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Running on generator due to power outage

Melensdad

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
Nice sunny day today, low 80's (F), moderately high humidity, no wind, no rain. This evening at roughly 7:55pm the power went out. Pretty much the rural 1/2 of the county is without power.

No clue why. We were outside at the poolside eating dinner. Heard the generator fire up, that is how we knew there was an outage.
Glad I have a generator with auto-start running on natural gas. In my 62 years, we've never had an outage that cut off natural gas. But we have regular electricity outages. We've had this generator for about 10 years? Our prior generator require a key to start and was a tri-fuel type, lasted 17+ years.
 
Outage lasted 2 hours. Not too bad. Had this been sub-zero weather it still would have been no big deal. I suppose we will find out tomorrow what caused this outage.
 
We had that problem at midnight on Thursday. Huge storm came through and the power went out. The generator, that I procrastinated so long about getting, kicked in and all was well until about one o'clock and the generator shut down. I could get it started but it kept giving me an error message of "under voltage" and shutting down so we were stuck without power. I was on the phone first thing Friday and got a technician out by that afternoon about 4 o'clock. The young Hispanic kid analysed the problem, explained it to me and set about fixing it. By 5 o'clock we were back in business. We didn't get utility power restored until Saturday evening. We were lucky. Some places around here aren't projected to get power back until this coming Friday.

My problem is that the generator doesn't run the a/c units because they are 3-phase. The temperature outside is the mid 90s with a heat index of 110°F, it's hot and humid as hell. I had all the ceiling fans turning like airplane propellers and I dug out about half a dozen fans stored down in the barn. The house was livable but not pleasantly cool.

It wasn't too bad apart from the fact that I had to rig up a portable generator and run extension cords all over the place in order to keep all the fridges and freezers running during the generator down time. I used to have 2 portable generators but gave one to my SIL at the farm never thinking that I might actually need it again. Serves me right for being a "god guy".

The storm also did a number about the place bringing down a huge dead pine tree on my new high dollar fence, destroying one section, and another came down on the barbed wire fence 'way down back. Neither of the trees were mine so we're waiting on my neighbor's insurance.
 
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My old generator would not run my AC unit either.

New generator runs the AC and also runs the swimming pool/hot tub pumps! We are fully functional during failures! :walking gator:
 
Melensdad said:
Nice sunny day today, low 80's (F), moderately high humidity, no wind, no rain. This evening at roughly 7:55pm the power went out. Pretty much the rural 1/2 of the county is without power.

No clue why. We were outside at the poolside eating dinner. Heard the generator fire up, that is how we knew there was an outage.
Glad I have a generator with auto-start running on natural gas. In my 62 years, we've never had an outage that cut off natural gas. But we have regular electricity outages. We've had this generator for about 10 years? Our prior generator require a key to start and was a tri-fuel type, lasted 17+ years.
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Usually when that happens it's because some construction worker down the road has done a big Ooopsie ;)

We love our whole house generator, but we don't have our air conditioning hooked up to it. Our basement stays pretty cool and with the power from the generator, we could always use fans down there. It was simply too expensive to pay for a bigger generator that wouldn't get much use anyway. But when we need it, it's so convenient! Our septic and well are connected to it, so that's a life saver right there.
 
I'm trying to figure out a way to get at least one of the air conditioners to run. I think that it could be done by means of a 3-phase converter but I need an electrician, a really good electrician, to look at it and come up with a plan.

During the winter the natural gas heat works just fine. It's only during the hot summer months that it is an inconvenience. Still, with all the fans running it was tolerable. I have a couple of portable air conditioners that I could hook up in a dire emergency and a huge evaporative cooler that wouldn't have worked very well with the high humidity we have just now. There is also a window unit out in the shop that will freeze you to death. All in all we were not in as dire straits as a lot of people around here.
 
EastTexFrank said:
We had that problem at midnight on Thursday. Huge storm came through and the power went out. The generator, that I procrastinated so long about getting, kicked in and all was well until about one o'clock and the generator shut down. I could get it started but it kept giving me an error message of "under voltage" and shutting down so we were stuck without power. I was on the phone first thing Friday and got a technician out by that afternoon about 4 o'clock. The young Hispanic kid analysed the problem, explained it to me and set about fixing it. By 5 o'clock we were back in business. We didn't get utility power restored until Saturday evening. We were lucky. Some places around here aren't projected to get power back until this coming Friday.

My problem is that the generator doesn't run the a/c units because they are 3-phase. The temperature outside is the mid 90s with a heat index of 110°F, it's hot and humid as hell. I had all the ceiling fans turning like airplane propellers and I dug out about half a dozen fans stored down in the barn. The house was livable but not pleasantly cool.

