New England B.S. Thread

Not sure re suspension in particular, Bruce's Auto in Hanover is a great general place. Welcome to the fun!!

 

My client in Bedford MA had to call me and cancel our Zoom call review session. They were getting hammered by the storm and straight out.

 

Lots of debris and downed trees on my drive to/from work. I didn't lose any power, but passed through many areas that did. Fletcher Ave in Cranston is a lake at the moment. Possibly too deep to cross in the 4Runner.

 

I’ve been off power since mid-morning, not even an estimate on when it’s coming back. I fired up the generator at 4 and have both fridges, some lights and the heat/hot water going. I have propane so my stovetop works also. I badly need to hire an electrician to install a transfer switch so I can do this properly.

 

I checked in with a friend in Stoughton. They didn't lose power, but he had a couple of tree branches come down in the back yard and a lot of standing water there as well.

Lots of power outages, which brings me to a funny (to me) story.

Back in October when we were selling the house the buyers asked a lot of questions about our whole house generator. I told them at least twice maybe three times what the story with it was. I also wrote out a note covering the same thing.

What I told them was that it would be smart if they stayed with the same propane company for a year or so and be sure to renew the service contract with the generator company. I went through how the generator worked when it sensed a power outage. Essentially other than paying the bills, they needed to do nothing. The generator would do it all.

They did none of that. They told me that they were going to switch to a different propane company, so I had our company come out to remove the tanks and cap the pipe. They also took the regulator since that was part of the lease deal we had. Based on what happened today, they didn't renew the service contract either is my guess.

Today that part of Stoughton lost power. Frequent outages were why we decided in 2018 to have the generator installed. I don't know why, but we always seemed to be the first to lose power and the last to get it back.

The generator didn't start.

Apparently they reached out to their realtor who reached out to our realtor. Who called me as a courtesy to the buyer. When she told me what happened I laughed and told her that I'd be wiling to bet that they never got propane tanks installed or renewed the service contract. I had also removed the 15A fuse in the starter circuit of the generator as protection in case they didn't get propane tanks installed. If the fuse was in the generator would keep trying to start until either the battery died or the starter burned out.

When I have a chance I'm going to text my old neighbor and ask him if he can walk by and take a look to see if they have propane tanks. Just out of curiosity because if they didn't follow up on what I told them and put in writing, then it's their fault and I'll just laugh at them.

 

So far so good here in East Bridgewater.

 

Still out here… killed the generator at 8 for the sake of my neighbors (although the one it probably impacts the most has his own that he left ripping all night). Still no updates or estimate from Eversource. I’m sure they have their hands full from that storm though.

 

I waited until 7 AM until I fired up the soothing sounds of a 420 cc internal combustion engine singing a very loud, mostly monotone hymn. The neighbor it would impact the most ran his generator all night anyways so I think I'm in the clear (other than just irritating the other neighbors that don't have generators at all).

 

With the temperatures dipping below 30 tonight - I'd have zero reservation about having a generator running to keep the house above freezing.

 

I've never had a generator, but we're close to a main road and very rarely lose power for any significant length of time. Last year was the first time we had a prolonged outage- about 14 hours. The house holds heat well so it was still 60° by the time the power came back, but we ended up moving stuff from the refrigerator to the garage because that was becoming an issue.

I thought about buying a little 120v one just to power the pellet stove, refrigerator, and a few lights to get us through. For water, I keep some full containers to allow for flushing the toilet and I have a river at the end of my back yard so that isn't an issue.

Conveniently, this truck has a 2400w generator built in and the pellet stove and refrigerator are both pretty close to the garage. I could pretty easily run a cord in to power them in a pinch. At some point I'll test it out to see how it works/see if I have a good combination of high quality cables. Not a perfect solution, but it would get us through. Getting a bigger generator to power the house would be more of an ordeal, because it would prompt replacing the main panel and bringing the rest up to code.

 

I bought a Harbor Freight 9000W generator for about $500 on sale a year or so ago. I can power the things I need to using extension cords. I'm looking into having a transfer switch installed now, but it's not a necessity. I ran cords to both fridges and rewired by boiler to have a plug also so I could power it from a generator. It only needs to be as complicated as you want it to be. Obviously, a whole house generator is a little more of an undertaking. I'm thinking a 50A sub panel that's powered from my generator, that'd power most of my house. I don't have a lot of draw in the winter, in the summer, the AC takes a lot of power.

 

Me neither, but it's loud as all hell. With snow on the ground, it's not bad because it deadens the sound. Now though... It just carries because there aren't even any leaves on the trees to kill the sound. The house stays decently warm through the night anyways. I cranked the heat at 7:30 last night and killed the generator at 8. It stayed comfortable through the night and the fridges will keep overnight without the doors being opened. In a serious situation, yeah, I'm running the bitch all night!

 

One of the nice things about our whole house generator was that it had a muffler and was very quiet. That's as compared to the portable generators that a few neighbors had. Also, I didn't have to lug it outside if we lost power during a storm.

We're planning on having a whole house generator installed down here in Texas because while less frequent, we do get power outages from time to time.

 

Years ago when i bought my house, My electrician friend put a sub panel at the other end of the basement for circuits needed for generator usage since I only had a smallish generator at the time.
I have my boiler, upstairs fridge and basement deep freeze ,with some outlets in the sub panel.

I don't have a formal transfer panel, but the sub panel has 3 position breakers. Commercial power-off-generator.
When I lose power, I simply switch the main breaker at the big panel and flip the breakers in the sub panel.
Plug the genny in the twist plug outside the house and fire it up.
May not be standard, but works for me and the 3 way breakers are pretty slick.
Have a big azz genny now, but not gonna spend on a whole house setup now as I probably going to sell in the future.

 

I could rewire the well pump in a similar way to your boiler - it's a 120v jet pump - not a submersible - so it wouldn't be hard. The pellet stove will heat the house without a problem as long as it isn't -20 or something, so I'm not too worried about the boiler. If it is -20, it'll still do enough, it just won't be 70.

 

I finally got my truck shipped out. Its a 2012 access cab tacoma. I am looking for looking to buy floor mats, snow tires, and a set of rims. I'm looking preferably for OEM rims preferably black and factory offset. I wouldn't mind upgrading my stock rims to TRD or another style and putting the snow tires on the stock rims. If any one is selling any of that stuff let me know I'm interested! Also gonna post on the buy/trade/sell.

 

Same here. I just run cords to the fridge and electronics. Maybe some day I’ll get a RV outlet wired to the panel. We have a gas hot water heater and range so we can still use that without power. We only lost power for about an hour last night. It was getting close to bed time so I didn’t bother bringing out the generator.

 

Even if it were submersible, it wouldn't be hard to rewire. I literally just intercepted the wires going to the boiler, put an outlet on one side and a plug on the other. In this configuration, the emergency switch at the top of the stairs no longer works, but I figure I can kill the generator outside which accomplishes the same thing.

 

If you’re wondering:
https://x.com/nwsgray/status/1737166195206598970?s=46

I’ll look for the other NE states.

https://x.com/nwsburlington/status/1737176142669582598?s=46

 

I saw a video of Jackson Falls in NH yesterday and it was wild!