Jump to content

2020-21 Winter weather; bring it on

Parliament

By Parliament
in Daily Texan

 Share

Recommended Posts

Mrs Whiggins

Mrs Whiggins 13050

Posted
Posted

We have food and occasional power and as the house temp has not dropped into the forties we are going to ride this out; I’m a little concerned about Wednesday though. Are we talking straight snow, wintry mix, snow cats and thunderdogs? We are considering throwing more bags of assorted garden product against the north foundation as an insulator while the weather has a break. Worth it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 5.4k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

SubliminalHorn
SubliminalHorn

Power back on. 109 hours. I almost want to cry a little 

Machinator
Machinator
BradInATX
BradInATX

I've actually been turning my heat up a degree every time a new Surly member loses power on this thread. It's a nice balmy 94 in here.

Posted Images

utexas8

utexas8 1463

Posted
Posted

Anybody in west Texas? Midland here and on hour 30 something. Luckily parents have power. One of them just got it back after 6pm last night. The other one never lost it. Got down to 40 last night in the house. We have been house jumping. So tired. We were in a RV. Was pretty good since the propane never went out but lost water. Then grey tank froze. It’s been rough. I’m exhausted. We have 4wd. Thinking about heading to El Paso. Have a friend who is stuck up there and they have never lost power.

Also broke into my friends house in midland who is stuck in El Paso. They gave us consent because their neighborhood never lost power. Surprisingly easy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tokamak

tokamak 6433

Posted
Posted
18 minutes ago, Michael Knight said:

 

Yeah this ain't have shit to do with wind energy. ERCOT tweeted this morning that they have some wind and solar coming back, but nothing but empty promises regarding thermal generation. Of course my in-laws didn't miss the opportunity to call my wife from their nicely heated home in Colorado to rant about gReEN eNErGY!! Every. Fucking. Thing. just has to be politicized nowadays.

 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Captainant

Captainant 27716

Posted
Posted

I'm glad power held out as long as it did for us, our 3 story townhome has been dropping temp like a rock. I measured floor and ceiling temps in the low 60s this morning and we're already at low 50s and can see our breath indoors.

The inlaws out in Rosenberg have power, well water, and a generator to keep things going. We may make a break for it at 3 or 4 and take my 4wd jeep out to their place with the dogs

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted (edited)
10 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

 

@slorch

So 23% of power production is shut off with the turbines. The other part of the power grid should be able to maintain through a weather event on a scale that basically none of us have ever seen in our lifetime. Right?
LO freaking L at Bloomberg approaching objectivity.

Edited by slorch
Link to comment
Share on other sites
SquishMitten

SquishMitten 10422

Posted
Posted

What's the word on downtown, stripmalls, dealerships, etc blasting through electricity? I know the Dallas skyline went dark, but has anybody else done so? Shutting down all that shit would do an enormous amount of good. If the gubmint ain't gonna do anything about it, property management companies could be a real game changer if they can get their maintenance folks on site. Anybody work high up at companies like that? It'd also be pretty damn good PR for any company managing a lot of commercial property. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Anastasis

Anastasis 23481

Posted
Posted
29 minutes ago, vicerous said:

Wife works for IBM and they're gonna comp a few nights of hotel. Question - if I'm leaving for a few days and want to kill water supply & drain, will pilot mode on the water heaters be enough? Should I just turn them off entirely?

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk
 

Just turn them off and relight when you get home imo. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Newdoc

Newdoc 3448

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

According to the ercot graph, demand starts to peak in early afternoon. When it's still daylight and temp should be peaking. 

Any ideas what's up with that? 

Trying to heat the pool up to 75 so I can swim this afternoon. Sorry for partying.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
  • Haha 2
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Popular Post
GhostOfTomJoad

GhostOfTomJoad 9347

Posted
  • Popular Post
Posted

How bad do you suck at math and/or reading,@slorch? Wind is operating at about 2/3rds of its planned output. The impact to the outage per ERCOT is 2,000 MW.

Thermal plants (NG, coal, nuke) are producing 35,000 - 40,000 of the 70,000 MWs ERCOT plans on.

Which failure is having a bigger impact?

