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Old 11-08-2015, 21:44   #406
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Roast Pig!

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Old 11-21-2015, 10:49   #407
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Field DC welding can also be done, using vehicle batteries as the power source. Basic terms, one 'shorts' the battery, using jumper cables for the ground and hot leads, and welds with a SMAW (stick) welding rod. 12v is pretty wimpy, 24v (two 12v in series or one 24v) is getting there, and 36v (3x12v or 24+12) will put out some real heat. Not the ideal setup, but could get one out of a jam, and is somewhat portable.

Basic needs include : two or three charged 12v batteries, (or one 24v) several sets of jumper cables, leather gloves and a couple pair of 'good' dark sunglasses (a shielding lens/hood is ideal, but...)
Can Attest This works great. but be careful you can overload the batteries causing venting and a possible explosion, i recommend using the longest pair of jumper cables you can also in a pinch cut a pair of Slave cables and seperate them cutting off the head and they work too.

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On a side note you can also make a killer sandwich by takin the bread, coldcuts/cheese (whatever you take from your local DIFAC downrange) etc puttin it together, wrapping it in tin foil - raise the hood of the humvee and putting the tin foil sandwiches on the engine block for about 3-5 minutes. Works better whenever its cold.
Back When i was a young CMCN (E3) this is how i did all of my cooking on FEX.

As a Seabee we do a lot of Jerry rigging everything from "hot wiring" a Hilux by using paperclips in the fuse box to fixing air intake's with Pringle cans and duct tape.

But my all time favorite we were doing an administrative convoy from VA Beach to AP Hill, one of our 15 ton stake trucks pulls off to the side of the road, as field crew we pull up and start checking it out after about 5 minutes we found that the throttle return spring was so worn out that it had no spring and the truck could not idle down, so I take my set of blousing straps (in the navy we use fabric rubber bands to blouse the bottoms of our pants instead of tucking them into the boot on our BDU's or CUU's or NWU's whichever term they use each year) and wrap them multiple times around the throttle return they are just springy enough to work, the truck made it the whole 6 weeks of training without needing any more work.
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Old 07-14-2016, 10:40   #408
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Generators

I wasn't exactly sure where to post this question, but I wanted to ask y'all for any recommendations regarding a generator. Application requirement is to power appliances in the house during blackouts or other outages. My family's home is in an area that recently lost a substation and has had power issues in the past.

I'm not home all the time, but the wife and kids are. We keep a deep freezer full of meat and my home barely gets above 80 in the hottest months, so I'm not really concerned with AC, but it would be nice to run it once my wife falls asleep - she likes the house at 80. I like the house at 64 - as do the kids. We compromise at 76 (not much of a compromise, huh? - happy wife, happy life) In the winter, the house gets down to about 60 if we do not run any heat. We have gas heat with an electric air handler unit.

My limited research has led me to believe that I need at least 5000w for the appliances and about 8000w if I want to add the HVAC into the mix. Most recommendations also point to gas for simplicity sake. I have a budget of ~$2k. Most generators I've priced are in the $500 and above range.

What are your recommendations? What brand? What power? As far as implementation and hook up is concerned - how would you go about it? What mistakes have you learned from? What other considerations am I overlooking?
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Old 07-14-2016, 11:25   #409
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I wasn't exactly sure where to post this question, but I wanted to ask y'all for any recommendations regarding a generator. Application requirement is to power appliances in the house during blackouts or other outages. My family's home is in an area that recently lost a substation and has had power issues in the past.

I'm not home all the time, but the wife and kids are. We keep a deep freezer full of meat and my home barely gets above 80 in the hottest months, so I'm not really concerned with AC, but it would be nice to run it once my wife falls asleep - she likes the house at 80. I like the house at 64 - as do the kids. We compromise at 76 (not much of a compromise, huh? - happy wife, happy life) In the winter, the house gets down to about 60 if we do not run any heat. We have gas heat with an electric air handler unit.

My limited research has led me to believe that I need at least 5000w for the appliances and about 8000w if I want to add the HVAC into the mix. Most recommendations also point to gas for simplicity sake. I have a budget of ~$2k. Most generators I've priced are in the $500 and above range.

What are your recommendations? What brand? What power? As far as implementation and hook up is concerned - how would you go about it? What mistakes have you learned from? What other considerations am I overlooking?
You will not be running much in the way of home appliances for $2,000. If that was my budget, I would probably go for a small Honda or Yamaha, which you would need to run extension cords to your desired appliances.

