Bee-Lieve it or not we still have a very few yellow flowers in protected areas here and there yet. Not many that's for sure.
Had a busy weekend with early rains Saturday and high winds Sunday but I managed to get the plywood box/cover finished for the gasoline generator and then man handle the thing up onto the porch.
The Gas generator is the last part of my electric redundancy chain. One I really hope I never have to use because the thing can be heard for miles around when running. To be honest I don't worry about losing power for much. I have the solar setup and enough rechargeable batteries to run all the gadgets I could ever need along with some electric lights if I wanted. I also have more than enough kerosene lamps and an endless supply of bees wax candles for lights.
Yet my big wood furnace requires electricity to run the blower and there is the matter of the freezers. I can run the blower on the furnace for four days of no sun off my battery bank and even then I could stop using the big furnace and fall back on the small wood stove for a long term grid down situation. None of these backup plans however adequately address the problem of having a nice hot fire going in the wood furnace and then the power going out in the middle of the night.
A wood furnace of the size I use can seriously damage itself if the blower loses power. Technically there is a sensor that automatically shuts the airflow off if the power goes out but I don't trust them completely. Also setting up a battery rotation from the solar bank is time consuming and not something I want to do in a snow storm in the middle of the night.
So in a sudden, middle of the night, dead of Winter, Snow storm if the power goes out I have my 7500 watt generator placed in it's own little box right by the window and a power cord ready to run through a wooden plate made specifically for that purpose. I can start her up, plug in the wood furnace motor and the freezer and let her run until the Sun comes up and the batteries can be put in place.
Each battery of my solar bank will run the blower on the furnace for almost 24 hours but it takes me a good 30 minutes to unhook a battery and lug it over to the blower. Unhooking it requires bending over into the storage area and it isn't something I wanna do while being rained or snowed on int he middle of the night. Also as I mentioned there is the problem of cloudy days. I would need four days of continuous sunlight with only small cloudy periods to keep the battery rotation solid and give them enough time to charge up between uses or eventually I would run out of juice.
So as you can see the chances of actually needing the gas generator eventually are pretty high if the grid is down for a long period.
Redundancy and Backup plans.
This also concludes the last project I wanted to finish before Winter actually hit this year. I was afraid I wouldn't get it finished since other projects kept taking precedence here lately but this latest little warm spell gave me the time I needed. It also allowed me to permanently get the generator out of the barn and in it's new storage location.
Now I can once again focus more on wood cutting and brush clean up. I am about a month behind on wood cutting again.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
Good news finishing what you wanted to get done is a big win congrats.
ReplyDeleteYes it is. Thank you SR.
DeleteCould you put the generator on the battery bank to charge them?? In stead of solar on cloudy days??
ReplyDeleteGlad you are getting caught up. Now that darn wood......
Rob - I am sure I could buy something that would fit in line with the Solar charge controller. It would only make sense. The battery bank is ont he other side of the house plus a few feet from the gas generator area though.
DeleteYou're good about building things to meet your needs. I am thinking of your hand pump and now the generator. I have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to do something like that and then, I usually don't get it right the first time.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the noise a generator makes. If I am running mine here, especially in winter, you can hear it echoing through the woods saying "here he is, come and get him!" I only use it when the power is going to be out for some time.
Harry - I like to ethnically engineer stuff. 99% of everything I build would never pass a paying customer's muster. Hell 99% of the stuff I build doesn't even pass my wife's muster :)
DeleteThe hand pump stand for the cistern is actually not level. I made it level but forgot I hadn't got the cement cap itself level. I had to do a bit of edging work to make it look OK. The building I turned into my shop had an odd sized door on it and someone had hung an inside door that was falling apart. I could not find an outside door anywhere so I used marine plywood and the old doors skeleton to make a new door. It works but when you really look at it you can tell it was just thrown together.
I am kinda a file to fit - paint to match sort of guy.
You are way ahead of me on this kind of thing. I have a propane generator but haven't hooked it up yet but never figured out the battery powered blower either. Some day.
ReplyDeleteSF - I really wanted a propane generator and log splitter. My Dad finally convinced me to go with gas ones because he swore they really are not hard to convert if the time comes. He was a mechanic for 40+ years so I am trusting him on that one.
DeleteI need to go buy the parts he said it would take though.
We keep a generator for power tools and to buy time for the stuff in the 2 freezers.
ReplyDeleteThe plan here is to keep the freezers going until I'm able to get what I want out of the freezers and safely home canned.We don't really need electricity for anything else and can live without it...but it sure makes life easier :-)
GM - My end game plan is to actually have a solar powered Small-Hold. From grass mowing to firewood cutting. I have made a few steps in that direction and power all of my tools off of the solar panels.
DeleteNext I want a battery cart I can pull around to run electric tools off of as well. I would love to get away from small gas engines as much as possible.
PP,
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't trust those sensors either.
As for the generator, if it can be heard from a distance, it would be a dead give-away for those in need of warmth and food. But since we don't have zombies running around, I say use the generator and perfect your process.
Sandy - I had planned on running the generator in the little shed I built for it. However yesterday I realized the exhaust gets a bit too hot to make that safe. I am now contemplating attaching an aluminum plate inside the mini-shed around a hole I cut out for the exhaust. That might keep the noise down some.
DeleteSame with my generator...loud. I chain it, when in use, to my garage door rail, lower the door four inches or so from the top of the unit and lock the door in place. Then I station our attack cat beneath. The cat is hell on ankles.
ReplyDeleteStephen - LOL. MY feline management staff was right there as I built the mini-shed. They hung out on the rail around the porch all day as I worked telling me how to do everything and inspecting the shed inside and out.
DeleteAt first they thought it was a new Winter lounge spot for them since it is on the Southside of the house and all.
Then I started the generator and the management team decided it was lunch time.
Why don't you make one of those bicycle chargers?.. like the one the prepper had on American Blackout
ReplyDeleteI think all generators are loud. I like it though, because we are the only ones in my imimediate neighborhood circle who own one...and it would be fun to piss off the liberals when the lights go out : ) .
JuGM - A bike generator is on the list somewhere. I think it has moved up a few spots and is getting close relatively speaking.
DeleteWe should team up. I have some wonderful plans on how to piss off Liberals when everything goes down. Especially some old hag Feminist ones that involve cigarettes and Hispanic street gangs.