General Music Chat

Maybe this will be the last one for the winter ... yeah, right. Actually, they have been downgrading it for the last day, we're only supposed to get 4-8" now, instead of the 12"+ they were originally forecasting.
This morning I rolled out the generator and cranked it up to ensure its self-starter battery was charged.
Added oil and gas to the snowblower - good to go.
Wired up an appliance cable to the furnace. Biggest drag when power goes out is the house getting colder and colder. Have a couple of 1500 watt radiator-style heaters, but they use a lot of power and don't keep the house really warm. One in the bedroom overnight works, but the rest of the house is chilly.
Someone at work mentioned the neat trick of hooking a power cable to the furnace's input (its a gas-fired steam furnace, so electricity is just for the control part of it, no pumps or fans). Now, if the power goes out, crank the generator up, run the cables in, plug the furnace in (actually have a power conditioner mounted to the wall for it), turn off the breaker for the furnace and viola - heat!

use a transfer switch, otherwise you are still connected to the grid on the neutral bar, potentially very dangerous esp on a power up.

use a transfer switch, otherwise you are still connected to the grid on the neutral bar, potentially very dangerous esp on a power up.

Especially when the line person (being gender correct) doesn't understand that 2 wires go to 2 wires and 1 wire goes to 1 wire.

The folks that restored power after hurricane sandy made SO MANY MISTAKES. I was out there dealing with those mistakes. I am still running in to damage from that storm MONTHS later.

For the record... I finally got a new carburetor for my snow blower. I will never make that mistake again. (sorta sounds like a marriage/divorce statement).