The cheap, gasoline powered 5,000 watt portable generators are a very short- term solution, and will burn 10 or more gallons of gas per day in continuous operation. They are not intended for constant runs or a long life span. It might get you through an extended outage, but not if you run it long and hard to replace commercial power. I had one while I was saving up to buy the whole house system.

If you are looking for a whole house generator, the smallest ones I am aware of are 5,000-8,000 watts and are not likely to support a whole house load plus an AC unit. Figure one of those would probably set you back $3,000 to $5,000, minimum, plus an electrician for a day or so and an LP tech to plumb the gas. You might possibly pick up a used unit for a few thousand, but that can be a crapshoot. You would need an Automatic Transfer Switch if you want it to kick in automatically when the power goes out. You would also need a steady supply of Natural gas, or at least a 500 gallon LP tank for a two-week power outage event. I would plan for a morning run of a couple of hours, and an evening run of a couple of hours as well, which should stretch your supply to at least a couple of months. I recommend the Kohler brand, the Generacs tend to be problematic. That would allow you to run your core appliances to keep your food from spoiling, and maybe a window AC. I have a 14KW, and it will just barely allow our 5 ton heat pump to come on, if no other heavy loads are on-line. Everything with an electric motor takes several times its normal running load to start up. You can manually switch on heavy loads as the others drop back, or use an automatic load-shedding device. We have almost everything on the 14KW Kohler, minus the other heat pumps, the water heaters, the stove, and the dryer. we were probably $8,000 to $10,000 getting our system up and running. We could probably have run everything on a 20,000 watt unit, but the increased cost and fuel consumption ruled it out for us.

Best of luck, hope that helps.

TR
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Old 07-14-2016, 11:38   #410
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That is exactly the kind of feedback and info I needed - thank you. I will most likely have to go the temporary route for now and budget the bigger unit for later. I'm renovating soon, and will have an electrician and a plumber on site in a few months. Sounds like that will be an ideal time to do any wiring or other work to at least stub something in. Appreciate the info, TR!
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Old 07-14-2016, 12:06   #411
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That is exactly the kind of feedback and info I needed - thank you. I will most likely have to go the temporary route for now and budget the bigger unit for later. I'm renovating soon, and will have an electrician and a plumber on site in a few months. Sounds like that will be an ideal time to do any wiring or other work to at least stub something in. Appreciate the info, TR!
Identify the circuits you want on emergency power, and have the electrician put them all in a separate service panel, if he can.

I had all of the outlets and lights put on the generator supply, and plan to turn off loads as they are not needed. The plumber should be able to run the gas to your future generator location. Gensets do tend to be somewhat noisy (about the same as a mower), so I would not put them outside a bedroom window. If you go with a conventional gasoline generator in the meanwhile, the electrician should be able to put the connections where you need them and set-up the generator service panel for a quick installation.

My wife loves it when the lights go out and ten seconds later, everything comes back on, without getting out of the chair.

If you buy a used gas model for the short term, you may be able to get most of your money back when you replace it. Give it a long test run, under load before paying for it.

TR
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Old 07-14-2016, 13:45   #412
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Identify the circuits you want on emergency power, and have the electrician put them all in a separate service panel, if he can.

I had all of the outlets and lights put on the generator supply, and plan to turn off loads as they are not needed. The plumber should be able to run the gas to your future generator location. Gensets do tend to be somewhat noisy (about the same as a mower), so I would not put them outside a bedroom window. If you go with a conventional gasoline generator in the meanwhile, the electrician should be able to put the connections where you need them and set-up the generator service panel for a quick installation.

My wife loves it when the lights go out and ten seconds later, everything comes back on, without getting out of the chair.

If you buy a used gas model for the short term, you may be able to get most of your money back when you replace it. Give it a long test run, under load before paying for it.
Roger that! I will post back to this if/when I have more questions. Hopefully, others will learn through shared experiences.
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Old 07-14-2016, 14:48   #413
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Roger that! I will post back to this if/when I have more questions. Hopefully, others will learn through shared experiences.
We’re on the other end of the spectrum from TR. Being off-grid solar, we never have long-term outages like people in hurricane or ice storm areas. With periods of extended cloud cover, we just need to remove the load from the system to allow the batteries to catch up with demand. This is never more than 6 to 8 hours, but is always during the day. We have several generators: a 2000kW Honda, a 3.5kW Champion, and two 5.5kW Generacs (one inop at the moment).

