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Letsgoagain · 01-31-2009, 07:42 PM

Evening,
We had a terrible ice storm this past Tues. and Wed with power outages all over the city of Evansville and regions around us. Some power may not be restored in parts of the city for another week. In other area's around us especially in Kentucky it is even worse.
There are so many down trees,limbs and power lines that it looks like a tornado went through.
We were some of the lucky ones in that we only lost power for 17 hours but let me tell you it gets cold fast in the stick house when its in the 20's outside.
Fired up the generator on the motorhome, ran an extension cord from the outside receptacle through a window in the house and powered the fridge, a ceramic heater, the sump pump, gas log blower, television and directv receiver. Got the house back up to 70 degree's and we were able to stay while a lot of people are unfortunatley living in shelters because of lack of electricity.
The motorhome generator ran at about half speed for the 17 hours and never missed a beat.
Sure is a good feeling to know that if we have to we can use the motorhome or generator in for situations such as this. Saved us a lot of inconveinence.
Letsgoagain

RedneckExpress · 01-31-2009, 07:49 PM

Sounds like you're ready to invest in having a good old fashioned pot belly stove added to your home. Cord of Firewood and you'll still have heat and can save some of the genny's fuel

.

read & learn · 02-01-2009, 05:05 AM

Great idea Joe, but where does he plug in the Directv?

GaryKD · 02-01-2009, 05:29 AM

It is the same for us. The coach is our life boat after hurricanes.

Vette Racer · 02-01-2009, 05:55 AM

During a ice storm we had in 2007 I lived in the trailer for 7 days parked in the garage. Ran extension cords to power frig/freezer and shop heater, then ran the generator about 5 hrs a day to keep things cold/warm as well as recharging the batteries. (Remember to route the exhaust from any closed area while running the generator due to carbon monoxide danger) Hooked up my dish antenna and was good to go. An RV is way more than a recreational vehicle.

Dadeaux · 02-01-2009, 06:24 AM

Immediately after hurricane Ivan we lived in our MH for about eight weeks. House was intact but the roads leading to it were non-existant in many areas.

We have also used our MH generator on a couple of occasions when home power was off. Certainly is handy.

RedneckExpress · 02-02-2009, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by read & learn:
Great idea Joe, but where does he plug in the Directv?

When you're in a situation like that, you really kind of want to conserve your resources, since there may not be any place to get anymore later for a while.

porscheracer · 02-02-2009, 11:33 PM

When we bought our current home, the neighbors warned us that in the "ice storm of 2000" some homes in our area were without power for over 3 weeks. We bought it with plans for a major expansion / update, so we added a 25KW natural gas generator to the list.

So far it has only been on line for a total of about 5 hours (in 3 years) - but we are only about 60 miles south of where the really nasty stuff hit here in Arkansas last week. We still had over 40,000 witout power in the north end of the state as of this morning.

Glen41 · 02-04-2009, 11:18 AM

I hope everyone remembered to disconnect from the grid by turning off the Main Switch at the panel before firing up the Genny. Otherwise you might just get some poor lineman all excited while he was working on a supposedly "dead" power line. Electricity flows both ways.

dirko · 02-17-2009, 10:06 AM

Hi Ho: Interesting thread. About 15 years ago we had a very heavy snow in February and a large section of the city was without power for as long a 5 or 6 days. It was in the 20's at night, so heat was a real problem.

We always keep a full tank in the motorhome, so we just wired up to the house and went ahead as usual. The gas furnace, refrigerator, and freezer were just fine. Trying to get the family to remember not to use the range and oven were the bigest problems because the poor generator would have been really stressed if everything were to be used at once.

What really bothers me is the possibility of an earthquake where natural gas is not available. I installed a real fireplace in our last house which we used one whole winter to heat the whole (3000 square ft.) house with wood. Hey, we had lots of teenage sons to feed the fire and haul out the ashes.

I do have a large kerosene heater, but would be afraid to use it over an extended period. Does anyone have an idea how to keep the house warm in the winter without natural gas?

I know, the answer is to move south, and that just getting in the motorhome and driving to Arizona might be the only answer.

Dirk