Re: Lipstick on Pig

"Lee Bell" <pleebell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:32Hyk.33406$De7.32440@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

As long as you have some way to cook. Most everybody I know has a
grill with at least one side burner. You can do just about anything
you have to on one of those. I also have a portable Coleman gas grill
in the garage for picnics and the like. If the boat survives, I could
live on it for a week without missing anything.

We have gas service for the house... Gas hot water heater and gas
range... Combine that with outdoor grilling via gas and we're pretty much
set with regards to cooking...

My 2,000 watt (actally 1,800) Honda will run the window unit I keep
here specifically for storms plus ceiling fans, lights and one of the
small TVs if I'm a bit careful not to turn on too many things at once.
The 7.5 kw, 13.5 kw surge generator will pretty much run everything
in the house except the central air on about 10 gallons a 24 hour day.
I have 110 gallons on hand right now and the capacity to store
another hundred, give or take.

I ended up waiting a day for the electricity to come back on and then
went searching... Ended up driving down to Victoria (about 100 miles SW
of my home) and getting one from Lowes... It's a 5500W continuous, 8500W
surge unit... They only had one type of generator, so it was pretty much
a take it or go without type of situation... I was hoping to find a
geneator that also ran on natural gas, but no such luck...I picked up one
of the generators along with a 6000 BTU window unit since my 8000 BTU
window unit was having problems... The 6000 BTU window unit can get my
master bedroom and master bath cooled down to the low 60Fs if I leave it
on continuously... Even though I had my home network up, Comcast did not
have a signal until a couple of hours ago when we got power to the
neighborhood... The power line that ran along the levee near our house
was down because 4 tree that were on the levee fell toward it -- I think
only one hit it though... They apparently turned on the power earlier
today, but didn't know that the line was down because it caused a grass
fire along the area that was down... I was able to run everything in my
house except for the central air... If the power had stayed off tonight,
we were going to see if it was possible to run the dryer also since Grace
was planning on doing some laundry... The generator had a 220V circuit,
so I ended up going to quite a few Home Depots and Lowes in order to find
all the things necessary for me to hook it up to my house... The first
two nights, I just ran a lot of extension cords around the house in order
to get everything working that needed to... Yesterday, I finished finding
all the parts that I needed and was able to reverse feed the 220V through
my garage's welder electrical outlet... One thing was a bit strange
though... I had a couple of outlets that would not power up after doing
that... It was not a problem with the circuit breakers since once power
came on a bit earlier this evening, everything was working... They
*might* have been a GFI circuit -- don't know if that would have made a
difference... None of the GFI outlets were tripped...

All in all, we came out pretty good... I've got about 300 ft of cedar
fencing along the rear of my lot and nearly all of it was down...
Probably only had a couple of sections that were still standing... I
spent yesterday and today cleaning up this mess... I had one tree that
split in half and fell over... I used a hand winch to bring it back up to
see if just perhaps the half that fell over might live... I chained it
together...

If things stretch out as long as they did after Wilma, you may be
desperate. I paid more than that for regular when I started to run low
on generator gas. Then again, I only had 50 gallons back then. The
problem was that the power substations were damaged. They had to be
fixed before everything else could be addressed. For the most part,
the gas stations had gas, but no power to pump it with. Several of
the large grocery stores lost everything they had that was
refrigerated. The one right down the street smelled strongly of
spoiled meat for weeks after they had power back. Florida passed new
laws requiring certain businesses to have generators including gas
stations for sure and I think also including grocery stores.

Some of the stores nearby were open yesterday, but most were on
generators... Wal-Mart was open, but they only had 1/3 of their lights
on... The Missouri City Home Depot was only allowing a couple of people
in the store at a time and as such, there was a *very* long line... I had
to go up there twice the other day and it was about a 45-60 minute wait
to just get in the building *each* time...

I have no sympathy for you having to buy avgas at $5 a gallon. I pay
more than that for high test at the marine pumps.

It depends upon where I have to buy it... $5 per gallon is somewhat
cheaper than most airports around here... There's a couple that are even
cheaper, but that aren't all that close to me...

The night that I bought the generator, I drove down to my hangar and
picked up the 55g drum of gas that I had stored there... It's not really
easy to pick up a 330 lb container of fuel and put it in the bed of a
pickup as high as mine... The plastic barrels just do not have any hand
hold on the bottom that lets you get a grip on the barrel... Eventually,
I grabbed a couple of 10 ft 4x4 posts that I had at the hangar and rolled
the barrel up the makeshift ramp into the bed of the pickup... The barrel
is still pretty heavy, so I think that I've used maybe half of it in the
last few days...

--
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