Most liked posts in thread: Let it snow...

My winter tires saved me today from the idiot in a big pickup truck who didn't think he had to obey a stop sign. Fortunately I stopped in time and my MINI is in one piece.

 

Snow tires are the ticket to winter travel!

 

Thank God for snow tires. It was a dicey drive home today, but my snow tires did the trick.

 

Yeah, I know what you went through. My 8 minute trip took over an hour.

This is the street just outside my business.

 

That does not count MM, because you were not driving your MINI. :cornut:

Jim

 

I don't know, an hour in a non-MINI must actually be like 2 hours....

That being said I'd have loved to have been in Babs' Forester. All wheel drive & 4 Hakka's.

 

Took the dog for a walk yesterday during the worst of the snow at a park about 10 miles from our house. Ahhhh, those unplowed country roads and a MINI with Blizzaks...piece of cake!

 

I just returned to this mess and the cooooolllldddd weather from Las Vegas. When I got off the plane I considered buying a return ticket....I'm starting to understand why people move to Florida when they get older.

 

Jim

 

You can do that to when you get old, which you are not.

Jim

 

Hey, from Florida. I resemble that remark. However I blew past a guy in a red Vette down here the other day just to say I did it. We old folks have fun.

 

Stop harassing the locals. They'll throw you out of town & you'll have to come back to the glacier.

 

We got a little snow, supposed to snow all day today too.....

 

Nice....
Any local power outages due to tree branches taking out the power lines? When we get that heavy wet stuff, it always causes problems in the neighborhood. Last big outage we were down for a week and a half. I had to direct wire the gas furnace to a gasoline generator in order to run the blower. All my neighbors left us and checked in to hotels. I could get 8 hours runtime on every filling but we managed.

 

Glad that worked for you. Last time my electric went out I tried my furnace (patched the wiring too) on my generator but the blower wouldn't kick on. From what I've read they're pretty fickle about the cleanliness of the juice that's coming through the generator. I'm thinking next time about trying a UPS to filter the line and maybe long term connecting a transfer switch to the circuit box.

 

Be sure if you tap a genset you turn "OFF" the main breaker so you don't backfeed thru the mains to someone who's trying to fix the broken wires....

Surprisingly, no power outages in the 'hood this time, although we've lost it before...

The last big outage lasted a week here too - the weird part is that out or the 1 mile darkened area 5 houses were still it - mine was one of them!

 

Yep....
I am also HVAC licensed in the state of Ohio.
Know about furnace disconnects.....
The generator supplies very clean power.

 

So is it mine that just happens to have dirty power? Would having the power go through a computer-type UPS filter it enough?
I wouldn't try the backfeed method. I'm thinking of installing one of these:http://amzn.to/eawOOL

 

The computer type UPS probably won't be able to handle the start up amps when the blower on the furnace kicks in. I considered adding a dedicated circuit but in reality we haven't used the backup generator all that much. You would need to hire an electrician to install the switch properly. There are several companies making clean power generators that are designed to handle the load that the generators are sized for (Honda for one). In my case, I don't run the entire house, just the furnace. I can give up the food in the refrigerator, but I don't want frozen pipes and all the headache of dealing with fixing water damage even though I have insurance. But that's just my take on it.

 

Actually reading the instructions on how to wire the transfer switch is not all that intimidating if you''re familiar with wiring. If I didn't do the multi-circuit transfer switch I saw this which would be a lot simpler! Then I would at least have the furnace covered.