Hi all...
You may or may not have been aware of the extreme weather the East Coast (mainly New-England-ish) of the Unites States has been receiving lately...
Well, here's what's happened... My town, and many of the surrounding areas were without power for several days straight, due to many downed power lines, from the massive quantity of heavy, wet snow we've received. In my area, it started snowing midday Friday, at which time it was warm enough that the snow was actually a mix of snow and sleet. It was coming down heavily enough that our high-school principal apparently considered sending us home early; this did not, however, happen.
By the time I got home (~2:30) most of the roads were beginning to collect a layer of sleet. By the time my younger sister got home at ~3:20,there was 1/2 an inch of snow and slush on the main roads. By 4:00, we saw our Borough maintenance department driving the salt truck around. Overnight we received 17+ inches of snow (depending where we measured).
Now, we live in an old town... The infrastructure, for the most part is aging, and poorly maintained. The wiring is really weird... My hill, as well as many of the areas behind us, and across the Monongahela river lost power, due to MANY downed trees. A friend called me at 8:45 saying he'd just lost power. We called my grandparents Saturday and learned they had lost power at ~8:15. We lost power at 11:45.
Big deal, right? Power outages in the past have lasted a few hours, max... Not this one. We went without power for 4 days. My grandparents are still without power...
Remember that weird wiring I mentioned? A section of stores and homes at the bottom of our hill never lost power... A neighborhood a few blocks away never lost power... We got our power back midday Tuesday, but a row of houses 2 blocks down and 1 over had power Sunday night...
Anyway... Enough on that stuff... Now to Flashlights... :devil:
Because of some poor grades, I've been grounded from my computer, and PSP, and (oh-noes...) flashlights for about 3 weeks... Anyway, my dad let me break them out on Friday, because we were all still up and about, and without my collection, we had a 2D Mag with a "3-watt" Nite-ize drop-in, my sisters headlamp, and my dad's Coast hocus-focus light...
shakehead)
So, I got to use my HDS B42XR with P4, my sister got my mini-Mag LED, my mom my Ti-Quark AA, the headlamps (mine: Princeton tec Aurora, hers: Princeton tec Fuel) were placed in the bathroom and kitchen, respectively. My dad insisted on keeping his Coast light, and we let my neighbor borrow our incandescent 2D Mag ( my dad's been holding out on me...)
Not having charged my Duraloops in about 1 1/2 months, the ones in my Ti-Quark, and LD20 were dead. My mom didn't tell me, but replaced the Duraloop with an alkaline AA (Duracell, yikes) in my Quark... I placed the newly found AA in my to-be-recharged stack, and put a set of lithium AA's in my LD20.
Now a discussion of batteries...
Conventional wisdom states that any emergency flashlights should use AAs, as they are easy to find, basically everywhere, and usually cheap. CR123 based lights are not considered good in this situation.
However, by Saturday, my dad and I needed to venture out to find propane (1lb tanks) for the small heater in my grandma's room. We drove to 3 different mall shopping area's... Most, if not all stores, and gas stations were closed, due to lack of power. Many sections of the highway's and back roads were down to 1 lane, due to the amount of snow on the road, and no place to plow it to, and the many downed trees.
Home Depot was open, but only because they had a backup generator.
They were out of: propane (1 (they even sold all of their 1lb propane soldering torches/propane tank combos) and 20lb tanks), propane heaters, kerosene heaters, D cells, almost all C cells (though these were much easier to find than D's) and almost all their AA cells in the front of the store. We managed to find several packs of AA's, and 1 4pack of D cells in the back of the store. However, nobody had purchased any Lithium AA cells (probably thought they were too expensive, 4 for $10, or 25 for $10). AAA cells were also difficult to find.
CR123, while moderately expensive ($6 cell), were available in much higher quantities, at both Home Depot stores we went to... Also, the Loews we went to had a large stock of 2packs of SF123's at $2.50/battery. I picked up two extra packs of SF123's, and a 4 pack of Lithium AA's for my lights...
Back to the lights...
Regulated, multi-mode lights shine (pun, I know) in this situation... The ability to tailstand, or prop up, a light and have enough output to illuminate a room, as well as low outputs for walking around the house are a great way to conserve batteries, and still be safe... Even not having power for 4 days, I got to show my family that. My mother and sister alternated between the Ti-Quark and Mag-LED, usually keeping the Quark in the kitchen, and bouncing the light off the underside of our white cabinets, while cooking and cleaning dishes. I placed some matte scotch tape on the lens of my LD20, and had a beautiful flood light to place on a shelf and point at a wall...
My HDS light was excellent for around the house. The even spacing of outputs and excellent efficiency meant that I have not used a single battery up, even having owned it for more almost a month, and using it quite frequently on maximum setting and Primary for the last 4 days.
