Hurricane Florence

[bigmike]

I’m seeing civilian MVs rescuing people. CNN posted a story about retired Marine Jason Weinmann and his deuce rescuing trapped residents.

 

[porkysplace]

I’m seeing civilian MVs rescuing people. CNN posted a story about retired Marine Jason Weinmann and his deuce rescuing trapped residents.

Link to the news story.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/14/us/hurricane-florence-new-bern-north-carolina/index.html

 

[NormB]

Thanks for the info. Glad everything went well for him and your home as well. Hopefully one of these soon to be 5-10 day outage folks in SE NC has a MEP and a whole bunch of diesel.

That’s the nice thing about the 802a. About a half gallon an hour at rated output. Do that 12 hours a day (AC, freezer/refrigerator, charge batteries), a fifty gallon drum can last a week - much longer if stretched, managed right. It’s what attracted me to the lower rated TQG in the first place.

Thinking through future needs I got an 803a. That gallon an hour figure isn’t as daunting once I’ve realized I’ve got 250 gallons of fuel oil by the house and diesel in several fifty gallon drums plus 20 in jerrry cans.

Could always raid the local high school’s backup genset fuel tank, neighbors’ tanks if worse came to worst like the zombies got ‘em.

God speed Carolinians.

 

[lonesouth]

That’s the nice thing about the 802a. About a half gallon an hour at rated output. Do that 12 hours a day (AC, freezer/refrigerator, charge batteries), a fifty gallon drum can last a week - much longer if stretched, managed right. It’s what attracted me to the lower rated TQG in the first place.

Thinking through future needs I got an 803a. That gallon an hour figure isn’t as daunting once I’ve realized I’ve got 250 gallons of fuel oil by the house and diesel in several fifty gallon drums plus 20 in jerrry cans.

Could always raid the local high school’s backup genset fuel tank, neighbors’ tanks if worse came to worst like the zombies got ‘em.

God speed Carolinians.

Fuel burn is roughly .1 gal/kWh, regardless of 802 or 803 or diesel or gas. The diesels seem to be about .01-.05 gal/kWh more efficient than the gas, but you can use .1 as a good rule of thumb. Doubt you would see any consequential variance between the 802 and an 803 for the same load.

 

[bikeman]

Checking in gang. I lost power for a little over a day. Unfortunately i got it back just in time to get a mandatory evac order. I'm currently cut off from my house. I was hoping to get back yesterday but they haven't actually announced the cresting of the Lower Little River yet.

I have two friends who have lost or will loose their houses. the road flooding around here is ridiculous. The long term issue is going to be not only the bridges themselves, but the surrounding earthworks. Thankfully, no big talk about dams breaking like during Matthew.

 

[gatorbob]

Fuel burn is roughly .1 gal/kWh, regardless of 802 or 803 or diesel or gas. The diesels seem to be about .01-.05 gal/kWh more efficient than the gas, but you can use .1 as a good rule of thumb. Doubt you would see any consequential variance between the 802 and an 803 for the same load.

So, in a fuel storage situation, I will actually benefit from running a 1000W load vs say a 2000W load? I had always mistakenly assumed there was some "minimum" fuel hit I would take whether it was idle at 0 load or using somewhere around 1/4 load.

Good info, thanks.

 

[DieselAddict]

There is a minimum fuel burn rate. Its around 0.15 GPH for a 802 and around 0.25 GPH for a 803. The fuel burn rate ramps up pretty linearly from there.

 

[NormB]

So, in a fuel storage situation, I will actually benefit from running a 1000W load vs say a 2000W load? I had always mistakenly assumed there was some "minimum" fuel hit I would take whether it was idle at 0 load or using somewhere around 1/4 load.
Good info, thanks.

Keep in mind you're more likely to get wet stacking if generator demand is under 25% of rated load, or about 1250watts for an MEP-802a, 2500W for an 803a. I just reread that somewhere in my notes, it's from an FM or TM, maybe a PM magazine, I forget where exactly.

 

[NDT]

Checking in gang. I lost power for a little over a day. Unfortunately i got it back just in time to get a mandatory evac order. I'm currently cut off from my house. I was hoping to get back yesterday but they haven't actually announced the cresting of the Lower Little River yet.

I have two friends who have lost or will loose their houses. the road flooding around here is ridiculous. The long term issue is going to be not only the bridges themselves, but the surrounding earthworks. Thankfully, no big talk about dams breaking like during Matthew.

Any immediate needs anyone can help with?

