Record Freeze

[Big Green]

My electric co-op just sent a text with a message from ERCOT who is asking Texans to turn their thermostat down to 65°. Yeah, no thanks. If we lose power I want to start from a hot house, not already cold.

 

[festering]

 

[TxStetson]

Remember that whatever you feed in to your house can and will go back through the service and come out of your transformer between 7200 and 14,400 volts. Extremely dangerous when people start working to turn the lights back on.


Make sure you know how to disconnect your house from the power lines that would normally feed it!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep. That’s half of my “bad shit happens” statement. The other half is the fireball and crater where your generator used to be when the power comes back on.

 

[Spcwolf]

If you have an electric water heater or clothes dryer in your garage, you can plug your generator in there. Just make sure you kill the main disconnect, or bad shit happens. I have a welder that‘s a 6500 watt generator that can easily power my whole house if I turn off all the 240V breakers. Just remember, any electric heating element is essentially a direct short. A small coffer pot can really put a strain on a generator.

Yes you can certainly do this.

Yep. That’s half of my “bad shit happens” statement. The other half is the fireball and crater where your generator used to be when the power comes back on.

Your house should have a main breaker you can disconnect.

if I had a big enough generator I would install a 2 pole breaker with sufficient size to run what you need, then hook of the generator leads to that breaker to run the house.
Now with this setup, you should take the neutral off the lug and use the neutral from the generator. Essentially you have a separately derived system.
You will need a breaker designed for this, a SO cord of sufficient size, and a generator capable for this setup.

 

[Texas_Lone_Ranger]

Yep. That’s half of my “bad shit happens” statement. The other half is the fireball and crater where your generator used to be when the power comes back on.

Facts.

 

[Leadeye]

Here in the Indiana wood I've always heated with wood, furnace never runs. Propane generator with auto disconnect powered by 1K tank of fuel. I've canceled everything for this coming week after getting snow/ice bound here last Tuesday.

Plenty of supplies so the wife and I will just stay inside.

 

[oldag]

ERCOT just issued a watch for a projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution from 5:00 to 9:00 today. High risk of EEA.

Look out.

 

[Spcwolf]

ERCOT just issued a watch for a projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution from 5:00 to 9:00 today. High risk of EEA.

Look out.

Well, shit.
I got some books I want to read anyways.

 

[IXLR8]

It is obvious that this weather could only be caused by President Biden’s policies. This never happened with Trump in office!

 

[Vaquero]

ERCOT just issued a watch for a projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution from 5:00 to 9:00 today. High risk of EEA.

Look out.

SPP is in pretty much the same condition.

 

[Coop45]

It is obvious that this weather could only be caused by President Biden’s policies. This never happened with Trump in office!

yes! we have to fight this dangerous global warming.

 

[Coop45]

It's supposed to be -10 tonight in the hub city.

 

[benenglish]

If there's an extended outage at my house, we can bundle up, use flashlights, and wait it out. I'm going to need to do a little research on how to handle the plumbing, though. After shutting off the water to the house, I assume I'd need to drain the pipes...somehow.

I guess it's off to DuckDuckGo to look for instructions.

 

[oldag]

SPP is in pretty much the same condition.

Sincerely hope you aren't on SPP.

 

[oldag]

If there's an extended outage at my house, we can bundle up, use flashlights, and wait it out. I'm going to need to do a little research on how to handle the plumbing, though. After shutting off the water to the house, I assume I'd need to drain the pipes...somehow.

I guess it's off to DuckDuckGo to look for instructions.

To drain the pipes, the drain has to be at or below ground level, preferably the latter.

Many houses do not have drain valves.

 

[ZX9RCAM]

If there's an extended outage at my house, we can bundle up, use flashlights, and wait it out. I'm going to need to do a little research on how to handle the plumbing, though. After shutting off the water to the house, I assume I'd need to drain the pipes...somehow.

I guess it's off to DuckDuckGo to look for instructions.

I wonder if a preemptive water shut off would be better than allowing faucets to drip?

 

[benenglish]

Many houses do not have drain valves.

Yep. Mine doesn't. So I'm kinda wondering what to do. Right now the plan is to drain what I can if the need arises and then hope for the best. I'm hoping to find more useful info as I continue searching online.

 

[ZX9RCAM]

Yep. Mine doesn't. So I'm kinda wondering what to do. Right now the plan is to drain what I can if the need arises and then hope for the best. I'm hoping to find more useful info as I continue searching online.

At what point would you know this?

 

[benenglish]

At what point would you know this?

If the power stays out long enough for us to get cold inside the house.

 

[ZX9RCAM]

If the power stays out long enough for us to get cold inside the house.

Ah, that makes sense.
I was wanting to know because I have no idea what to do, lol.