WOOOOOOO! I just found out that I can power my oven off of the generator after all! I thought that it had 220V plug, but it's a conventional 110! (It's a gas stove, but the regulator for the oven is electronic. I DID NOT want it that way, but it's what I've got. The stove uses mechanical valves, so we've been able to use those with no problems.) We're having pizza tonight!
Lifelong owner. Why rent a shitty one when there are so many uses and it's so much fun to have a big one? You know... like the time I stripped the paint off my new truck... That is absolutely ideal. My place has the same thing. I have a sub panel in the main electrical room that feeds the stove, stove's exhaust fan, furnace (gas but electric blower/fan), hot water tank (gas tankless) and fridge... all able to be easily switched over to the generator running in the garage. That way the core essentials can be run as long as I have gas for the generator. On top of that I have a gas fireplace that has a built-in battery pack for the ignitor that lasts for years. Not sure why more houses don't come with this kind of setup right from the start when they're built. My cat doesn't seem to glare at me as much as your cat.
Jesus, all these pussies in the South. Just put on a coat and shut up about the cold already. I’m sorry your giant trucks and Confederate flags can’t keep you warm. And stop running your god damn cars in the garage with the door closed.
she loves being outside and is very angry with me right now. She thinks the white stuff is my fault I believe.
dude I've been laughing all day. My sister next door just sent my wife and I a text that she had an "emergency." Apparently she took a crap and couldn't flush it because there was no water to the toilet. Watching the local news is like SNL skits in real life, though unfortunately some of them are very deadly. One idiot tuned on their stove to heat the apartment, went to go play in the snow, and was surprised the apartment burned down.
There are aspects of this that are genuinely difficult and I sympathize. Then there are the aspects where Southerners are baffled by basic facts of the cold. Like the fact that water freezes.
Arlington TX. Shit. We had multiple storms and a blizzard in Maryland, and several storms in the PNW and never lost power. Fuck ERCOT and Oncor. Not baffled at all. Our pool has the sensor that keeps it running if temps dip below 36, so up til we lost power Monday morning it was fine. We lost power around 245 and it froze before 7. Under normal situations, the ground isn’t cold enough that losing power below 36 will freeze the pool. Shit. Losing power in the 20s usually won’t freeze it. But it was -2° here. We just don’t have capacity. Especially with these chuckleheads running our shop. I’m not baffled water freezes. I’m just wowed because this is so outside our wheelhouse it’s crazy. Edit: My parents live north of us and we’ve had to, when I was a kid, chip ice in our water tanks for the animals to drink. We even had to help neighbors break stuff up for their stock ponds. 4” of ice in the dfw area in a pool is exceedingly rare. I’ve never seen it happen.
The number of social media pics I've seen of frozen pipes and the resulting damage has been shocking. As a Canadian, all I can do is think... "duh". I wonder if this will change the thoughts on Climate Change down there... at all... or will this continue to be a one-off freak incident, that is happening more and more frequently and with more and more intensity.
Probably. In 2011 we had a similar event (not as cold) and faced similar issues as far as blackouts and water main breaks and suggestions were made then to solve the issues. The cost of the solutions was greater than the fines for noncompliance. Since our stuff is deregulated and privatized guess what! And trust, I get folks who are from cold climates looking around like “no shit?”, I’m the same way when people bitch about heat and can’t handle 90° days. Then I have to remember that regionally, the infrastructure is just different. Personally, I’m telling my parents that we need to start stocking up on round bales now because the last event was in 2011 and that summer was a drought and had a stretch of over 30 100° days consecutively. Hay got up to $250-500/bale and it was brutal on the animals.
Once the cold started coming in prior to the precipitation, it was recordshattering. My kid is living in Vail right now and he’s been warmer than we are.