wireless ac mains detection circuit

Cold? What's that? :>

(Actually, we had a string of four or five nights in the teens many years ago. But, for the most part, 28F is the coldest it gets, here -- and we are in one of the colder parts of town! I wear a short-sleeve T-shirt year round.)

Our services are below grade so rarely fail from "events". It is almost always equipment reaching EoL. No tree limbs falling on wires, drunks hitting poles, etc.

Gas furnace with forced air, gas water heater, electric stove/oven. Gas is more of an issue, for us -- the city lost its gas supply for a day, day-and-a-half a few years ago. There are few practical alternatives to it when it goes missing!

Of course, the reason for the outage was excessive demand due to an unusually cold few winter days. Not an outage as much as lack of adequate supply to maintain required delivery pressure (furnace would light and then quickly extinguish as the flame wasn't hot enough)

In a *power* outage, we'd have no problem as we could still power the furnace blower (circulating pump in your case) and control electronics.

And, keeping charcoal on hand (weatherproof/pestproof 5G buckets) means we can always cook something (frozen foods *tend* to need to be cooked before consumption)

But, charcoal can *only* be used to prepare meals. So, one could have a sh*tload of charcoal and still be in the dark! Hence the desire to move to dual-fuel.

We have a 6500W gas genset that probably has 5 hours on it! It's too big to run the smaller loads that we have (refrigerator, freezer) and too small to run the really BIG loads (ACbrrr).

So, it's taking up space that something else could probably better use.

The ideal solution would be a smaller unit and purchase a window ACbrrr to cool *one* room in the house if a prolonged outage. AFAICT, as you get older, you are physically less capable of tolerating those sorts of stressors (?)

What's amusing is how many people obviously are dependent on the power for health reasons (oxygen generators, refrigerated medications) yet, apparently, take no measures to safeguard those things!

Round here folks with that sort of need can get the utility to put in a subsidized natural-gas-powered automatic backup generator. A friend of ours across the street took three years or so to die of COPD awhile back, but at least his night-time vent worked 100%. (COPD is _not_ a fun way to go. Poor guy.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Only takes once.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Once you've been working double shifts for a week, up in a bucket truck in the freezing cold, I imagine you could easily start making mistakes. It's nice when the electrical code is trying to protect you.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Try ALS! :< Imagine knowing TODAY is the *best* day of the rest of your life (i.e., TOMORROW *will* be worse!) I've known a couple of people who went that way. Gotta give them credit for facing what's got to be a miserable reality (with very little realistic chance for a "cure" in the time you have left)

I wanna die peacefully, in my sleep. Like grandpa. Not screaming in terror like the people on the bus he was driving!

I've spent time in New Mexico, but can't stand Arizona. I'm from the Canadian Riviera, so dirt and rocks and baking heat aren't my thing. You folks do that well, though. ;)

I really like the weather here in downstate NY (*)--I nearly always wear golf shirts, and go to work in shorts and flipflops about 5 months of the year.

One January (2012ish) I was on my then-regular 1 week/month gig in Albuquerque. I had a VRBO that I rented most months--a beautiful 3-BR house in Placitas, at just over 6000 ft elevation on the western shoulder of Sandia Mountain, that looked out west over the Rio Grande valley. I could see probably 50 miles on a good day.

It had the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen, on account of the view and a bit of dust in the air. Just about every day before sunup, the whole view was dark purple and black. As the sun rose behind the mountain, a bright pink layer gradually descended over the purple-black mesas, until the sunlight hit the ground. It was like a pousse-cafe'. Amazing.

This January night, it was probably 10 degrees out, and as dry as dry. I left the bedroom window open a little and went to sleep. Around 2 AM I woke up because my throat was so dry I could hardly breathe. I went and stood in the shower until it all got unstuck, which took a fair while. Not fun.

So the desert isn't my natural habitat.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(*) Some folks think that 'upstate' begins at the Willis Avenue Bridge, but I take a more classically liberal view and say that the boundary is probably the Croton River. Some radicals think that it's I-84, but that's clearly upstate--just count the locals' heads. ;)

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the death of a pal I'd known for over 30 years, from ALS. No, it isn't pretty.

But unlike getting run over by a bus, or dying unexpectedly in one's sleep, it does give the opportunity to die prepared, if one is so inclined.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Exactly. You'll hear (some) electricians complaining that the Code exists just to make their lives more complicated: "What's wrong with stapling ROMEX to the facia boards on the house?"

There are what I call 'hot sitcks', battery powered devices that are about an inch in diameter and a few inches long battery powered. They have a LED that lights up when the stick is near a voltage. Put one of those next to the wires comming in from the transformer and put a WIFI camera facing it. When the LED comes on you know you have main power back.