It wasn't too bad apart from the fact that I had to rig up a portable generator and run extension cords all over the place in order to keep all the fridges and freezers running during the generator down time. I used to have 2 portable generators but gave one to my SIL at the farm never thinking that I might actually need it again. Serves me right for being a "god guy".

The storm also did a number about the place bringing down a huge dead pine tree on my new high dollar fence, destroying one section, and another came down on the barbed wire fence 'way down back. Neither of the trees were mine so we're waiting on my neighbor's insurance.
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Around here people call that an act of God. People do not have to pay for something like that.
 
One of these days I'm going to get a proper generator setup for outages. I do have a 3500w champion portable generator for the rvs that I have used in the past to hook up to the house but it was back fed through a power receptacle with a double ended mail cord with one end to the generator and the other to a plug in. And kept moving it from one plug to another to find the circuit that the refrigerator and half the lights upstairs were on. To do it safely, First and most important step is to shut off the main breaker to the house along with all of the breakers. Then with the generator plugged in to a receptacle, start flipping breakers until you get the refrigerator and freezers going.

This kept us with half the lights on and at least the refrigerator cold for 36hrs while we were without power. But it won't power the well pump as that's 220. So we had to keep melting snow in pots by the gas fireplace to use to flush the toilets. We had drinking water as I keep 10 gallons in portable camping jugs downstairs for drinking water in emergencies. I keep the fifth wheel camper ready to go minus food and clothes parked beside the house when not in use during the summer so if we do get an outage, I essentially have a full assortment of camping gear including cooking stoves ready to go at a moments notice if needed. And we can cook and use to oven in there. Plus, I have a few different coleman lanterns ready. I seem to have assembled an assortment of cooking stoves for camping over the years and now have 7 naphtha 2 burner coleman stoves and 5 propane 2 burner stoves. So I keep a couple in the house garage ready to go. And I have several battery operated lanterns as well as a propane lantern and a naphtha one.

Doing it this way is a bit of a hack way of powering the house during an outage but it worked in a pinch and took a bit of time to set up. I keep the generator and double male ended cord down in the heated house garage so I there's an outage, I'm back running in 5 minutes. But, doing it this way also means that I have no way of knowing when the power comes back on. So I leave the lights on in the garage and when I notice them come on, I go down and disconnect the generator and flip the main breaker and all the separate ones back on.
 
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Very first power failure we had at our house was the 2nd winter we were there. Lost power for 8 days in an ice storm. All the generators in the area were sold by the time the road had opened up on the morning of the 3rd day. Rented a large gas powered welder, drilled a hole through the wall of the attached garage over my basement electrical panel and 'back-fed' the power into my AC circuit with the main switch cut out so as not to send out power to the grid. Operated like that for 5 days and ordered a Tri-Fuel system (26+ years ago). It was not a fancy auto-on system, those were scarce back then for homeowners. That died after 17 or 18 years. Replaced it with a Generac full auto system.
 
I have several generators from 1500W to 15,000W depending on what I want to run. The largest will run everything except the A/C.

Not sure if anyone else has it but my septic system has a pump that ejects the effluent from the tank to the leach bed. I always keep this in mind when I need to run a generator for an extended period. Sure, we have water coming into the house but I need to be mindful to run that pump on the sewer side to keep it from overflowing.
 
FrancSevin said:
Interesting that the archaic fossil fuel system is more reliable than the modern electricity that our government insist we must go to entirely and exclusively.

Makes no sense:rolleyes:
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What makes no sense to me - when the US government decided they owned the air, the atmosphere, not just in the US but across the entire earth, the news of it arrived to thundering applause.
 
Our latest power outage is ongoing, not for us, but for many parts of East Texas. We lost power for almost 2 days but even large cities like Longview still only have 50% power. The earliest that they are projecting full power restoration is Friday with some smaller communities not getting turned back on until the beginning of next week.

During an outage I used to wait about 6 hours before hauling out my portable generators. I never connected either of them to the house circuits, I just ran extension cords all over the place. The main concern was keeping all the fridge freezers cold. I considered all the alternative ways to get power to the house but extension cords seemed the best and safest way to do it.

Just over 2-years ago I hurt my back, yet again, hauling the generators out of storage during an outage and that's when I decided that I was too old for this crap and finally got a NG Back-up generator. I had to wait a while to get it installed but it was one of my better decisions.
 
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rebrecs said:
And did that help ? I live in the Houston, TX area- and we are plagued with outages.
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You chose Texas. With their power grid it isn't the best state to choose. I do like the state and lived there many years but that was before they started using green electricity.
 
