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Been an interesting week of freeze no power and water

mopar 3 B said:
Not all of Texas. A portion of the North is in a collective that goes all the way to Canada. We had roving outages here to make sure the grids in Oklahoma and that part of north Texas never went completely dark. If their power stations had gone down it would take lots longer to restore power to the grids. Someone needs to pay for that inconvenience.
Our bill here will also be larger but not on count of rate increases. We had two days I know the furnace never shut down and the propane tank took a beating.
We just got the water fully restored today our selves. Spent the last four days repairing frozen line breaks after 3 days of frozen lines. Most of it could have been prevented if I had known the heat tape to the main line was not working.
Click to expand...
Yes ive heard that about North Texas... power generation and distribution is a big deal, it needs to be constantly upgraded....My buddy who worked substations told me some coal fired plants in Texas use a water slurry to deliver coal to burners...How that works I have no clue or what im saying is acurate....My plants use to pulverize it and blow it into furnaces.....Anyway he said the water system they use froze up....I have to try and read up on that to see if that did happen
 
Ironbuilt said:
That generator ran my house when we lost power last week for 3 days. That APU (Alternative Power Unit) is a beast!! It keeps me warm in the winter, cool in the summer and saves me thousands in fuel. Thanks again @Roger63
Click to expand...
Just what powers that unit?
 
mopar 3 B said:
Not all of Texas. A portion of the North is in a collective that goes all the way to Canada. We had roving outages here to make sure the grids in Oklahoma and that part of north Texas never went completely dark. If their power stations had gone down it would take lots longer to restore power to the grids. Someone needs to pay for that inconvenience.
Our bill here will also be larger but not on count of rate increases. We had two days I know the furnace never shut down and the propane tank took a beating.
We just got the water fully restored today our selves. Spent the last four days repairing frozen line breaks after 3 days of frozen lines. Most of it could have been prevented if I had known the heat tape to the main line was not working.
Click to expand...
You use propane to fire your furnace? I am asking because we have a heat pump that is part of our AC and in really cold temperatures, it takes forever to heat the house. The south is not supposed to get so cold. Damn global warming!!
 
mopar 3 B said:
Not all of Texas. A portion of the North is in a collective that goes all the way to Canada. We had roving outages here to make sure the grids in Oklahoma and that part of north Texas never went completely dark. If their power stations had gone down it would take lots longer to restore power to the grids. Someone needs to pay for that inconvenience.
Our bill here will also be larger but not on count of rate increases. We had two days I know the furnace never shut down and the propane tank took a beating.
We just got the water fully restored today our selves. Spent the last four days repairing frozen line breaks after 3 days of frozen lines. Most of it could have been prevented if I had known the heat tape to the main line was not working.
Click to expand...
Your absolutely correct, Texas has their own grid so they are not subjected to federal oversight. But, they have the capability of drawing off there neighbors in critical times. The pie chart below shows the real reason it was so hard on everyone around Texas
Screenshot_20210221-182825_Chrome.jpg
 
steve from staten island said:
Yes ive heard that about North Texas... power generation and distribution is a big deal, it needs to be constantly upgraded....My buddy who worked substations told me some coal fired plants in Texas use a water slurry to deliver coal to burners...How that works I have no clue or what im saying is acurate....My plants use to pulverize it and blow it into furnaces.....Anyway he said the water system they use froze up....I have to try and read up on that to see if that did happen
Click to expand...
Just maybe the next upgrade will be changing out the gear head oil in the wind generators. Not sure what the plan has been for the hot summer nights when the wind down there stops blowing. Question is will it be worth the investment. Remember this was a one hundred year event. Do you spend ridicules amounts of money just to make sure what happened will not happen again to equipment that will not be around for the next occurrence
Our utility here did come out with a statement to the affect that we need to become less dependent on them in time of crises. .
 
Ironbuilt said:
You use propane to fire your furnace? I am asking because we have a heat pump that is part of our AC and in really cold temperatures, it takes forever to heat the house. The south is not supposed to get so cold. Damn global warming!!
Click to expand...
We use propane and for us it's pretty efficient. I haven't used over 1000 gallons per year in 20 years.
 