  • Hook 'Em 8
  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
boilerhorn

boilerhorn 1398

Posted
Posted

ERCOT needs to be massively reviewed/restructured/dismantled after this.  When you are less reliable than Spectrum, Comcast, Suddenlink, ATT, Sprint, and Verizon you have failed.

As has been said here already, we knew this was coming.  ERCOT knew demand would rise.  It takes about 3x the energy to run an electric heater over an AC and 50% of Texas homes have electric heat.  Simple math says, "Hey we might have demand higher than peak summer."  Let's fire up the reserves...

The whole "Demand exceeds supply.  It's your fault, consumers" mantra is a load of inexcusable crap.

  • Hook 'Em 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites
crimsonlonghorn

crimsonlonghorn 2306

Posted
Posted
43 minutes ago, utexas8 said:

Anybody in west Texas? Midland here and on hour 30 something. Luckily parents have power. One of them just got it back after 6pm last night. The other one never lost it. Got down to 40 last night in the house. We have been house jumping. So tired. We were in a RV. Was pretty good since the propane never went out but lost water. Then grey tank froze. It’s been rough. I’m exhausted. We have 4wd. Thinking about heading to El Paso. Have a friend who is stuck up there and they have never lost power.

Also broke into my friends house in midland who is stuck in El Paso. They gave us consent because their neighborhood never lost power. Surprisingly easy.

My dad in Snyder says they haven’t lost power. Same with brother in Lubbock, who happens to work for the electric coop and was sending “oh shit” texts early yesterday morning before it became obvious to normal people what was about to happen. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Orange&White

Orange&White 5528

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

Our friend is the executive chef at the Driskill. He's stayed on site the last 2 nights because it was too risky for him to drive back up to CP. It's just him and one other cook in the kitchen. They had a borderline record day for breakfast yesterday. Last night they had 400 rooms filled, the most since COVID hit. They're running out of supplies at a rapid pace.

Those poor folks staying at the Driskill. I hope they are able to eat. T&Ps.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
BradInATX

BradInATX 9208

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

How bad do you suck at math and/or reading,@slorch? Wind is operating at about 2/3rds of its planned output. The impact to the outage per ERCOT is 2,000 MW.

Thermal plants (NG, coal, nuke) are producing 35,000 - 40,000 of the 70,000 MWs ERCOT plans on.

Which failure is having a bigger impact?

 

I'm not sure where he got those numbers either. Wind running at 4,000 MW out of 6,000 is 23% of a 30,000+ MW shortage?

  • Hook 'Em 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
tokamak

tokamak 6433

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, boilerhorn said:

ERCOT needs to be massively reviewed/restructured/dismantled after this.  When you are less reliable than Spectrum, Comcast, Suddenlink, ATT, Sprint, and Verizon you have failed.

As has been said here already, we knew this was coming.  ERCOT knew demand would rise.  It takes about 3x the energy to run an electric heater over an AC and 50% of Texas homes have electric heat.  Simple math says, "Hey we might have demand higher than peak summer."  Let's fire up the reserves...

The whole "Demand exceeds supply.  It's your fault, consumers" mantra is a load of inexcusable crap.

Not so fast my friend. My Comcast internet has been down all day. They would never miss out on an opportunity like this.

10 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

Would.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
crimsonlonghorn

crimsonlonghorn 2306

Posted
Posted (edited)

Goddamit.
 

I turned off and drained the water at the farm and barndo on Sunday. We were looking forward to turning it back on this afternoon and having hot showers and flushing toilets... walked outside a few minutes ago and saw water on the ground under the sediment filter. I didn’t think to take that off Sunday and now the saturated filter froze and cracked the housing. No water today because now I gotta heat it up and get it off and then find a new housing before we can turn it back on
 

in the grand scheme of things it’s minor and there’s no ancillary damage and it will be easy to fix, but in the grand scheme of things it’s extremely annoying. 
 