Out here in rural Ca. we get our electricity turned off on a regular basis, in the winter its the storms and the summer its fear of fire. I don't claim to be a genius, but why are all the utilities on poles ?? Wouldn't it have been cheaper in the first place to bury the services?? and been protected from everything. WTF. I have several generators and they are all Diesel.
 
m1west said:
Out here in rural Ca. we get our electricity turned off on a regular basis, in the winter its the storms and the summer its fear of fire. I don't claim to be a genius, but why are all the utilities on poles ?? Wouldn't it have been cheaper in the first place to bury the services?? and been protected from everything. WTF. I have several generators and they are all Diesel.
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It costs about 3-5x to burry the wires in decent soil if they already have an easment no easment or rock $$$$$$$$$
 
tommu56 said:
It costs about 3-5x to burry the wires in decent soil if they already have an easment no easment or rock $$$$$$$$$
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If all the utilities, electrical, gas, phone and internet were in the same trench. it would reduce the cost and they would have to figure out a different way to start the fires.
 
m1west said:
If all the utilities, electrical, gas, phone and internet were in the same trench. it would reduce the cost and they would have to figure out a different way to start the fires.
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Most areas you can't use the same trench for gas and electric. Explosive risk? Not really sure but I know I ran gas/electric about 12" apart to my pool house and I got red-tagged. Had to run them in 2 different trenches, a couple feet apart. The pool house is not drawing a lot of electric or gas, but the inspector threw a hissy fit over my single trench with the feeds a foot apart.
 
Melensdad said:
Most areas you can't use the same trench for gas and electric. Explosive risk? Not really sure but I know I ran gas/electric about 12" apart to my pool house and I got red-tagged. Had to run them in 2 different trenches, a couple feet apart. The pool house is not drawing a lot of electric or gas, but the inspector threw a hissy fit over my single trench with the feeds a foot apart.
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Im sure they can make a trench the separates everything. Not much room needed for the electrical. Gas and water could go in one and communications and electrical could go in another. I don't care if it more costly. People died and property has been destroyed too many times to let them file for bankruptcy and then raise the rates to recover there losses. Then turn off your services everytime the wind blows, sometimes for weeks, depending on you're location.
 
Well, who would have thunk it, we're back on generator power.

A short but wild storm came through about 6 o'clock tonight. It only lasted about 30 minutes but it was a wonder to behold. Near the end of it the power went off. The generator came on and has been running ever since. No worries about heat and humidity tonight, it's relatively cool outside.

Whoa! Just as I was typing this the power came back on after about 5 hours. I wouldn't have those lineman's job for any amount of money.
 
"It costs about 3-5x to bury the wires . . . "

looking at the entire picture - tree trimming, wind damage, ice damage, pole replacements (rot/warp), resetting breakers from wind whipped shorts . . . - it's actually cheaper, long term, to do underground - with the exception of hard rock mining . . . that is an issue.

almost without exception, all new developments in this area are underground - and most people building on their own 'acre(s) size lots' go for trenching electrical, cable and telephone (if they even have landlines anymore....) running natural gas or public water mile(s) from the road (if available) is seldom done/economical.
 
Part of the problem with the tree trimming is caused by the people who contract to trim. They trim just enough to clear the lines. I know a man who got one of the trimming contracts. I asked him why not just cut the tree down and forget about it. His answer, Job security. If they did any more trimming they would not have a job.
 
power1 said:
Part of the problem with the tree trimming is caused by the people who contract to trim. They trim just enough to clear the lines. I know a man who got one of the trimming contracts. I asked him why not just cut the tree down and forget about it. His answer, Job security. If they did any more trimming they would not have a job.
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That and a lot of landowners like me don't want there trees cut down. Bury it and there is no more problem.
 
chowderman said:
"It costs about 3-5x to bury the wires . . . "

looking at the entire picture - tree trimming, wind damage, ice damage, pole replacements (rot/warp), resetting breakers from wind whipped shorts . . . - it's actually cheaper, long term, to do underground - with the exception of hard rock mining . . . that is an issue.

almost without exception, all new developments in this area are underground - and most people building on their own 'acre(s) size lots' go for trenching electrical, cable and telephone (if they even have landlines anymore....) running natural gas or public water mile(s) from the road (if available) is seldom done/economical.
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Thats maintance, Yes in the long run its more expensive to go over head but whomever is paying for the inicial instulation is looking short term in pa most of the time if you want electric you pay to get it to you if its not 150 0r 250 foot from your house so the home owner go's for the lowest price.
 
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