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[smithbr]

Hi
Had a power outage last night.  Finances this year were such that we've not purchased our propane gennie with autostart yet, so we're reliant on a gas gennie.  Of course, at -25C, wind chill at -42, guess what!  The house is well insulated, so my only worry was the outdoor portion of the furnace.
After an hour of horsing around, I said wait a minute, I can run the furnace circuit for a short while from my computer UPS(not our air circulator, just the OWF and pump).  Patched in a line cord to the furnace circuit, and five minutes later, fired up the E1450 to see how it was doing.  Ran the circulator for a minute, felt a cold slug of water come through, then hot as usual.  Although the unit had been off for an hour, the water in the OWF was still at 192F.  The short burst of cold water must have been just the leg of pipe running from the back of the furnace into the ground.  With the furnace powered, we checked the readouts and all was well.  Power returned at the 2 hour mark, but I'm sure we'd have been good for six hours, as long as I pumped the slug around every hour or so using the UPS.

Note to self, need to decide how best to keep my gennie warm enough to wake up these days!

[smithbr]

So how do others deal with power outages?  In this neck of the woods, we're good for half a dozen 3-hour outages a year,  evenly spread across the calendar.  Since the OWF is new to me, I hadn't really thought about the chance of the water freezing during an outage.  Using the UPS to circulate certainly buys me time, but eventually we'd have to run the whole furnace long enough for a reheat, and that's not going to happen on a crappy little 300VA ups.
Thanks
smithbr

[Crow]

I have a small gas generator that I keep in heated garage. It's kind of a P.O.S., but I run it occasionally to make sure it works. I pull the wiring from my electrical panel, hook an extension cord to it and put it out though the basement window. I can run the pump and fan on the furnace, and I can also run a small fan in the back of the oil furnace to move some heat in the house. There's a better way I know, but this works for me on the occasional outage.

[mlappin]

I keep a portable 9000watt generator in the shop by the waste oil boiler, as long as she’s kept above freezing almost always starts by the third pull. Then I get it out to the main pole, turn the mains and all the breakers off then back feed the house breaker and one that goes to the barn where the electric fence chargers and cow waters get juice from.

Next time we have $7 corn and are lucky enough to be the few that are getting rain like last time, I plan on installing a full blown nat gas back up generator. We don’t loose power that often though, on the main highway and we are ahead of the state park.

[smithbr]

As posted elsewhere, I could put a block heater blanket on a temperature switch, and strap it to the body of my 8k generator (the one that was too cold to turn over...), but I really cringe at paying the hydro company for every hour we're below +20 F, (which seems to be about the block heater temperature switchpoint) which is way too warm.  It'd be on half the winter around here.  I'd like it to turn on around 0 F.  We only see a few hours of that most nights from December through February.

It's really annoying to have missed this little detail.    We bottomed out at -28 C last night, about -18F.  Won't get there again for a week or so, but I'd like to have a better plan than my computer's UPS.  It's either that, or put my gennie in my buddie's heated garage, about 3 miles away, and go fetch it when the lights go out - if the car will start.

[mlappin]

You could always find a snap disc or something to wire in the power cord so it can only turn on at 0

[schoppy]

Remember with standard portable generators it is not recommended to use these on equipment with microelectronic controls such as anything programmable. Typically they do not have adequate protection to provide a good clean sine wave form which can damage sensitive equipment. Standby whole house generators on the other hand can provide electricity as clean or cleaner than utilities provide. Check the specs before wishing you had first.

[mlappin]

Remember with standard portable generators it is not recommended to use these on equipment with microelectronic controls such as anything programmable. Typically they do not have adequate protection to provide a good clean sine wave form which can damage sensitive equipment. Standby whole house generators on the other hand can provide electricity as clean or cleaner than utilities provide. Check the specs before wishing you had first.

Exactly, usually a good starting point is if the generator head uses skewed windings or not.

[juddspaintballs]

I've got an older military diesel generator.  It's "rated" at 10 KW, though it's civilian counterpart is an Onan 15 KW.  This is rated for 100% duty cycle at 100% capacity and 300% surge rating for ~15 minutes.  It's about 1800# of air cooled diesel goodness.  I pulled it out the other day in single digit temps to see if it would start.  I haven't started it, put fuel treatment in the diesel, or even charged the batteries in over 2 years.  All I had to do was hook the batteries back up and then try to start it.  It always takes a little longer to start than most diesels, but about 2 minutes of cranking and it fired right up and hummed away.  I quickly brought it up to speed (as it's designed) and set the frequency to 60 Hz.  I plugged a space heater into it for a little load and let it run for about 15 minutes.  I then hooked up the float chargers and charged both batteries then put it back away.  When the power goes out (rarely more than a flicker), I put it next to the house and plug it in through the plug I installed outside.  It powers everything in the house like nothing happened.  It's not an automatic genset, but I paid $1300 for it a long time ago and it's portable. 

[mlappin]

My distributor has one of those old military diesel generators, its one of those diesels when it first starts you take a few steps back out of self preservation in case a rod comes flying out the side of it. He said it’s “always” sounded like that and it was 80 degrees out.

[wreckit87]

 

My distributor has one of those old military diesel generators, its one of those diesels when it first starts you take a few steps back out of self preservation in case a rod comes flying out the side of it. He said it’s “always” sounded like that and it was 80 degrees out.

  Those are my favorite. Buddy drove a Bonneville for several years with what I can only assume was a loose harmonic balancer, that rattled like a rod was coming through from idle all the way to 6500. As a high school kid even- you know how those cars get treated. He ended up rolling it over and it still rattled just the same when it went to the crusher lol