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Scott and Jackie's Travels – Thousand Trails Reviews, Campground Reviews, Fulltime RVing, European Travel

Tag: generators

Hurricane Ike – 20: Give me power!

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I write this on Tuesday morning – day 10 and counting without electricity at our house. We are thankful for the loan of a 5kw generator which we are using to power our camper with a/c. I’m having to buy around $20 in gas a day just to run it in the evenings and overnight. It’s not to high a price to be able to sleep, something that would be hard to do otherwise. Our overnight lows have been in the mid 70’s the past few nights with high humidity. I think we have a minor cool front coming in tomorrow. It will drop the temps a few degrees and is supposed to bring us some very welcome drier air.

Another complication is mosquitoes. They have exploded in number since the storm and being outside means constantly brushing them off or donating blood to their cause. Happily, the county has started aerial spraying. The sound of the “buzz bombers” was welcome this morning and I was actually able to sit on the back patio to read my Bible at the start of my day.

One of the biggest problems for Jackie is that she has to go through several intersections where the stop and go lights are either not working or not there at all. In morning rush hour traffic that turns into a nightmare with traffic backing up at some spots as far as you can see. Also, people tend to get a little nutso about stuff like that.

Lots of photos here.

Hurricane Ike – 18: More power!

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With temps rising to the mid to upper 80’s and no power company repair crews in sight I decided to see if I could track down a bigger generator. My idea is to fully power the camper so we can have a/c for sleeping. Otherwise, we are in for some warm, humid, and noisy sleeping conditions. I don’t know if this is a future strategy or not, but many people we know already have power restored so their generators are once again unused. I made two phone calls and ended up with offers of two generators! The one I ended up with is a beautiful 5kw Huffy power plant. This one would actually power our entire house, but I’m going for the easy approach for now and am just powering the camper plus whatever we want plugged in inside. It should take less than five gallons of fuel for a night, which is the capacity of the generator. Hopefully, we’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight.

Lots of photos here.

Hurricane Ike – 17: More on generators

grscott

We’re still waiting on electricity. I think we have some power lines down on our branch of the blessed electrical tree and that means we have to wait till they get the easier ones up and running before they look our way. The storm was overnight Friday and we are now at the following Thursday morning. There may have been a truck from the electric company here, but if there was I missed it. I’m not complaining but I’m looking forward to seeing the power back on. Meanwhile, a lot of people in the community are getting power and some gas stations are opening up. The result, for us, is more noise than ever. Apparently, as folks get power they loan their generators to the less fortunate in our neighborhood. People know they can get fuel, so there is no effort to spare the gas. One neighbor was given a big and old welding machine for power. She already had a couple of small and quiet generators, but now she’s running this workhorse. You can’t carry on a conversation in the front yard without practically shouting. These are nice people but it’s frustrating to have all the windows open so the nice cool air can come in and having the racket of at least four generators, one of which dominates all the others. I’ve probably spent too much time in state park campgrounds where people value quietness and being outdoors.

Lots of photos here.

Hurricane Ike – 8: What does it sound like to be without electricity?

grscott

We lost power here at 8:00 Friday evening. Many people already had generators running. Even after the wind died down on Saturday morning there was no quiet. The sound of the “rushing mighty wind” has been replaced by the groan of generators. Jackie and I love camping, so we are not strangers to the sound of generators, but what we have here are not RV generators. My next door neighbor has an old mobile welding machine sitting outside his garage (and therefore, outside one of the windows of our house). It is very loud. Across the street a worksite generator is running just about all the time. Across the back fence another construction type of generator is running. Sitting outside is not a peaceful experience! I’m not opposed to this, and I’m not complaining, but the noise is somewhat unexpected. I have a generator of my own. However it’s a very small Honda job that will run, at most two appliances at a time. Basically, it’s designed to keep the batteries on our camper charged. It’s made for RVing and therefore is campground friendly. The noise is so loud here that I can’t prove it, but I don’t think it can be heard beyond my front yard. I only run it an hour or so a day anyway. One more comment…sometime in the early morning many of the generators run out of fuel. One by one they shut down and by 5:00 or so it becomes amazingly still. Of course, having slept all night with all the racket, the silence wakes us up!

Lots of photos here.