According to the news I saw today, five eastern states are suffering from storm aftermath and stiffling heat.

Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, DC and Ohio have a total of 3 million people without power and the temperatures there range from the 90's to 104 F.

Fortunately, matoso and plix are in the non-affected areas of Ohio. However, Wetherman, our chat moderator, is caught in it and has been offline two days now.

Here's hoping they survive the heat till power is restored in a week to ten days (current news estimates).

That's a tough situation to be in, especially with the heat. Not to mention having to helplessly watch all your refrigerated and frozen food spoil before your eyes. Living in an elevator equipped building with windows that don't open must be almost like being entombed, especially if you are on an upper floor.

We had a similar situation last summer. A wind storm brought down trees on power lines all over our area. We were without power for 5 1/2 days. But we fared better than most because we cook and heat water with natural gas and have two 2200 watt generators. Not big enough to run anything that requires 240 volt power so no AC, but big enough to run our two refrigerator/freezers, microwave, coffee maker, some fans, some lights and most importantly, the sump pump (not all at the same time). We have municipal water supply so no need to run a well. We were also fortunate that it wasn't beastly hot and cooled down enough at night to sleep comfortably. The generators were a godsend but noisy and expensive to run. The noise wasn't a problem because there were enough neighbors running their own. We spent almost $180 on gasoline running those two small generators about 15 hours a day. Being without TV or internet wasn't the horror you might think and was probably good for cleansing the brain. I'll admit to going to the local McDonalds a couple mornings to take advantage of their free wireless connection. Bonus, no filters!

Best wishes to those folks out East.

I have been in that myself, when living in the Santa Cruz mt. a big redwood came down the mountain and took out the main power source for the canyon, we were without power for 5 days. I took my food up to a friends house which was about 100 ft from the slide and crash area and used his generator and frig etc. then packed up my stuff and went fishing.

Think about this for a minute, 100 years ago and before we did not have electricity. WHAT ! how did they survive?

River

move to the west coast states

cool hardly any sun with temperatures in the 70s

no storms just gentle rains and boring weather with eternal spring and no summer...got to love climate change...we are on our 3rd year of this strange type of new summer

you can run a big screen tv for 8 hours on a car battery and a jerry rigged computer apc

then recharge battery with jumper cables and run another 8 hours

no noise

How are you connecting them to the car battery? I never studied electricity, sorry...

Paolo wrote: Mon Jul 02, 2012 9:07 am How are you connecting them to the car battery? I never studied electricity, sorry...

You can usually just connect the positive lead to positive post, negative lead to negative post. If you use a good power inverter ( converts 12v DC to 110v AC) Those inverters are usually only about $50. They are sometimes called DC to AC Transformers.

I have no idea how to jury-rig an APC for a computer, though I know what it is. It is usually an uninterrupted power supply with its own battery system. In theory, the APC could still be charging from the 12v battery. It would just charge slower than if it were on a steady 110v AC.

A simple power inverter can do the same job for a lot less money.

I suppose the benefit of the APC is that you start from an already charged battery. (20 minutes to an hour of operation with no power.) You'd get slightly longer run time with no variation or dips in power.

Other than my couple trips to McDonalds to use their WI-FI we had no TV or internet for that 5 1/2 days last summer. We did novel things like read, talk to each other and listen to the radio. "Just like the olden days".

sduyck_2000 (imported) wrote: Mon Jul 02, 2012 6:56 am move to the west coast states

cool hardly any sun with temperatures in the 70s

no storms just gentle rains and boring weather with eternal spring and no summer...got to love climate change...we are on our 3rd year of this strange type of new summer

I wonder which western states you are referring to. I'm in Southern California and our temperatures the last week have been 95 F. ergo, too hot for me.

MacTheWolf (imported) wrote: Mon Jul 02, 2012 1:33 pm I wonder which western states you are referring to. I'm in Southern California and our temperatures the last week have been 95 F. ergo, too hot for me.

Oregon and Washington have been cloudy and cool, generally in the lower 70s in the Portland - Seattle areas, both of which I've been to during the last few days. I'm from Portland and was in Seattle yesterday. Today, I'm a little west of there on the Hood Canal. It's cloudy and cool where I am today. We're having some sprinkles and had some yesterday in Seattle. We've had little summer weather this year. Sduyck_2000 is also from Oregon.