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posted to rec.boats
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Aug 2013
Posts: 6,972
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Bad outcome
On 1/21/2014 11:58 AM, F.O.A.D. wrote:
On 1/21/14, 11:50 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/21/2014 11:34 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2014 06:43:56 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:
We have a 500 gallon buried tank, so it gets filled to 400 gallons. I
think our genny burns about 1.75 gph at half load, so at any time
during
the month between tank top-offs, we should have at least a week of run
time, probably more if it is winter, because the larger of our two heat
pumps primarily runs off propane anyway, so if the power goes out, the
only additional load for heat from the generator will be to run the
compressor and furnace fan. The smaller heat pump is not on generator
backup.
... but your gas assisted heat pump is sucking propane out of your
generator fuel tank.
I agree with Dick, "feeding the monster" can be an issue in a long
outage. That term came from our Punta Gorda friends who were living on
a generator for over a month after Charlie.
My wife was prairie building when she brought her community out of the
ground and they ran the construction trailer off of a 36KVA diesel
genset. They got fuel delivered a couple times a week.
The problem up here in the Northeast would be when the last time your
tank was filled prior to a long term outage. When we get a major
snowstorm and lose power the propane delivery trucks are usually
grounded for a while as well until all the side roads are cleared. If
the power outage occurred when the tank was low, you're screwed.
If we had natural gas piped up from the street, it would be more
feasible. However, we've lived in this house for going on 14 years now
and the number of long term outages have been minimal. In fact, I can
really only recall not having power for more than a few hours as being
about 3 times in 14 years and they only lasted a day or two with the
worst being 3 days.
Now that I've said that ... we'll probably get creamed with the storm
tonight.
Hmmm... just had a thought. I wonder if they make a generator that
runs off of furnace fuel oil. Probably do. That would be more
practical as we have two 330 gal oil tanks and one 275 gal. We keep
them topped off.
Isn't furnace oil fuel a variation of diesel?
It's a variation but my understanding is that furnace oil does not
contain lubrication additives required for diesel engines. I don't
think I'd try it.
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