Our house was built to be energy efficient with extra insulation, 6” walls, all Energy Star appliances, and LED lights throughout.

Before the solar system was up and running, we ran the whole house with the Champion for roughly 16 hours a day for 4 and a half months. We could not run large appliances simultaneously. So we retired the Champion and added the first Generac. We can run most things simultaneously except the washing machine and microwave. (For some odd reason the dishwasher will not work with the Generac.) One note: our heat-pump system is a Daikin ductless mini-split system which does a very good job and only uses about 300 watts once the house is cooled. We turn it on while the indoor temperature is below our thermostat temp, that’s an advantage of living in the desert, it cools drastically at night.

Next week we are installing a Kohler 8kW automatic LP gennie that will only help charge the batteries on those pesky overcast days (which have been bad the last 8 months or so.)

Good luck!

Pat
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Old 07-17-2016, 18:30   #414
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We’re on the other end of the spectrum from TR. Being off-grid solar, we never have long-term outages like people in hurricane or ice storm areas. With periods of extended cloud cover, we just need to remove the load from the system to allow the batteries to catch up with demand. This is never more than 6 to 8 hours, but is always during the day. We have several generators: a 2000kW Honda, a 3.5kW Champion, and two 5.5kW Generacs (one inop at the moment).

Our house was built to be energy efficient with extra insulation, 6” walls, all Energy Star appliances, and LED lights throughout.

Before the solar system was up and running, we ran the whole house with the Champion for roughly 16 hours a day for 4 and a half months. We could not run large appliances simultaneously. So we retired the Champion and added the first Generac. We can run most things simultaneously except the washing machine and microwave. (For some odd reason the dishwasher will not work with the Generac.) One note: our heat-pump system is a Daikin ductless mini-split system which does a very good job and only uses about 300 watts once the house is cooled. We turn it on while the indoor temperature is below our thermostat temp, that’s an advantage of living in the desert, it cools drastically at night.

Next week we are installing a Kohler 8kW automatic LP gennie that will only help charge the batteries on those pesky overcast days (which have been bad the last 8 months or so.)

Good luck!

Pat
Thanks, Pat! That's great info. When we sell this house, we plan to build and going off-grid is definitely a priority for us. I'll dog ear this and loop back to it, though I'm sure some technologies will shift, but the concepts should be similar. In the meantime, I gotta get something quick and in a hurry b/c we're on rolling 4 hr black outs at the moment, sometimes twice a day. I have a couple deep freezers full of meat so there's that. Thanks again!
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Old 07-17-2016, 19:22   #415
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Thanks, Pat! That's great info. When we sell this house, we plan to build and going off-grid is definitely a priority for us. I'll dog ear this and loop back to it, though I'm sure some technologies will shift, but the concepts should be similar. In the meantime, I gotta get something quick and in a hurry b/c we're on rolling 4 hr black outs at the moment, sometimes twice a day. I have a couple deep freezers full of meat so there's that. Thanks again!
I wasn't pushing off-grid, just pointing out that a 5.5 kW can run your house for short outages and longer if needed. But, get a battery start for your wife. The problem on my new Generac is that the pull cord is very long and my wife can't start it.

Also, as TR said, you can run extension cords from important appliances to a power strip and use a smaller gennie. But, if you want it to run the whole house through the service panel, you'll need a transfer switch which is another couple of hundred dollars. If you are in a crowded neighborhood and need a more quiet solution, look into an inverter generator like the Honda EU2000i. There are some cheaper knock-offs now that are OK.

If noise is no problem, I can recommend Champion. They are made in China, but customer service is in the U.S. and they respond quickly (I only had a problem with the pneumatic tires going flat and they replaced them with solid tires.). They also make a inverter knock-off but I have no experience with it.

Good luck.

Pat
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Old 07-18-2016, 10:57   #416
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DIYPatriot,

Your message box is full.

Pat
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Old 07-18-2016, 11:27   #417
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O Rings

Missing O rings and certain gaskets can be replaced with USB Cables or other electrical cords. I had one hold up on a power steering unit for 9 months. It worked great.
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Old 04-06-2017, 17:55   #418
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Sometimes only Duck tape will do

Occurred right before service. TGF duck tape.
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Old 06-19-2017, 10:08   #419
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Some Serious Fishing Going On Here

I'll just leave this right here...
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Old 06-19-2017, 10:34   #420
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I'll just leave this right here...
You know, if he cammies that contraption and calls it a "Tactical Fishing Rig" he'll make a few million.

Just saying.........
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