 

C02289FC-C7B3-407F-8BC5-F216366DA875.jpeg

Edited by crimsonlonghorn
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Shoxthemonkey

Shoxthemonkey 1982

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Zepol87 said:

Mom is still without power in Decatur. She was using the car to warm up and charge things but then the garage door froze shut. We were getting worried about her doing something dumb like running the car with it closed but she got it open somehow. This shit sucks

Just as a PSA, there should be a red cord that hangs from the garage door opening system whether it's chain or track. You can pull that cord to release the door from the powered track. The door can then be manually operated. When it is ready to be returned to auto service you can close the door and use a short push stick or flat ended tool to re-engage the mechanism to the track or chain. No reason to be trapped because the power is out.

One other thing, Do this when the door is closed. If you pull the cord while the door is open it could fall to the closed position and kill or injure a pet or child standing in the way. Don't do that.

Edited by Shoxthemonkey
safety and shit
  • Hook 'Em 6
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
crimsonlonghorn

crimsonlonghorn 2306

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, CleverNickname said:

20 hours, not expecting coming back today. Trickling inside pipes, wrapped (foam, towel, covered in bucket or tub). Thinking i will cut water today. Anything I need to do with gas water heater (garage) after I run faucets dry?

Turn it down to the lowest setting and let your hot water trickle. Some would advise to turn it completely off and relight later, which isn’t a bad option either. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
washparkhorn

washparkhorn 9939

Posted
Posted
37 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

According to the ercot graph, demand starts to peak in early afternoon. When it's still daylight and temp should be peaking. 

Any ideas what's up with that? 

People preparing for the cold night ahead - from warming their own bones to warming pipes with hairdryers - would be my guess.  It is what I would be doing. 

good luck all of you in harm's way.  Pulling out tents to create small heat envelopes within your space is wise.

Apollo 13 situation right now - it will end, but this is extreme.  Help each other when you are able.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
texhorn

texhorn 351

Posted
Posted
What is the verdict on vehicles - I've got a 2013 F150 sitting in the street and i'm curious if i should fire it up and run around the block, or wait for it to warm up on friday.  Anything to look out for?

Dead battery is probably the biggest concern if it’s old... otherwise cars can handle the cold.
  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
washparkhorn

washparkhorn 9939

Posted
Posted
25 minutes ago, Shoxthemonkey said:

Just as a PSA, there should be a red cord that hangs from the garage door opening system whether it's chain or track. You can pull that cord to release the door from the powered track. The door can then be manually operated. When it is ready to be returned to auto service you can close the door and use a short push stick or flat ended tool to re-engage the mechanism to the track or chain. No reason to be trapped because the power is out.

Also, the flexible seal at the bottom of garage door will freeze to the floor with wintry weather. I had a flexible ruler to run along the bottom of the door to free up the garage door. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
wildcat09

wildcat09 29361

Posted
Posted
28 minutes ago, Storm the Field said:

Centerpoint outage numbers in Houston finally trending ever so slightly in the right direction. After dropping to 39% of customers with power (1.46M without) as of 10 AM, now back up to 44% (1.34M) Was in the mid-50's when I fell asleep shivering under a mountain of blankets last night.

Rumor has it their new plan is to just have half the city alternate days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
fuggled

fuggled 576

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

According to the ercot graph, demand starts to peak in early afternoon. When it's still daylight and temp should be peaking. 

Any ideas what's up with that? 

Yeah, those aren't real projections.  I watched it yesterday and they kept pushing that peak further and further out over the course of the day.  I think that demand is based on turning everyone back on.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
captcha

captcha 50

Posted
Posted

I just typed up my scenario and some dumb questions asking for advice, but decided to go do some research before posting. I have been following this thread off and on and haven't seen a lot of chatter about what actually causes a pipe to burst. Maybe I just missed it. I was assuming it was ice expanding beyond what the pipe could handle, like a beer in the freezer, but come to find out that isn't what usually causes them to burst. Although it can. Most often it is the pressure build up in the pipe caused by the ice and not the ice itself.

 

This leads me to believe that my outdoor faucet that's not turning on isn't as dire a situation as I had thought because that faucet is likely a dead end to my plumbing. At least, I think it is. If the frozen pipe is at the end, it seems the pressure shouldn't be a problem as long as I have an upstream sink partially open to relieve that pressure. I don't know what I'm talking about, so this could be total bullshit. Seems to make sense though.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing


Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!

×
×
  • Create New...