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Hurricane Harvey
- Thread starter Huntn
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Only for essentials. Kitchen and computers, mainly. I'm not fussy about TV or anything like that. I am looking towards a whole house battery setup, but not sure if it's wise to purchase now. Tesla makes whole home batteries and a variety of companies offer them here. Total cost is under $15,000 for two battery systems. The larger the home, the more you need or want.
The unit takes a few seconds to startup. I haven't tested it out in very cold weather apart from 34*F. Which isn't cold for an east-coaster like you. Within a minute or two, it can provide power to the whole house. Otherwise from startup, you're good to go. As it's natural gas, it's quieter than diesel and has less emissions. It's also easier to clean since there's next to no soot. I test every other week or once a month during the warmer months.
Around the same time, I replaced our central air unit with two larger, but more efficient units, to split the load for cooling needs or if need be, only cool one part of the house. Ideally, you can do this with one unit and use close-offs (I can't remember the technical term), but you do waste a lot of potential cooling before cold air reaches the longer parts.
I'm familiar with NYC power outages and the associated New England area. Storms and wind are usually the biggest causes. Outside of that in good weather, it's essentially a failure of a component.
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That's I-10 East outside of Houston going to Louisiana as of today it's still flooded.
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Part of the land subsidence in the area is from depletion of groundwater during extended periods of drought...
Interesting. I believe California's central valley is similar. There are these old pictures of country roads where there's a difference in sign height when measured against a sedentary position like a mountain in the distance. I can't seem to find them, but my Google Fu isn't very good. Underground land slides have also caused warping in areas. I took geology as one of those fun side courses during my undergrad and learned a lot (and forgot) about the lay of the land, with a focus on California then.
A lot of what we have built in the last 100 or so years is essentially "floating" on packed dirt. Unfortunately, we do not have very accurate map measurements, even now, so we can't tell how much of the US shoreline has disappeared in the last 200 years without doing a rough ballpark. I'd like to say we're several thousand years away from a split, but I don't know.
What I do believe is lessening the impact we have and using resources wisely. Up until a few years ago, it was illegal to capture rain water in California. I mean, illegal in the sense that you'd have be caught by an official who knew the law. Thanks to Brown, we can collect water. Granted, I'd been doing it since I bought my home because I couldn't give a flying squirrel about the law because I needed water and I wasn't going to "waste" water during a drought. My system consisted of various barrels dug halfway down, with collection pans and various mesh filters.
Nearly everyone here did it. Especially neighbors a few blocks up from us. Their large house sits on 1.7-2 acres of land with lots of fruit and coniferous trees, along with bushes and roses. Not much for some of you, but a lot for California.
They had/have multiple custom rigged system to collect rain water. It was an engineering marvel when they showed it to a select few of us.
There's a lot of things I love about this state, but I also hate the stupid things such as the law that made it illegal to harvest rain water.
A lot of what we have built in the last 100 or so years is essentially "floating" on packed dirt. Unfortunately, we do not have very accurate map measurements, even now, so we can't tell how much of the US shoreline has disappeared in the last 200 years without doing a rough ballpark. I'd like to say we're several thousand years away from a split, but I don't know.
What I do believe is lessening the impact we have and using resources wisely. Up until a few years ago, it was illegal to capture rain water in California. I mean, illegal in the sense that you'd have be caught by an official who knew the law. Thanks to Brown, we can collect water. Granted, I'd been doing it since I bought my home because I couldn't give a flying squirrel about the law because I needed water and I wasn't going to "waste" water during a drought. My system consisted of various barrels dug halfway down, with collection pans and various mesh filters.
Nearly everyone here did it. Especially neighbors a few blocks up from us. Their large house sits on 1.7-2 acres of land with lots of fruit and coniferous trees, along with bushes and roses. Not much for some of you, but a lot for California.
They had/have multiple custom rigged system to collect rain water. It was an engineering marvel when they showed it to a select few of us. There's a lot of things I love about this state, but I also hate the stupid things such as the law that made it illegal to harvest rain water.
Get a generator?
So the question for me, living in Houston, should I have a generator? A friend in the same neighborhood had one, but ironically he did not get to use it. He purchased 30 gallons of gas and 60 gallons of water, which I thought was overkill at the time (for the water, not the gas). You can burn, I want to say 10-15 gal of gas a day. Even though during the storm the highs were only in the 70's it would have been a miserable 4 days if the power had gone out on Friday night. Hmm. I'm thinking I should have one to power the fridge, and cool one room.
So your house stayed dry? That would be good news indeed while still commiserating with those who have a wet house, lost a loved one or everything.
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During the binge shopping, beer seemed to be high priority with many.
Or one of Tesla's home battry systems.
Either that or Bloom box.
Our house stayed dry, but will be helping others whose house did not.
...and meat. Lots of meat sold at Kroger. And Eggs, diary, and other carnivora foods.
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Houston, in a few years, will be the biggest city on earth, and probably the most ethnically diverse.
We could do with some rain here... According to our service provider and some of the apps we use, a major warning has been issued thrice today about massive rains over an inch in a short period of time. I'm looking at the sat images. There's very little chance anything will make a dent in the extreme heat here. We do have a lot of cloud cover that is helps with the rays, but it feels like a sauna outside.
Unfortunately, there have been 30 confirmed Harvey-related deaths in Harris County and grand total Deaths in Texas has risen to at least 60.
I remember one of the first reported deaths being that family of six that drowned in their van as they attempted to escape.
Six relatives of singer Selena drowned in Hurricane Harvey, says her father
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/e3e7a7b0-b331-31f7-aff4-16c4be78702c/ss_six-relatives-of-singer.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/e3e7a7b0-b331-31f7-aff4-16c4be78702c/ss_six-relatives-of-singer.html
Just in case some are wondering who is Selena
http://www.tmz.com/2017/09/05/selena-quintanilla-family-members-among-harvey-victims/