Well howdy there internet peeps who are still battening down their hatches for Winter's last gasp of icy fingers gripping us all.
A FB friend or two in the Twin Cities in MinneSNOWta showed they got about a 5 gallon bucket high snowfall yesterday.
Here in NE Indiana, it's mostly WIIIIIIIIIIIND and cold. I went for a walk this morning around the neighborhood. From the wind earlier in the weekend, we had a Privacy fence panel along East edge of the complex get blown over. It's leaning precariously. One 8ft piece of the new faux cedar siding come loose on a building in a different area, and some flashing along one of the flat roofs come loose.
Well, today it seems like a pine tree had decided to go on walkabout, and one of his buddies lassoed him to keep him stable. Maintenance put up caution tape to keep folks from the walk-path until our tree guys get out to remove the tree.
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In other news, I had to take the old man cat out to get his arthritis shot. That's a five minute visit. Takes longer to drive and park than the visit takes, and the vet is less than a mile away.
Also, I've been looking at Solar Generators for backup power. City Prepping (dude named Kris) on Youtube does a good job of covering the major off-grid or Grid-down needs. His channel helped me get a long range plan on what we need to survive a tornado or straight line wind event like we had a couple of years ago, when the grid is down for multiple days.
But, baby steps. We have the budget to get some solar generators, aka, battery packs that can run fridges and a solar panel or two for recharging them.
The initial step was to purchase enough to run our smaller fridge, and some home essentials like a fan, and coffee maker as well as keeping the internet/wifi running. I spent some time looking at Anker, Jackery, Bluetti and a few others. Part of the decision was which one did I eventually want to add if we decide to add a smart panel and in-home batteries? I kept coming back to Anker and Jackery.
So looking at what was best bang for the buck NOW on getting batteries in hand to handle a day or longer outage, I purchased this:
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And another of the same C1000 Gen 2. We can keep one on the fridge in grid down, and the other for the incidentals. Then charge either with our dual fuel generator, or solar.
Since I can't have fixed Solar installed (condos and HOA), I have to have portable solar. I'll probably pick up some of the cheaper panels off amazon and have a bigger array of them ready to deploy as needed. And Add a larger battery or two down the road when we get the budget for the next investment.
Now, the question becomes: Will the HOA let us put in a Generac Nat Gas Backup generator. That's going to be pricy. Utilities come in on the "front" of the condo...and IF the HOA allows it, the generator will have to be at the back of the condo. That'll be a run of about 40 feet of romex to get from the generator to the breaker box zone.
So, I'm considering some of the still portable, but larger "Solar Generators". I need to get an electrician out and see if our breaker panel installed in 1974 is going to have to be upgraded, and what's allowable by code and budget.
Fortunately, we get a nice check from my wife's mother every year. She's trying to gift to her kids before the inheritance taxes become real. That check will pay for a large part of whatever we decide to do.
OK, back to laundry. Everybody hang on until Heatmiser kicks his brother outta here.
