And so it starts

seems like i just posted on getting power back after charlie.
now we have no power thanks to francis.
thankfully my home computer is a laptop, so i have about 2 hours left of power.

Oh well , at least i have my flashlights to keep me entertainded, and allow me to read during the outage.

will post again when i regain power.

better luck to the other flashaholics living in florida /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif

good luck and be safe. they just said 2 million with out power

A 5 or 6 hundred watt inverter and two or three deep cycle marine batteries can run anything you need for only a coulpe hundred bucks initial outlay. I don't understand why more people can't figure that out.

Metro

I have a 1000 watt inverter (will run 1500 for short periods) and a deep cycle battery on a dedicated charge maintainer. I thought that it was all I needed
until the last power failure at 6 AM.

I ran a heavy extension cord into the kitchen and plugged in my coffee maker, then set off to turn off all my computers and UPSes. I did not pay any attention to the whine from the garage. When I got back to the kitchen the coffe pot was dead.

Turns out the "whine" was the overload alarm. The coffee pot got 3/4 of the way through before the inverter shut down. The inverter is fine and powered right back up after I disconnected the coffee maker. There was enough coffee to get my morning started, so it was not a total failure.

I will get a smaller coffee pot for future power failures. I will not get a bigger inverter. The 1 KW draws around 100 amps at full load. That takes some seriously thick wire.

Good luck there in Florida.

Daniel

I'd probably fall back to the time-honored method of making coffee, either instant coffee (forgive me for even suggesting it, but in a pinch, one may not have a choice) or a small gas-powered burner/camping stove. Gas to heat seems like a better alternative. I'd save the battery power for things that can't run on anything else. Laptops are good, they conserve power compared to desktops.

To those in the path of the storm, may your lights burn bright and may you ride out the storm in safety.

Agreed. I dont drink coffee but if i did id have a camping stove of some sort. But there arent many tropical storms hitting Dallas thankfully. A Camping stove should be kept at the ready for any emergency though, weather it be torrents of rain, earthquake, tornado, or any other disaster. Even if hard rain knocks the power out for a few hours. When you're hungry you're hungry. Sometimes it takes out power company 6 hours to get the power back on even in a simple thunderstorm.

Good luck and stay safe.

The problem with a camping stove is that there is nowhere to use it when you are bunkered down in your home behind hurricane shutters. Something about no open flames indoors...

(Ask me how I know this...)

you could cook in the fireplace with it if you have one. If you dont then yah id agree. carbon monoxide is none too good to breath heh.

The coffee in the bags (like tea bags) is much better than instant coffee IMHO.

Thanks Hoghead. I could get some of those coffee bags and an immersion heater. That will get me through the morning.

Daniel

Man, HH always has the most simple, straight forward answer's /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bowdown.gif has since the first time i posted! VDG

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they just said 2 million with out power

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Now they are saying that up to 4 Million people are without power.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif

Stay safe, everyone.

And to top it off, it now looks like Ivan has a good chance of hitting Florida too.

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gadget_lover said:
Thanks Hoghead. I could get some of those coffee bags and an immersion heater. That will get me through the morning.

Daniel

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Man I have no idea why I didn't think of the humble travel immersion heater.. maybe the lack of coffee (and I'm not in a disaster area) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif

just got power back!!!!!!!!
i do have an inverter, which thanks to that i was able to watch the tv news during the power outage.
but you can bet i will be getting an extra battery so i don't have to run it off the car battery.