Glad to hear that you came through OK Cranky, after you posted that your generator took a crap, I got a little concerned. I’m glad all the others that posted are doing OK. We just had a mini blizzard here on Monday. Spent Tuesday digging out. Our son and his family in Kentucky lost power for a couple of days due to the ice down there. Supposed to warm up a little this week. Man, I can’t wait to get the Belvedere out, but that won’t be for awhile yet.
4063F085-B46F-43AC-B598-60C7BA69B814.jpeg
 
I have been watching this tragedy on our news up here in Ontario. You guys are having a waaay worse winter than we are. So sad that people ther have lost so much. I know that lots of Canadians are feeling bad for you.
 
PRND21 said:
Glad to hear that you came through OK Cranky, after you posted that your generator took a crap, I got a little concerned. I’m glad all the others that posted are doing OK. We just had a mini blizzard here on Monday. Spent Tuesday digging out. Our son and his family in Kentucky lost power for a couple of days due to the ice down there. Supposed to warm up a little this week. Man, I can’t wait to get the Belvedere out, but that won’t be for awhile yet.
View attachment 1073155
Click to expand...
You do know those piles take longer to melt. I left our 7 inches sit. Our last snow I think was Wednesday. Today it is almost gone.
 
Dave6T4 said:
I have been watching this tragedy on our news up here in Ontario. You guys are having a waaay worse winter than we are. So sad that people ther have lost so much. I know that lots of Canadians are feeling bad for you.
Click to expand...
And so you should this is your weather. Boarder patrol should have stopped it.
 
Roger63 said:
Your absolutely correct, Texas has their own grid so they are not subjected to federal oversight. But, they have the capability of drawing off there neighbors in critical times. The pie chart below shows the real reason it was so hard on everyone around Texas
View attachment 1073152
Click to expand...
That chart was for southern power pool, this one is texas 2019
ercot.png
 
I got lucky here in Abilene. I had power for some reason in this part of town. The water treatment plants all lost power so most did not have water. We had low pressure because we are on the low part of town. All the residual water went downhill! My shop lost power and the water froze. Some of my rental houses had pipes freeze but nothing broke. This really caught us off guard. The windmills froze up because they are not prepped for this length of downtime and the gas lines had water in them that froze. Ercot did not handle this well. They have taken a lot of the gas fired electric plant out of service to please the greenies in Austin. Funny, they bitched the most because Austin was out of power. We lost our cell tower and tv cable so we really did not know much that was going on. Our cell phone would still call out but we only kept track of our family. Our kids in San Antonio lost power and water for days.
Our church had a massive warming center at both of our campuses. They fed them as well. Many slept there. The city lost power at the main place it was going to care for people so it called our church. We still had power at both. No water but had power. They figured out the a Baptist church has a backup supply of water for flushing toilet! The baptistry! They had a constant” bucket brigade “ going.
Sadly one older man die from freezing in his own home. His wife almost died before they found her. With lots of communication down, things got missed. I hope they figured out what went wrong because it’s been this cold before and we never had problems like this.
 
fastmark said:
I got lucky here in Abilene. I had power for some reason in this part of town. The water treatment plants all lost power so most did not have water. We had low pressure because we are on the low part of town. All the residual water went downhill! My shop lost power and the water froze. Some of my rental houses had pipes freeze but nothing broke. This really caught us off guard. The windmills froze up because they are not prepped for this length of downtime and the gas lines had water in them that froze. Ercot did not handle this well. They have taken a lot of the gas fired electric plant out of service to please the greenies in Austin. Funny, they bitched the most because Austin was out of power. We lost our cell tower and tv cable so we really did not know much that was going on. Our cell phone would still call out but we only kept track of our family. Our kids in San Antonio lost power and water for days.
Our church had a massive warming center at both of our campuses. They fed them as well. Many slept there. The city lost power at the main place it was going to care for people so it called our church. We still had power at both. No water but had power. They figured out the a Baptist church has a backup supply of water for flushing toilet! The baptistry! They had a constant” bucket brigade “ going.
Sadly one older man die from freezing in his own home. His wife almost died before they found her. With lots of communication down, things got missed. I hope they figured out what went wrong because it’s been this cold before and we never had problems like this.
Click to expand...
Sp glad that you made it out okay @fastmark Sorry to hear about that elderly man. Government is what went wrong with the power grid, that and the "greenies"!!
 
mopar 3 B said:
You do know those piles take longer to melt. I left our 7 inches sit. Our last snow I think was Wednesday. Today it is almost gone.
Click to expand...
You’re right, my concern was the inch of ice under the 10-12 inches of snow that we got on top of it. I’d like it to melt first. Also those 2 foot drifts are a bitch walking through to get to the shop. I’m very thankful that we didn’t lose power.
 
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