

Looks like more than rain

Tornado Watch
Severe Storm Watch
Thunderstorm Watch

Then some alternating WARNINGS instead of WATCHES. Warnings light up a yellow light on the radio and the warnings are announced in medium volume. Watches light up ua red light and are announced loud enough to wake you from a sound sleep.

So now what do we do? We have a kid fresh home from the hosptial who had major back surgery and is walking S_L_O_W_L_Y but is walking. So rather than panic later if/when something really bad does hit, we retreated to the family room to watch some DVDs as a precaution.

This is the Sangean radio we have, its a model CL-100 => http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003QHXZM4

It takes some effort to program, but once its programmed its a great warning device.

VIDEO REVIEW => http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=relmfu&v=p158sjz6ZOA

Well it is nice to be prepared well in advance.. Weather is getting tougher and unpredictable now...I am doing lots of changes in my home

 

[Dargo]

We've not had the storms you have had, but we have had several that knocked out power to my house. I can now happily say that, with my extensive 3 year project of setting up my generator, we literally don't notice if the power goes out unless we go outside and hear the generator running. From inside, we can't hear it at all and apparently it's never taken long enough for the big generator to come on to drain the short term batteries between the power loss and backup coming online automatically. I guess it makes me feel better that it works with me doing nothing so I don't have to worry about my wife or kids having to do anything.

 

[LamarBowers]

Well it was hot and humid all day, drove home from the hospital with Melen and the radio said there might be rain.

Looks like more than rain

Tornado Watch
Severe Storm Watch
Thunderstorm Watch

Then some alternating WARNINGS instead of WATCHES. Warnings light up a yellow light on the radio and the warnings are announced in medium volume. Watches led lights up ua red light and are announced loud enough to wake you from a sound sleep.

So now what do we do? We have a kid fresh home from the hosptial who had major back surgery and is walking S_L_O_W_L_Y but is walking. So rather than panic later if/when something really bad does hit, we retreated to the family room to watch some DVDs as a precaution.

This is the Sangean radio we have, its a model CL-100 => http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003QHXZM4

It takes some effort to program, but once its programmed its a great warning device.

VIDEO REVIEW => http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=relmfu&v=p158sjz6ZOA

Well it is nice to be prepared well in advance.. Weather is getting tougher and unpredictable now...I am doing lots of changes in my home

Nice to hear you have big generator now..

 

[JEV]

Who is LamarBowers??? No introduction thread data. Lots of criminal mug shots when the name is Googled. Who are you????

 

[Melensdad]

We've not had the storms you have had, but we have had several that knocked out power to my house. I can now happily say that, with my extensive 3 year project of setting up my generator, we literally don't notice if the power goes out unless we go outside and hear the generator running. From inside, we can't hear it at all and apparently it's never taken long enough for the big generator to come on to drain the short term batteries between the power loss and backup coming online automatically. I guess it makes me feel better that it works with me doing nothing so I don't have to worry about my wife or kids having to do anything.

Sounds like you have a great set up with a Generator + Battery system.

Mine is far more basic.

Nothing is automatic, just a manual cut over switch and generator that runs on Natural Gas/Gasoline or Propane. I've never run it on Propane. I do keep a battery tender on the generator's battery so its electric start is available.

I've wanted to upgrade the system to a larger, 1800rpm generator, possibly with a battery bank and maybe wind or solar for short term. But I have a problem with spending $$$ when my current system actually works. When this generator dies then I'll probably do an upgrade.

I'd love to know the details of what you have installed. Not so much the SIZE of your system, but rather the SCHEMATICS of your system. Everyone one of us can learn from your system, then, if desired, adapt it to our own property.

 

[Dargo]

When I can, I'll take some pics of what I can access easily and then write out how it is setup. I definitely cannot take credit on the design. I finally had a friend who is a professional electrical engineer specializing in this field do all the technical work and design what I described that I wanted; a completely automatic system where we really wouldn't notice if our power from the utility company failed.

I realize that many do not have the problems I have, which is being the only house on a reasonably long run. Getting my power back on is about last on the utility's list since I'm just one house. Fortunately, it really wasn't that much more to go fully automatic vs having a manual start and flip over to generator power system. Obviously, I'm now glad I went that way.

 

[Melensdad]

Well I'd love to know how yours is set up.

I presume the utility company feed runs through a modest size battery bank, the battery bank runs power the house. The utility feed keeps the batteries charged. Again, guessing here, but I'm betting you are running the utility through the batteries (and associated inverters to switch from incoming AC to battery DC and then back to household AD).

In the case of a power outage, the batteries keep the power on while the generator is starting up.

Does this sound about right?

Or are the batteries isolated and then cut over when the voltage drops? Again, just using the batteries/inverter long enough to get the generator up and running.

 

[Dargo]

Well I'd love to know how yours is set up.

I presume the utility company feed runs through a modest size battery bank, the battery bank runs power the house. The utility feed keeps the batteries charged. Again, guessing here, but I'm betting you are running the utility through the batteries (and associated inverters to switch from incoming AC to battery DC and then back to household AD).

In the case of a power outage, the batteries keep the power on while the generator is starting up.

Does this sound about right?

Or are the batteries isolated and then cut over when the voltage drops? Again, just using the batteries/inverter long enough to get the generator up and running.

You are right on. My batteries will drop off any A/C unit that is running, but basically power most everything else for the 10-15 seconds it takes for the generator to come online and have steady power. The A/C units will then come back on after their electronics sense that the pressures have equalized and will not harm them.

 

[Melensdad]

PICTURES

 

[EastTexFrank]

PICTURES

I second that.

I haven't gone through this exercise for a few years as the utility company performance has actually improved as time has gone on. When we came here about 16 years ago, it was so piss poor that I threatened to take my house off grid .... until we worked out the costs involved.

Like Bob, with so few outages these days, I'll probably keep on doung what I'm doing until one of my generators gives up and then I'll probably switch to a NG stand-by unit around 18 kW. Last time I sized the house that was big enough to keep everything going that we needed. I should mention that we have NG cooktop, water heaters and heat and can't run the well pump or the a/c as they are 3 phase so my loads really aren't that high.