How the weather?

[Daniel Wood]

Well, it's finally here. It reached 98° today (Saturday) and it's 75° with the humidity of 76. They're saying 97° for Sunday and it's supposed to start raining Tuesday through Friday. Temperatures are not going to drop until Wednesday with a high of 88°.

It's awful early in the year for us to be having this kind of weather. I'm pretty sure August is going to be really tough.

[olddog]

It's been real close to 90 the last few days. Humidity feels very high. It makes working outside miserable.

[thcardoc]

I've long promoted AC in the shop to other shop owners. The productivity/efficiency that I don't lose on any one day pays for the AC all month. We have to be disciplined about the doors, just like we do in winter, but its well worth the effort.

[Daniel Wood]

Well, it's HOT and August ain't here yet!

[Porcupine]

99 degrees today. humidex of 104 to 105.

While I love the heat I do have limits. As long as I'm pumping ice cold water, I'm happy

[Daniel Wood]

We've been flirting with a triple digit and it finally hit us today. 101° and it's 89° right now. It's supposed to get down to 72°, but if it does, has to be about 3:00 in the morning.

2 counties here in Mississippi are under a no burn ban. First time I've heard of it since I moved here in 74. I'm pretty sure it's tough everywhere.

That humidity sucks!

[Porcupine]

Watching the forecast every night we hope for rain and then they call for some sort of rain. I've seen more moisture from someone sweating than the amount of rain we get. We're just shy of a drought stage.

Lawns everywhere are turning brown
Temps have been averaging high 80s low to mid 90s with that higher humidex.
Still, it beats winter every time I think about it.

Weather reporters and politicians. They tell you one thing and you get another.

[olddog]

Very hot and dry here. Friday 6/29 hit 101F then two or more storm fronts crashed together. We had 80 Mph straight line winds. Trees are down everywhere. Limbs 2 feet in diameter snapped out of trees like toothpicks. Chimneys blown off of roofs. It looked like the aftermath of a hurricane.

Most power lines are down. Very little power still on in most counties around us. A few grocery stores were open by generators. You can imagine the lines. Over the week end there was only two gas stations in the county with power and another running on a generator. 2 hour wait in line to buy gasoline. About a half dozen more are now up and running. Lines are very long.

I have a generator, but gasoline is hard to come buy so I have not ran it any more than necessary. It is only 5500 watts, so it will not handle the air conditioner. Over 90 in the house during the day and only dropped to 82 over night Sunday. Last night I was able to wedge a nasty dirty old fan from the garage into a window and got it down to 74 this morning. I have to run the generator at night as my wife and I both have sleep apnea and use CPAP machines, so its no problem to run the fan at night. It's a bear during the day to leave the generator off most of the time.

They are starting to get power back up to Hospitals and the bigger cities today. Radio says it may be 7/8/12 before all power is restored. I have to say the local radio station has passed out more unverified inaccurate information than the rumors at a nymphomaniac convention.

I have not heard of one case of looting or witnessed any rude behavior. The people have been great.

[Daniel Wood]

I have a generator that I can plug directly into the house (don't have to use a lot of extension cords) and all I have to do is move the lever on the junction box underneath my meter that I had installed to. And I had a 12,000 BTU window unit put in my dining room for a backup just in case my central unit went out.

The generator is strong enough to run my refrigerator, freezer, window unit, TV and lights. It was really nice last summer when we lost electricity for 8 hours.

But, I thought I was going to have to mortgage my home to pay for gas.

I'm just glad that you and your wife are ok.

I forgot to mention that the window unit only cools the dining room and the front part of the house. Doesn't bother me to sleep in the living room. We block off the hallway to the bedrooms.

[vetteonr]

Originally Posted by olddog

It is only 5500 watts, so it will not handle the air conditioner.

2 weeks ago our power went out and I borrowed my neighbors generator (that's right, across the street had power, go figure). It's a 5000 watt unit and it powered my air, fridge, fan, a couple of lamps without any problem. I have to get me one of those.

[olddog]

My Central air conditioner has a 40 amp breaker and #8 wire going to it. Not sure how many amps it actually pulls, but I expect it would be over 30 amp. Furnace blower likely pulls between 5 and 10 amp, so I'm certain the 25 amp continuous duty a 5500 watt generator puts out is not enough.

Last year I was at a yard sale and very nice remote controlled window air conditioner, like new, was $40. I tried to get a friend to buy it (that could use it), and we walked away. It sure would be nice to have it now. I think I am going to get one (maybe 2 or 3) that my generator can handle and put it in the garage. Then under these conditions I could move them to the house.

I am using about 6 gallons a day - a little under $20. I expect if I ran it round the clock and with more load, I would be using 10-12 gallons a day. I can tell you that you just cannot have enough gasoline sitting around to do you any good. When all power is down, buying gasoline is not always possible, and for sure a real pain. If you have natural gas at your house, it is the way to go. I expect natural gas would be cheaper than gasoline, as gasoline has 65 cents road tax on it here.

[vetteonr]

Yeah, I didn't realize it was central air. I have two window units because I have a boiler for a heating system and have no duct work. It's a good trade off because the window units do a great job as my house is surrounded by trees. Plus, I really like a hot water heating system.

[Daniel Wood]

Originally Posted by vetteonr

It's a 5000 watt unit

I have a portable 6500 and it comes in real handy when we lose power. I tried one time using my central unit just to see if it would work. With the refrigerator and freezer, it put a really heavy load on the generator but it kept going. I don't believe it would've lasted very long though.

Also, you can't run anything with heat like a hair dryer or the central heat. So when we dry clothes, we have to turn off the refrigerator and freezer and and everything else off so that it doesn't put a heavy load on mine. And I had a Infra-red heater (hope I spelled that right) installed (again, mainly for backup in case the central heat went out) and it keeps the front part of the house warm. I had a five grid but it was too hot (low was one grid, medium was three grid, and high was all five) sometimes one wasn't enough and three was to much and five, you just couldn't stand it because I had it installed in the living room. So I traded it for a three grid and it does pretty good as long as I don't lose natural gas and that happened a long time ago. Long story!

I was told and I don't know if this is true or not. But just using one grid will burn for 16 hours on 1 gallon of propane. Natural gas is measured by the yard so I don't know how to break that down. But at any rate, that's cheap just to keep your house warm.

[Porcupine]

Today's temp averaged 97F degrees witha humidex of 104.

Too many people whine about the heat, but I'm hearing more and more that love it. I love it too...to a limit.

I used a laser thermometer and the driveway registered 137F.
I tried the old egg-fry trick. I saw a couple of tiny, tiny spots where the egg-white started to turn white as though being cooked.
I would say for sure that given a higher temp we would have had better results. This was an experiment done for the kids. I venture to say that had I put a steel plate or piece of tin on the same spot I may have gotten better results. Just a fun thing to do with the kids

[Daniel Wood]

Originally Posted by Porcupine

Today's temp averaged 97F degrees witha humidex of 104.

Too many people whinje about the heat, but I'm hearing kore and more that love it. I love it too...to a limit.

Dem dar sum fancying spilling wards dar Poraupine. Ya sur ya knot ah koona.s.s lke me ¿