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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2006-12-15          138029

The news is saying that 1.5 million here in the pacific northwest are without power. Ours has been down for 20 hours and the utility says that 99% of their customers are out since the main BPA lines feeding the system are down. It might be a few days. Dress warm fellow PNW people, the cold and snow are coming this weekend. Winter weather, ya gotta love it.

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SG8NUC
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 579 g
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2006-12-15          138031

The weather channel said yall were going to get break so much for that. If you need something the mail always runs. I can put it on the pack mule and have it there in a few. Good luck and if wish you the best. ....

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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2006-12-15          138033

Thanks for the offer! Some pack mule meat might be mighty tasty :) Just kidding. We're doing fine. Generator is running, lots of dry firewood, and the pantry and propane tank are full. The pioneers would be jealous. I'm a little worried about the neighbors though. They're the type who seem to live one day at a time without planning ahead. I'll wander over later and see how they're doing. ....

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Murf
Join Date: Dec 1999
Posts: 7249 Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada
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2006-12-15          138035

Nothing to do but sit it out huh Ken?

I have a good friend in Vancouver, I talked to her this morning and she said the wind was so bad last night it blew the grill off the fart extractor in her bathroom about 3am this morning. She said she nearly had a heart attack from all the clatter, nasty wind!!!

She lives right downtown in an old subdivision, said she had to walk many blocks to get on a bus this morning, so many trees down the buses couldn't streets, sidestreets were blocked.

Best of luck. ....

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Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2006-12-15          138039

Yep looks really bad out there. Good thing I went to work for a power distribution equipment company. Bad weather is good for business, tragically.

Stay warm, stay dry.

Ken, nothing like a stocked pantry and a full propane cylinder on the grill. I don't need much. I always had about a week of food on hand at a minimum in winter. That way when the weather turns ugly, you can stay warm and fed.

Wonder if they'll have problems with people stealing the downed power lines for the metal like the east coast did... ....

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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2006-12-15          138043

My sister said my brother in law was home, the transit was down in Vancouver. It seems like they have had funny weather. I have not been following the weather in the pacific is this the remains of a Typhoon? ....

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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2006-12-15          138046

I'm not sure where this storm came from. If it's not on the Weather Channel dot com 10 day forecast page I won't see it. ....

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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2006-12-15          138056

Vancouver Sun said Race Rocks on Northern Vancouver Island saw 100 mph winds. They stated this was just a normal system that is normally on the Queen Charlottes and Stika track that headed more southernly.
Now I know why I had a wasted youth shovelling snow in Terrace. I bet Mark is happy he doesn't have to deal with this anymore. ....

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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2006-12-15          138060

100 mph winds were reported off the Oregon coast too. Wasn't there a treaty signed that was supposed to keep Canadian weather in Canada? :)
....

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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2006-12-16          138072

Well the normal track is northern Alaska and B.C. coast. I never lived on the coast but 90 miles inland. I can remember days where my father worked around the clock trying to keep the power on, as a lineman. My mother would threaten me if he could not get back in the driveway after working hard. I spend days working on the driveway as the snow pile up fast. Luckally the wind was not normally that strong that far inland. ....

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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2006-12-17          138120

It's the third day without power and the utility still has no ETA for repair. The phone lines went down Friday for no particular reason it seems (want's windy, wasn't raining) and they also have no ETA for repair. Temperatures have been in the mid-20s and the house is pretty chilly in the mid 50s. One fireplace doesn't do a great job heating a big house. Next year we'll buy a second LP generator just to run the heat pump. Generators are sure cheaper now than they were when we bought ours during Y2K. Anyway, just whining some. ....

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ncrunch32
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 762 Kingston, NY
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2006-12-17          138128

Good luck Ken, we were out for 1 week several years ago - but were lucky it wasn't too cold. Funny, when we lived in apple orchard country as a kid we never had long outages. But in recent years and not so far away we have had more and longer outages. You don't have a wood stove? ....

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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2006-12-17          138129

No wood stove. We have two fireplaces but one is in the unfinished basement. They're fairly efficient units with outside combustion air and a blower but still not enough for the entire house. We didn't get around to installing radiant floor heat this year but definitely will do that next year. That will add gas-fired heat on the main floor but won't be adequate for the upstairs bedrooms.

A few years ago we were out of town for Christmas and the power here went out for a week while we were gone. My cousin was keeping an eye on the house so it wasn't a problem, just a pain. ....

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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2006-12-17          138132

I think it is called deregulation. On the coast where I grew up and my father was a lineman. We had a thinning crew working full time removing brush and suspect trees. We seldom had the power out. They laid the crew off and then got contractors in to thin once in a while. My fathers overtime doubled. Someone just looked at the cost of the thinning not the cost of overtime for the linemen or the risk it put them in. In addition we lost a friend and nearly a whole line crew do to over loaded lines and trees that had grown too close to 500 KV lines.
The old thinning crew took ownership of their lines and their work. They knew the problem areas. They kept the brush at the required distances. With the rate that the trees like alder grow it is essential that you stay on top of them. A contractor sweeping through once every few years can not stay ahead of the problems. If a tree dies how long does it take it to be a problem? Here with the pine it is about a year. ....

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ncrunch32
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 762 Kingston, NY
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2006-12-17          138133

Peters, my Dad used to be one of the guys who ran the power plant in the control room. I used to think the reason we had so few long outages was because my Dad used to call the plant whenever the power went out :). Your explanation sounds good.

My Dad lived through some pretty scary situations at the powerplant. One time the giant fan disintegrated killing a worker. Another time a new power plant "imploded" when the furnace vents wouldn't open, a vacuum was created inside the furnace and the steam pipes broke away from the furnace. Everyone was crawling on their hands and knees to find a way out. Turned out a squirrel had gotten into the controls somewhere which prevented systems from operating correctly. ....

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kthompson
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 5275 South Carolina
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2006-12-18          138156

Peters, you could be right on the deregulation.

On the east Coast something I have noticed with hurricanes is years ago they cut off the power so swaying lines did not hit each other and burn something out. No more. Now they leave them live until they swing and hit each oher buring something out. No doubt there is a reason for this, could be they worried about switching the lines back on. ....

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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2006-12-18          138159

Yay! Power came back on a little while ago and the heat pump is doing it's best imitation of pumping out some heat. Went through ~250 gallons of propane in 3 1/2 days. Expensive outage! I'm just grateful that the power is back before Christmas (knock on wood). ....

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kthompson
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 5275 South Carolina
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2006-12-18          138160

You did come to my mind this weekend on this. Glad for you. ....

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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2006-12-18          138164

Good to hear the power is back. Lister made a small cogen system that used the waste heat from the engine to heat the house. If you sucked back 250 gallons of propane there must have been more than a little waste heat.
Did you consider just putting a heater coil in the heat pump ducts? You could run this off a hot water tank and then use waste heat like that from the generator. The old house had one and it ran off the outside wood burner. It kept the house toasty warm. ....

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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2006-12-18          138165

Capturing the heat is a good idea but might be sort of difficult. The generator is in a shed about 100 feet from the house. It's an open frame generator with the exhaust piped to the outdoors. But the heat isn't totally wasted. We keep firewood in that shed and the shed gets to be about 80 degrees with the genset running which helps dry out wet wood :) ....

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