The Big Blow

Well..., that was an adventure.

   Some here may have heard, or been affected by, the unprecedented & seemingly now-historic windstorm that blew through KY, southern IN, northern TN and probably other states a week ago.

   On Friday, March 3, a very severe and historically unprecedented wind storm swept through Kentucky, northern Tennessee and southern Indiana.  A record wind gust of 69 MPH (111 KPH) was recorded at the Louisville International Airport (SDF) not far from us, and sustained winds of 50 ~ 65 MPH (80 ~ 96 KPH ) were common for many hours that evening. We were one of 290,000 electric utility customers without power at dawn the next day in Kentucky alone.  Power went out at our home at 5:45 PM on Friday, and was not restored until 5:30 PM  Wednesday, March 8, almost exactly five days without grid power or broadband.

   An old friend retired from a career in Load Distribution with the local electric utility a few years ago.  He said the LG&E/KU outage map was the ugliest he'd ever seen.  That's sayin' something!

   Our 8KW Generac portable generator consumed more than 30 gallons of fuel keeping refrigerator, freezer and a few critical lighting circuits running here at the house.  There are still a few hundred electric utility customers in Louisville alone without power at this writing, many more without broadband.  We had no broadband service during that five days, cell service was very unreliable,  and our property sustained some minor damage in downed trees and a small burn in the side yard grass from a downed arcing line, but our house itself is undamaged. Our next door neighbor lost many shingles from his roof.to wind damage. We helped him with repair, using some spare shingles we had left over from our last roofing job.  Many homes in Louisville are very seriously damaged (some probably totaled) by falling trees.

 There were a few tornado touchdowns not far from us in Kentucky and southern Indiana during the Friday windstorm.  The entrance to our neighborhood at the corner of our property was blocked for 36 hrs. by a downed tree and tangled electrical wires the tree took with it.  We had to wait for the utility company to move the wires before we and a bunch of neighbors could start cutting the tree out of the way with chain saws so traffic in & out could flow.

   Did storage maintenance on the gen prior to parking it in it's spot in the garage yesterday.  It kept $1000.00+ of food from spoiling over the five days it ran, and kept us entertained with OTA TV at night.  The gen plugs into a 30 amp port on the patio that's connected to a manual transfer switch on a sub-panel next to the main breaker panel.  Last time the gen ran in anger (other than semi-annual testing) was about three yrs. ago, and it started & ran perfectly when called on last week.  We charge the AGM starting battery once a month for an hour or so.  We only run 100% pure gasoline in it (and all of our small motors), with Stabil storage formula mixed in.  We rotate 25 gal. of stored fuel every two years as recommended by Stabil, so the fuel we were using was only about 18 mo. old.  We'd like to run 100% gas ,in the Z1's, but the location of the oil company in southern IN is too inconvenient to do so.

   Life has returned to what passes for normal around here.  Lots of tree debris cleanup to attend to, some neighbors will require help for a while, but all in all, we dodged a Big Blow relatively unscathed.  Now, if it would only warm up enough to go Ridin' comfortably...

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

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Glad to hear you are ok with only minor damage 
We here in Michigan lost power for only 12 hours  from last weeks snow / ice / wind storm..
Just a minor bump in the road 
Dave

We're no stranger to high wind here. Sometimes it can get to 80+ MPH and the codes as far back as the 50's reflect that when building. Composition shingles don't do well out here but they use them anyway.   
Glad you came out of it OK and generator is a must out here. Back in the 60/70's we didn't have one but I did have a 12v lighting system in the 80's and still have it today. Haven't had to use it in years since they upgraded the power lines in the 90's. Have had to use the generator a few times since then due to cars taking out power poles on 1000 Palms Canyon or a critter getting Zapped tripping a breaker at the sub station. 
Back in the day lanterns and candles were the norm on rainy nights or high winds. Back then it was only weekend cabins and a few full time residents. 
A lot has changed since then. Down valley it's a different story. Every year the winds take out main power poles leaving E of Indio without power sometimes for days. IID is replacing them with steel poles but its not cheap and takes a lot of time to replace them all. Last month all the power was out from here to El Centro. We were the first to have our power back 6 Hrs. while everyone E of us were out for days. Sure glad I fixed our generator last year.   
I remember reading an article in Mother Earth news on how to make methane with a 55 gal. drum, a 45 gal inverted drum and a truck tire tube leading to a generator with a small ball valve to control the RPM. It told how when using LPG it didn't have the BTU's to start the generator but when started it could run on LPG from then on. They said methane was different. It would start it and run better than LPG. All you need is organic material to decompose, the 45gal. drum would provide the pressure and the tire tube will keep it constant. Any excess would bubble harmlessly  into the air as long as it was far enough away from the generator. They told of a farmer using a old Harley Davidson motor  to power a pump to irrigate his field using this method. That was back in the late 70's when it was cool to do things like this and no one got offended. 
I'm thinking on trying this myself but using blue plastic drums instead of steel otherwise it should work. 
Save a lot of gas that way. 
Steve


 

God was with you. Good to here all survived but for minor discomfort. We’ve had a couple bad winter storms here the last 3 weeks. Started with a heavy rain/ice storm, lots of downed limbs and whole trees. 40,000 out of power for several days. My property survived that with just one large limb safety landing in my backyard. Two more heavy wet snows followed. But also following the snow we’re 40-50 degree days and the snow melted quickly. 

Glad to hear you made it through alright Jim.  We have a genset on our RV but the RV is put to bed for the winter and therefore of no value if we lose power.  We lost it two New Years Eve's ago for 25 hours.  Luckily our gas fireplace could run to keep the dogs warm.  We kept warm by shovelling snow, as it snowed pretty much the entire 25 hrs.

We too have gas logs in our living room.  One of the 'critical' circuits powered by the gen has the living room ceiling fan on it.  That fan distributes heat off the living room ceiling around most of the house pretty effectively.  Our bedroom at the opposite end of the house remains cooler, but we like sleeping in a cool room with heated mattress pads under us.

We recently had a transaction with Achim on a very rare Z1 part.  The part arrived last Mondaywhile we had no power or broadband & we couldn't acknowledge receipt until last Thursday AM when connectivity returned.  He was becoming concerned that he hadn't heard from us.   Upon contact, he expressed happiness that we were OK, and asked very specifically if our Z1's were damaged .  We assured him that they were safe & undamaged, and that catastrophic damage would have to occur to the house for anything to happen to them.

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

Glad to hear you and yours are OK.  Sounds like proper planning and maintenance not only is important to these old Z1's and KZ's but also to surviving in unsure times nowadays!