So, my thoughts on the whole experience have led me to conclude this...
1) CR123 based lights may not be a bad thing, for emergency lights. However, you have to have a multi-mode light, and several spares.
2) Lithium AAs are excellent. They work much better in the cold, and allow for extended runtimes when using high outputs continuously.
3) Single cell lights are much better for tailstanding, unless you like carrying around a glass to hold your light.
4) Regulated lights, even running on alkalines, are much better than unregulated (IMHO), as many allow multiple modes of output, maintain their brightness for longer, and allow you to get more energy out of a cell, before it dims to unusable brightness... I changed batteries in my LD20 once, once they were no longer able to run at high for more than a few minutes, before dropping in output. My dad changed the AAA's in his Coast light 4 times, although arguably, my light was used 2x as much.
5) Make sure you have a back up source of heat and power BEFORE an emergency happens... My dad managed to find a kerosene heater by Tuesday, but paid over $200 for it. Generators were sold out everywhere, as were all sizes of propane and kerosene heaters. Propane was also exceedingly hard to find, and, while many gas stations did have kerosene and gasoline, they were unable to pump it, from lack of power...
6) You can lose a lot of weight and build a lot of muscle trying to keep your self warm. Even in many layers, and eating much larger portions than I do normally, I lost 5 lbs after shoveling a crap load of snow, and doing countless, push ups, sit ups, and who-knows-how-long jogging in place.
7) If you lose power, take the ice tray out of the freezer, and dump it. I know that sounds stupid, but once it gets warm enough for that ice to melt, it will cause a huge mess in your kitchen.
8) Coolers full of food, buried in snow are not as weird looking as you think. We started doing this Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday, all our neighbors had done the same thing. Even the ones with generators.
9) No matter what, do not run a generator in your garage, next to any windows, or on your covered porch. It's a bad idea. I walked by three houses that had done this, and one that had done a combination, with a bunch of 1kW generators.
Feel free to discuss what you've done, your thoughts on emergency lights and batteries, as well as generators, and alternative heat sources. and any past experiences in other circumstances that are similar.
*******Mods:
I realize that this thread had a lot of text on batteries, and flashlights too. That's why i put it in General Discussion, however, if you feel that it might be better suited elsewhere, please feel free to move. Thanks...
You may or may not have been aware of the extreme weather the East Coast (mainly New-England-ish) of the Unites States has been receiving lately...
Well, here's what's happened... My town, and many of the surrounding areas were without power for several days straight, due to many downed power lines, from the massive quantity of heavy, wet snow we've received. In my area, it started snowing midday Friday, at which time it was warm enough that the snow was actually a mix of snow and sleet. It was coming down heavily enough that our high-school principal apparently considered sending us home early; this did not, however, happen.
By the time I got home (~2:30) most of the roads were beginning to collect a layer of sleet. By the time my younger sister got home at ~3:20,there was 1/2 an inch of snow and slush on the main roads. By 4:00, we saw our Borough maintenance department driving the salt truck around. Overnight we received 17+ inches of snow (depending where we measured).
Now, we live in an old town... The infrastructure, for the most part is aging, and poorly maintained. The wiring is really weird... My hill, as well as many of the areas behind us, and across the Monongahela river lost power, due to MANY downed trees. A friend called me at 8:45 saying he'd just lost power. We called my grandparents Saturday and learned they had lost power at ~8:15. We lost power at 11:45.
Big deal, right? Power outages in the past have lasted a few hours, max... Not this one. We went without power for 4 days. My grandparents are still without power...
Remember that weird wiring I mentioned? A section of stores and homes at the bottom of our hill never lost power... A neighborhood a few blocks away never lost power... We got our power back midday Tuesday, but a row of houses 2 blocks down and 1 over had power Sunday night...
Anyway... Enough on that stuff... Now to Flashlights... :devil:
Because of some poor grades, I've been grounded from my computer, and PSP, and (oh-noes...) flashlights for about 3 weeks... Anyway, my dad let me break them out on Friday, because we were all still up and about, and without my collection, we had a 2D Mag with a "3-watt" Nite-ize drop-in, my sisters headlamp, and my dad's Coast hocus-focus light...
shakehead)So, I got to use my HDS B42XR with P4, my sister got my mini-Mag LED, my mom my Ti-Quark AA, the headlamps (mine: Princeton tec Aurora, hers: Princeton tec Fuel) were placed in the bathroom and kitchen, respectively. My dad insisted on keeping his Coast light, and we let my neighbor borrow our incandescent 2D Mag ( my dad's been holding out on me...)
