Hurricane, wiley window, dorm fridge, mini-generator

Anything to do with mechanical, construction etc

Hurricane, wiley window, dorm fridge, mini-generator

Postby daveesl77 » Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:57 pm

Hurricane Irma decide to pay our area in central Florida a visit the other day. She was not a nice guest, as she totally trashed the town and left lots of junk all over my yard. Fortunately, she did not do any major damage to our house. She did cause the power to be out for a couple of days, but we were lucky. Anyway, here are the results of the "hmmm, will this work in a hurricane?" test.

1) Irma - eye went just west of us, sustained winds about 70+ and a few gusts of about 100 mph, this lasted about 5 hours. Tropical storm force winds lasted about 18 hours. Rainfall total over 24 hours was in excess of 8".

2) I purposefully left the two front Wiley Windows in the angle-open position to see how they would fare in an actual hurricane. This windows are mainly over the linoleum area of the floor. I did not open the two next to the bed, as in case my test was not good, I did not want a wet mattress, in case water came in. The windows were perfect! Literally, not a single drop of water inside.

3) Figuring we would lose power, 2 days prior to the storm I fired up the 3 cubic foot Haier dorm fridge and brought it down to its coldest setting, about 14 degrees. That way it would be ready when the power died, which it did. I knew from past tests I could run the fridge at 31-34 degrees (with outside temps in the 80s-90s and high humidity) for at least 10 hours with the Rural King farm deep cycle battery and the 1200 watt inverter (HF centech brand) and still keep the battery about 12v.
3) I have one of the HF 800 watt 2 cycle generators and I knew it would run the fridge, battery charger and other stuff. I also have the 200 watts of solar if power was to be off for an extended period and we had sunlight, which almost always happens for several days after a major storm. In a previous test with the solar-battery-inverter setup, we ran the fridge for over 36 hours non-stop and the solar maintained the battery charge to a workable level. With the gennie, we could go as much as we wanted.
4) Internet would have been provided by either the cable company or our TMobile cell phone, however they all went down for about 3 days, so that didn't work.
5) TV comes from the over-the-air antenna on the house or the little 4 bay bowtie antenna I made out of copper wire and a plastic table leg, for the camper (we call it Ms. Antenna). Actual televisions consisted of the big screen LED, a 19" lcd and a 7" battery powered. Transmitters are over 60 miles away, but these antennas have always worked great. During the height of the storm, using Ms. Antenna duct-taped to the roof of the house and the 19" tv, we still got great signals.
6) The generator did great, it ran everything I needed it to. I ran it for over 25 hours, 14 hours on one stretch. It used a total of less than 2.5 gallons of gas. That said, I've decided to buy one of the HF Predator 2000 inverter generators, on sale for $399 and my neighbor is buying the little HF gennie for $50.
7) Conch Fritter was rock solid. We slept in it after the power went out and literally didn't really know we were in the midst of a hurricane. No leaks, no damage.
8 ) For ventilation, we have two of the O2 12v fans that mount either over the windows or on a shelf. We also have a series of good 140mm computer fans in the ducting at the front, which draw and exhaust underneath the trailer. They worked great.
This was a true test of a lot of stuff in some pretty rough conditions. By and large everything worked out very well.

dave
Last edited by daveesl77 on Wed Sep 13, 2017 3:56 pm, edited 3 times in total.
*******
Dave and Regina - Enjoying old age, a LOT!

Build Journal - http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=62386
User avatar
daveesl77
Donating Member
 
Posts: 871
Images: 273
Joined: Tue Jan 27, 2015 4:33 pm
Location: Pocahontas County, West Virginia

Re: Hurricane, wiley window, dorm fridge, mini-generator

Postby daveesl77 » Wed Sep 13, 2017 3:49 pm

I did forget one part that we started on day 2 after the storm. While we had pre-frozen several gallon jugs of water and made several quart and gallon baggies of ice, we thought that perhaps the power would be out for perhaps a week. So we pulled out the Igloo counter-top ice maker and put it to work. Even though the power did come back on later, we let the igloo run for a day. It makes ice a lot faster than our refrigerator, so we used it to make ice for drinks and to refill the ice supply in the fridge. A trick we learned in the past is that since the ice it makes is a bit soft, after the power came back we would just dump the made ice into a large bowl, put it in the freezer and let it harden. Then just slam down to the bowl to break the ice chunk back into individual pieces. It works great and the little generator could run it by itself, but not with the dorm fridge running.

dave
*******
Dave and Regina - Enjoying old age, a LOT!

Build Journal - http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=62386
User avatar
daveesl77
Donating Member
 
Posts: 871
Images: 273
Joined: Tue Jan 27, 2015 4:33 pm
Location: Pocahontas County, West Virginia

Re: Hurricane, wiley window, dorm fridge, mini-generator

Postby greygoos » Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:17 pm

Thank you for your post and glad to hear you are safe.
greygoos
Silver Donating Member
 
Posts: 630
Joined: Sun Sep 27, 2015 6:15 am
Location: Syracuse NY
Top

Re: Hurricane, wiley window, dorm fridge, mini-generator

Postby edgeau » Thu Sep 14, 2017 5:00 pm

Well done on the Wiley windows. That is great.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
User avatar
edgeau
500 Club
 
Posts: 509
Images: 2
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 8:21 am
Location: Gold Coast Australia
Top


Return to Teardrop Construction Tips & Techniques

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests