Just wanted to send out my hopes that all our friends on the east coast of the USA that were effected by this massive storm are doing ok. I know Ralph's home is in an area that was most likely severly effected. Our thoughts are with you all and your families. Take care.

Rick

Good man Rick.

Ralph is out there where help may be hard to find. I have family somewhat close to area and they are fine. Never know tho...

My Thoughts and prayers are with all out in the Northeast. The NK forums aren't the same without Ralph! Hope to see you soon!

Well luckily I am on the very east end of Long Island so we had some 70+ mph gust and lost 6 trees on our property but we missed the "surge". Western Long Island, New York city, Staten Island and New Jersey got hammered.

We lost power, cable tv, phones and internet on Monday. The tv/internet/phones just got restored today (Saturday afternoon). I occasionally have cell service. We have not had electricity for 5 days but luckily I picked up a 5KW generator at a yard sale 10 years ago and have it wired into my house so we run the generator for a couple of hours in the morning and for a couple of hours in the evening (right now so I am able to have internet:-).

The biggest problem for us has been gasoline for the generator. I have 5 5 gallon cans and they were all empty this morning. There have been 2 - 4 hour gas lines for stations that had gas and had power.

We might not have power for another week. Luckily I only had to sit in line this morning for 30 minutes and was able to fill all of my cans plus my truck ($163.30). Some stations are limiting delivery to 10 gallons.

So now that I have internet I am searching for LP gas conversion kits for a briggs and stratton 10 hp gas engine so that in the furture I can use our bulk LP gas to power the generator and not worry about gasoline shortage.

Thanks for the concern, for now we are doing well I got a couple of illegal day laborers to help clean up the trees so in four trips to the dump we got everything cleaned up.

Lots of people are really hurting and have lost their homes so any support is appreciated.

You can make donations to the Red Cross.

Ralph

Glad to see you are alright Ralph. I was concerned seeing all the chaos that was left in your area. Looks like it will be a while before life can get back to somewhat normal.

Rick

YEAH!

Glad to hear you are okay...

I had been wondering, I guess along with many others here!

I would "suggest", ever so humbly, that you put your generator onto a separate LP tank. (Even if you do end up having piping and valves to connect both systems...)

Sometimes, in life's series of circumstances, heat is more important than power and vice-versa...

If you have 2 separate supply tanks, you can avoid running into the problem of realizing you are completely out, when you may have made the choice to just have a little less power. (Or vice-versa...)

Just a thought....

If course, if you have a "been-counter trait" then tracking one tank continuously would not be a problem.... :)

Now battery backup for lights or TV?

I have a pair of 12volt deep cycle batteries from O'Rielly's connected in series to form a 24volt system.

I have 2, but only use 1, inverters to produce 120vac.

The battery pair, and inverters, can power some 1 watt high intensity LED lights for months... (Of course, NORMALLY for ME, I have the TV, Internet, and TV there as well so I am down to a couple of days of conservative use!...)

Just some thoughts...

Best of wishes...