New England B.S. Thread

Based off my $417 electric bill from last month, hell the fuck no I am not crypto mining It is far too inefficient at this point in time. I still have the rig and I'm going to make a nice gaming/home entertainment setup out of it, but that is all I think.

Also yeah, I was one of the young ones for a long time I started going to TW trail rides shortly out of HS and got addicted to smacking trees and dragging rocks!

 

Still old, just not infirm yet. If I go for a ride down gnarlier trails (chunky would probably be a better descriptor) though, my back and shoulders will feel it for a few days. I'm old, not dead!

 

“His name is WHAT, and he’s teaching you words that mean WHAT?!”

…GarlicHotbox will be my next username. Or HotboxFarts

I won’t lie, I feel that. I’m still able to take advantage of not being in need of new joints etc, but when I wake up and my knees are sore it’s like “no shit, you did 30 miles yesterday, the hell you expect?!”

“back in my day” when I used to ride BMX, I could rock it all day and then wakeup spritely and ready to go. Still kinda can, just takes a few more minutes for liftoff.

Yeah, I just got there when I turned….28? whatever age I was. Whatever. I enjoy the trips more than wheeling, sometimes.

OOF. What the hell are you running up there!? My bill is 100…..wait. Nat’l Grid levels that throughout the year, so yeah maybe couple hundred for A/C checks out.

Next large investment in the house after sistering the joists is solar and/or geotherm.

Breakfast: Coffee, advil, and a shot of rum.

Remember. Drinking beer before noon makes you an alcoholic, but drinking rum before noon makes you a pirate.

 

Same

 

Ours hovers between 175 and 225, but we have electric hot water and I think that's a good percentage of it. The girlfriend also does laundry every day and the dryer is electric.

It is pretty consistent from summer to winter for us. In the summer the dehumidifier in the basement and the mini split + bedroom window AC are used and are definitely big contributors. In the winter, the pellet stove is on 24/7 and the water out of the well is much colder and puts a greater demand on the water heater.

I'd like to do solar some day, but I'd want to replace the roof first which realistically has 10 years left in it at most. And I need to be able to swing it without having a 20+ year loan like so many solar companies want you to get into because paying for solar longer than I'll be paying for the house seems nuts to me. I'd also want battery backup. A friend just got a system without and I couldn't bring myself to pay that kind of money to generate electricity and have it be useless in a power outage.

 

All you guys talking about being old is making me feel old. Class of 86 here.

 

In 2022, I am not in for a battery bank yet. I think it’s a lot better than even 5 years ago, but still…just not there yet. I plan to have a generator. It will only need to run the HVAC system and the fridge, so it can be dinky. In theory I can tap it into whole home which I MAY do. Running the A/C would be a nice capacity but focus would be the heat. It’s a natural gas indirect hot water heater with a natural gas furnace. All that thing needs to run is the pump and the fridge, otherwise it’s some Tstat wiring.

Whole home would be nice just so that it all ties in. If that natural gas stops flowing we got MUCH bigger issues. That said, I’d look at having a second system if solar goes in, I think solar works best with forced hot air.

Same for us with the roof, about another 10 years. But, generator will probably happen before this winter - new power company does NOT strike confidence.

 

We've only lost power for maybe a total of 8 hours over the course of 5 years, but the weather gets a little worse every year.

 

We haven't lost power for any significant amount of time since I bought my generator... go figure...

 

Friend of mine's neighbor had a big run everything in the house natural gas powered generator installed. Bad storm comes along, knocks out power...and brings a huge tree down onto the generator

 

I figure if I bought one we'd never lose it again.

What helps us is even though we're rural, we're right next to MA Route 8 which gets restored quickly. There is also a sizeable National Grid substation and office 10 minutes away where they park quite a few trucks so response to this area is quick.

 

Ouch, that's just bad luck there!

When we first moved in, we lost power a few times for a full day in the middle of the summer. That sort of shocked us a bit and we bought a generator big enough to run the fridge and the heat. Turns out, that was not the norm for where we are and we've only lost power in 20-30 minute spurts every since. But dammit, I'm ready if we ever do lost power!

 

I’m near Providence so we used to be pretty quick, if power DID go out.

We just had our electric grid sold to “Rhode Island Energy”, run by some company out in PA. Needless to say, I’m at least suspicious/weary that their response might not be as good. That said, a dinky little generator enough to run the heat (assuming natrual gas is still flowing) and refrigerator isn’t the worst idea.

 

Be sure to check start up wattage on furnace and refrigerator and not just run wattage. I say that assuming you have municipal water and not a well.

 

^^This!! Very important and often overlooked. The fridge compressor may have a substantial spike when it starts up. Also, many generators advertise 'peak' output, not running output. I had an older 4k watt generator but it was 4k peak, 3,500 running. I also would not run anything with sensitive electronics off a small generator. The power from a small generator will often have surges which can cause damage to circuit boards.

 

A lot of the modern generators have some sort of sine wave output or something called similar. Can’t remember the exact name but it’s some sort of filter that prevents those surges when running.

Startup - yup. Even with that, with just the fridge and the water pump for the heat, should be fine. My t-stat is one of them fancy honeywell ones, if I don’t go whole house I’ll need to re-run a c-wire to the furnace instead of the air handler for that, but that’s nothing. Some pretty basic stuff to sort out, but I’m in pretty good shape. I DO need to get the furance side re-wired because right now it’s hard wired to a breaker. I checked code and in theory I am allowed to change that to an outlet, so I’ll probably do a single recepticle (sp?) by the furnace, and if needs must, swap it over to the generator.

Whole house would be nice in that I wouldn’t need to run cords out but, small cost to pay for a much simpler system.

 

Pure sine wave inverter generator. I believe they are DC output converted to sine wave AC

 

32, but I feel way older my joints don't hurt just yet but im flat footed as fuck so anytime I'm on my feet for any extended period of time it works its way up the chain. Doesn't help that I'm barefoot in people's homes all day for work...

 

We installed a whole house Briggs and Stratton Fortress in 2018. I should say we had it installed. All in for generator, transfer switch, electrician, propane tank and plumbing it was about $7700.00 and well worth it.

Just a note on AC. If it's central air we were told we can run it with limited success. The compressor requires 220, but apparently will run on 110, just not as well. Other than that everything except the stove and clothes dryer will be fine. In case you're wondering, we have no natural gas lines within 1/4 of mile, so we went with Propane.

It's definitely worth the money for us, but younger people may be able to get buy with a portable. If you have the option, get a generator that will run on natural gas or propane. Using gasoline means filling up every 8 hours or so and if the power outage is widespread enough the gas stations might not be pumping gas.

 

Yep, those, and they're about triple the price compared to a regular generator with the same output. They work, but you pay a hefty premium for it.