 

[lonesouth]

Keep in mind you're more likely to get wet stacking if generator demand is under 25% of rated load, or about 1250watts for an MEP-802a, 2500W for an 803a. I just reread that somewhere in my notes, it's from an FM or TM, maybe a PM magazine, I forget where exactly.

That is a concern if you're only running 10-30%, but if you're using 70% on your 802, you should be fine with an 803.

 

[DieselAddict]

Wetstacking fears are for the most part overblown. It absolutely is a real thing and does happen. It doesn't happen in 30 minutes of idle time. The units you see wetstacked with stuff ooozing out of the exhaust took many tens of hours with no load to get to that condition.

Since the group here will be running our units under emergency conditions and putting few hours on them per year (in relation to their primary mission before we got them) its not really a problem.

Its a simple thing to avoid. If you are running your unit under emergency conditions for a few days all you need to do is bake a cake or dry some laundry to clear things up before you put the unit to bed. If you have a load bank that is the ideal way to make sure the exhaust is tidy.

If you can load your unit up to full and don't see a lot of smoke beyond the normal haze when its working hard then you don't have a problem. You had enough heat in the exhaust while it was running to prevent buildup.

If you see some extra heavy smoke, let the unit run with as much load as it will take till it clears up. If you want to see what one looks like that has a severe case of wetstacking look at this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9cI1l77fbg

The unit in the video would run at most about 50% of full load. As bad as this one was it only took a few hours of stepping up the load a bit at a time to completely clear it up. When I was done it would pull full load+ (133%) with zero issues.

 

[bikeman]

Any immediate needs anyone can help with?

I'm tracking a few minor things, but not right this second. I'm working to get an ATV or something to help with my debris clearing and then assist others. I got back to my house this morning after running a closed road with only a couple inches of water... Could have been a problem but I met one of my old NCOs who had just walked through it. I've lost a lot of branches and my sump-pumps are running full tilt.

A friend's place is totally flooded out. They probably lost almost everything. There's a lot of trees down. Flooding is still a major issue. NCDOT (and SCDOT) will have their work cut out for them evaluating roads, bridges and similar. If we can stop making this topic about generator gas consumption and get in touch with the rest of the NC/SC/VA members that may have been affected, it'd be a good start.

 

[MWMULES]

For HURRICANE-FLORENCE! relief

SHIFT TO


https://www.steelsoldiers.com/showthread.php?181800-Attention-All-HURRICANE-FLORENCE!
​

 

[Katahdin]

Any word on how White Owl Parts is fairing? They're near the Neuse river in Kinston NC, and I read water levels are still cresting.

https://abc11.com/kinston-residents-keep-watchful-eye-on-rising-neuse-river/4296557/

 

[BELinNC]

Hi Bikeman or any others on this thread. I am in Fayetteville and lost power for 6 days due to Florence. Had to evacuate for one day, but luckily no major damage. I have a MEP802a wired into the house, but a while back it developed a problem that I did not fix before the storm. It will start,but will only run if I manipulate the throttle by hand. Eventually it will die out. Think the governor is kaput. Do you know of anyone locally that can trouble shoot and/or repair these things? I can do basic things, but generators are not my strong point!
On a side note a year or so ago I sold a 2K MEP531 to a friend who needed it to work on his boat in Key West after last years storm. He did not need it any more so a couple days before Florence arrived I bought it back from him. Good thing I did because I changed the oil and ran it almost non stop for 6 days. Stopped it after a couple days and changed the oil again. It really saved us. Would run basic lights,a fan, the fridge and the microwave if we turned most everything else off first. It was great to have it back, but I need to look into getting the 802a back to life. Thanks for any help.
Ben

 

[DieselAddict]

I'm in the Durham area if you want to bring it up sometime.

 

[BELinNC]

Thanks for the reply Chris, Will be in touch in near future. Sold my SEE tractor so I will have a bit of a challenge getting it on my trailer, but I will figure it out.
Ben

 

[bikeman]

Sorry man. I have no knowledge on the generators. I can follow a TM with the best of them, but I can't (and won't) guarantee anything.

 

[Bmxenbrett]

BelinNC. Have you looked at the simple stuff on your generator? Fluids, fuel lines, batterys? Is it showing any fault lights? Make your own thread. There is alot of ready and willing help on here. Finding someone thats close to you may be a needle in a hay stack.

 

[BELinNC]

Thanks for suggestion. I will study it some more and see if I can find any obvious defects and have a better idea on how to describe the problem. If I can't make any head way may very well trailer it over to Dieseladdict.