Resent-Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 15:42:03 -0500
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 15:41:57 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <200101082041.PAA02230@out-of-band.media.mit.edu>
From: Lenny Foner <foner@media.mit.edu>
To: nelson@crynwr.com
Cc: elbow-joints@haven.org
In-Reply-To: <14938.7598.938348.98651@desk.crynwr.com> (message from Russell Nelson on Mon, 8 Jan 2001 15:08:06 -0500 (EST))
Subject: Furnace question
Cc: foner@media.mit.edu
Resent-Message-Id: <"ZZGE4.0.Pr4.ROYMw"@opal.haven.org>
Resent-From: elbow-joints@haven.org
Precedence: list
Resent-Sender: elbow-joints-request@haven.org

    Date: Mon,  8 Jan 2001 15:08:06 -0500 (EST)
    From: Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>

     > do---the chances that you will be without power for so long that
     > you'll need to do this in the first place are low, at least for city
     > dwellers, and especially those who have somewhere else they can go.

    Yeah, but it's so much better to be able to stay in your house and
    keep it warm.

But it also depends on where you live.  Almost everyone on this list
lives in the greater Boston area---and probably the majority in
Cambridge and Somerville.  After more than a third of a century living
in Belmont, Cambridge, Watertown, and Somerville, I have never -ever-
seen a residential power outage longer than about 4 hours.  In fact,
it wasn't until I moved to Somerville that I saw anything longer than
about an hour---unfortunately, my neighborhood still had old 4kV
lines, and for about the first 4 months I lived in Somerville, I had
about one 4-hour blackout a month when one of them rotted and failed.
They've since cut over to 13.8kV and life is much better.

Thus, dedicating the money to a backup generator, not to mention the
space in one's garage for a big open-frame style, seems like it just
doesn't justify the return.  Even in the bitterest cold, it takes a
lot longer than 4 hours for a house to cool to the point of being
uninhabitable.  It's a pity, because I'd -like- to justify getting
a generator (my car can be used as a 300W inverter if I have to,
but that's somewhat inconvenient), but I just can't, unless something
radical occurs to me.  It's such a pity.  The Honda one is at least
small enough that it can be tucked out of the way in a largeish
shoebox, and it's not irritating to be around when operating, so at
that point, it's only the money...

The only places I've seen longer outages, actually, were at MIT.
The most widespread was when a transformer blew up in a manhole,
and the longest was self-inflicted---Physical Plant managed to drill
through the power neutral for Holman Entry of Senior House, just five
short minutes after they drilled through the entire telephone trunk
cabling for the building.  Trust me, you -really- don't want to know...

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