Not having charged my Duraloops in about 1 1/2 months, the ones in my Ti-Quark, and LD20 were dead. My mom didn't tell me, but replaced the Duraloop with an alkaline AA (Duracell, yikes) in my Quark... I placed the newly found AA in my to-be-recharged stack, and put a set of lithium AA's in my LD20.
Now a discussion of batteries...
Conventional wisdom states that any emergency flashlights should use AAs, as they are easy to find, basically everywhere, and usually cheap. CR123 based lights are not considered good in this situation.
However, by Saturday, my dad and I needed to venture out to find propane (1lb tanks) for the small heater in my grandma's room. We drove to 3 different mall shopping area's... Most, if not all stores, and gas stations were closed, due to lack of power. Many sections of the highway's and back roads were down to 1 lane, due to the amount of snow on the road, and no place to plow it to, and the many downed trees.
Home Depot was open, but only because they had a backup generator.
They were out of: propane (1 (they even sold all of their 1lb propane soldering torches/propane tank combos) and 20lb tanks), propane heaters, kerosene heaters, D cells, almost all C cells (though these were much easier to find than D's) and almost all their AA cells in the front of the store. We managed to find several packs of AA's, and 1 4pack of D cells in the back of the store. However, nobody had purchased any Lithium AA cells (probably thought they were too expensive, 4 for $10, or 25 for $10). AAA cells were also difficult to find.
CR123, while moderately expensive ($6 cell), were available in much higher quantities, at both Home Depot stores we went to... Also, the Loews we went to had a large stock of 2packs of SF123's at $2.50/battery. I picked up two extra packs of SF123's, and a 4 pack of Lithium AA's for my lights...
Back to the lights...
Regulated, multi-mode lights shine (pun, I know) in this situation... The ability to tailstand, or prop up, a light and have enough output to illuminate a room, as well as low outputs for walking around the house are a great way to conserve batteries, and still be safe... Even not having power for 4 days, I got to show my family that. My mother and sister alternated between the Ti-Quark and Mag-LED, usually keeping the Quark in the kitchen, and bouncing the light off the underside of our white cabinets, while cooking and cleaning dishes. I placed some matte scotch tape on the lens of my LD20, and had a beautiful flood light to place on a shelf and point at a wall...
My HDS light was excellent for around the house. The even spacing of outputs and excellent efficiency meant that I have not used a single battery up, even having owned it for more almost a month, and using it quite frequently on maximum setting and Primary for the last 4 days.
So, my thoughts on the whole experience have led me to conclude this...
1) CR123 based lights may not be a bad thing, for emergency lights. However, you have to have a multi-mode light, and several spares.
2) Lithium AAs are excellent. They work much better in the cold, and allow for extended runtimes when using high outputs continuously.
3) Single cell lights are much better for tailstanding, unless you like carrying around a glass to hold your light.
4) Regulated lights, even running on alkalines, are much better than unregulated (IMHO), as many allow multiple modes of output, maintain their brightness for longer, and allow you to get more energy out of a cell, before it dims to unusable brightness... I changed batteries in my LD20 once, once they were no longer able to run at high for more than a few minutes, before dropping in output. My dad changed the AAA's in his Coast light 4 times, although arguably, my light was used 2x as much.
5) Make sure you have a back up source of heat and power BEFORE an emergency happens... My dad managed to find a kerosene heater by Tuesday, but paid over $200 for it. Generators were sold out everywhere, as were all sizes of propane and kerosene heaters. Propane was also exceedingly hard to find, and, while many gas stations did have kerosene and gasoline, they were unable to pump it, from lack of power...
6) You can lose a lot of weight and build a lot of muscle trying to keep your self warm. Even in many layers, and eating much larger portions than I do normally, I lost 5 lbs after shoveling a crap load of snow, and doing countless, push ups, sit ups, and who-knows-how-long jogging in place.
7) If you lose power, take the ice tray out of the freezer, and dump it. I know that sounds stupid, but once it gets warm enough for that ice to melt, it will cause a huge mess in your kitchen.
8) Coolers full of food, buried in snow are not as weird looking as you think. We started doing this Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday, all our neighbors had done the same thing. Even the ones with generators.
9) No matter what, do not run a generator in your garage, next to any windows, or on your covered porch. It's a bad idea. I walked by three houses that had done this, and one that had done a combination, with a bunch of 1kW generators.
Feel free to discuss what you've done, your thoughts on emergency lights and batteries, as well as generators, and alternative heat sources. and any past experiences in other circumstances that are similar.
*******Mods:
I realize that this thread had a lot of text on batteries, and flashlights too. That's why i put it in General Discussion, however, if you feel that it might be better suited elsewhere, please feel free to move. Thanks...
