Black outs - Austin and surrounding areas (Wimberley, Franklin: construction, public school)

[Dr.Mom]

Originally Posted by CptnRn

My gas fireplace has a simple valve you open and I light it with a long handled butane lighter. No electricity needed. It is not all that expensive to add a gas burner to any existing fireplace.

Thanks! We would definitely be retrofitting our fireplaces if we weren't planning to move soon. Good to hear that power is not out frequently in Austin.

[austinnerd]

And to keep things on topic. My parents heater went kaputsky after the power was restored yesterday morning. The tech is finally just now getting out there to have a look see (hey, a fireplace in Austin does come in handy some times). Luckily our house never lost power. Sounds like the utilities will have a few days to get their act together before the next, albeit not as bad, front comes blowing through next week.

[JayBrown80]

Originally Posted by austinnerd

And to keep things on topic. My parents heater went kaputsky after the power was restored yesterday morning. The tech is finally just now getting out there to have a look see (hey, a fireplace in Austin does come in handy some times). Luckily our house never lost power. Sounds like the utilities will have a few days to get their act together before the next, albeit not as bad, front comes blowing through next week.

I never understood fireplaces. They are pretty. But in all the houses I have owned that had one, I never noticed them heating up a room. Maybe I had really ineffecient ones?

[Bo]

Some posts above were deleted. Losing electricity is a major hassle. When discussing it here, aim your annoyance at the topic, instead of other members.

Also, this topic can easily spawn some tantalizing tangents, like how people lived in the pioneer days. Those aren't on topic in this thread. If I left any remnants of tangents like that, please don't reply to them.

[HappyTexan]

Originally Posted by JayBrown80

I never understood fireplaces. They are pretty. But in all the houses I have owned that had one, I never noticed them heating up a room. Maybe I had really ineffecient ones?

Fireplaces are more decorative than a real source of heat for the home.
Close up maybe..but they won't heat up a home like a wood burning stove will.

[austinnerd]

Originally Posted by JayBrown80

I never understood fireplaces. They are pretty. But in all the houses I have owned that had one, I never noticed them heating up a room. Maybe I had really ineffecient ones?

Actually most fireplaces in general are incredibly inefficient, that's just a fundamental flaw in their design (the bulk of the heat goes straight up the chimney). Luckily the one in my parents house was designed specifically to actually be functional, it has a chamber directly above the firebox that room air gets sucked into. The heat rises from the fire, warming the air in this chamber and a fan then blows this warmed air out into the room. It's a cool design. We only use the fireplace in our house for aesthetic considerations (gotta have a fire going on xmas morning while the kiddos open presents, mom and dad sip hot chocolate and Sinatra belts out "White Christmas"). The fireplaces like my parents are few and far between, at least here in Austin.

Wood stoves rock and roll. We had one years ago when we lived further north. Darn thing would get so hot that the walls of the stove would turn orange and get a bit translucent such that you could see the shadows of the wood inside. That bad boy cranked out some super serious BTU's when it was going full tilt. It helps to have a fan or something better distribute the heat, though it is still better than a fireplace. Just keep the kiddos and pets away!

[h886]

Originally Posted by Dr.Mom

Thanks! We would definitely be retrofitting our fireplaces if we weren't planning to move soon. Good to hear that power is not out frequently in Austin.

Yup, we've considered doing ours as well, but worry we wouldn't use it enough to make it worth it.

[verybadgnome]

Originally Posted by CptnRn

Austin Energy admits only some areas endured rolling blackouts

"Although Austin Energy officials had promised early Wednesday that the pain of the outages would be distributed "evenly throughout our service area," in practice only about 20 percent of its roughly 350 power circuits were subjected to the outages, city officials said Wednesday night."

My initial reaction to such a statement is that they knew 20% of the population would be shouldering the burden of the blackouts which is a lot of capacity to try to make up for in such small percentage of the population. Rolling blackouts should be neighborhood to neighborhood all over the city not neighborhoods 1 to 8 with only #1 and #2 being switched on and off. Hospitals are a sure exemption but beyond that and a few other critical functions it should be game on for just about everyone else.

"In the end, only about 75 of the city's approximately 350 circuits were deemed eligible for the blackouts."

I would like to ask someone as to why such an infrastructure was built that would allow such little flexibility in circumstances as we've had in the past few days.

"Many Austin Energy circuits contain special equipment necessary to maintain the grid stability, Clark said late Wednesday. Cutting off power to those circuits would jeopardize the entire system, he said."

Now that just sounds like a design flaw.

Sorry Austin Energy but I don't see why I should conserve electricity tonight when others are not asked to make any sacrifices and when inadequate planning was done on your part. That a grid system was built that would not allow specific non-critical areas to be cut off completely sounds like lack of foresight which is like, you know, part of your job.

[HappyTexan]

I'm TXU. We were subject to the rolling blackout but it was 20 minutes.
Maybe because I live out in the county and with only 3 homes on the road wouldn't really give that much back.

[verybadgnome]

And actually it did not do much good to repeatedly blackout our particular neighborhood in East Austin. Why? Because almost all of us have natural gas for heating resulting in less half the energy use of an electric heat home. Yes there is energy consumption for lighting and appliances but that is miniscule compared to an electric furnace trying to make up a 55 degree heat differential.