Hope you southerners are safe.

[whitewater]

Hope you guys are doing ok down there!!

If you need anything feel free to reach out!

[1964GN]

We are in Largo, FL in between St Pete and Clearwater. Our shop did fine but most employees had downed trees and power outages. We had single phase power but no 3 phase on Friday. 40 percent of our county was without power after the storm.

The real devastating damage happened directly on the coast. Every coastal area in the area had record storm surge. 2 feet plus over previous records. We print for a lot of restaurants along the coast in beach communities and they are ALL destroyed. Caddy's beach resturaunts, Frenchy's with multiple locations, Coco's, Hogan's Hangout, and hundreds of other businesses and homes heavily damages. Some buried if 4-6 feet of sand. The pictures I am seeing of FB are stunning.

All of this damage and the storm passed 100 miles off our coast.

[StinkyDaddy]

Has anyone heard from Brandt? I saw some drone video along the river in Johnson City and the industrial buildings are hammered.

[whitewater]

My son and some really good friends live in Asheville, they pretty much got destroyed as well. Johnson city is not far from there, eastern TN got hit as well..

My wife was there visiting a week and  a half ago.. glad she wasn't there and got stuck.. My son, he was in a good spot - no issues and has food and water..

Last year I almost signed a lease for a space down there. If I did, it would have been gone.

[GraphicDisorder]

Has anyone heard from Brandt? I saw some drone video along the river in Johnson City and the industrial buildings are hammered.

We are good, 5 exits up though the city/interstate/etc just wrecked. Ashville isn't far and its basically cut off from the west, something like 280 roads were impassable yesterday.

[whitewater]

glad that you are good!

My friends left Asheville this morning to go to Charleston, they have a airbnb condo there. They said interstate was clear and once they got to South Carolina they could get gas.

[mk162]

We're good just northwest of Atlanta.  My folks are on the Ga/SC border and I'd be surprised if they have power back in a week. We took them our generator and some supplies. 

It narrowly missed us.

[3Deep]

glad you guys are all good my business neighbor has family in Carolina that didn't fair so well is what she told my wife this morning, no life loss which is a blessing

[mk162]

glad you guys are all good my business neighbor has family in Carolina that didn't fair so well is what she told my wife this morning, no life loss which is a blessing

Spartanburg, a suburb of Greenville isn't expected to have power restored until the 8th.

A lot of my family lives around Greenville.  It's bad. They at least have cell service. some of them can't leave their neighborhoods. One of my cousins has a generator so she can keep her freezer and fridge running.

Side note, newer fridges can trip GFCI breakers. My parents fridge won't stay running on the generator, but the chest freezer does. My only thought is running the generator power through a line conditioner or a UPS to even out the signal going back might help it.  Something to think about if your short term plan involves a portable generator.

[Admiral]

glad you guys are all good my business neighbor has family in Carolina that didn't fair so well is what she told my wife this morning, no life loss which is a blessing

Spartanburg, a suburb of Greenville isn't expected to have power restored until the 8th.

A lot of my family lives around Greenville.  It's bad. They at least have cell service. some of them can't leave their neighborhoods. One of my cousins has a generator so she can keep her freezer and fridge running.

Side note, newer fridges can trip GFCI breakers. My parents fridge won't stay running on the generator, but the chest freezer does. My only thought is running the generator power through a line conditioner or a UPS to even out the signal going back might help it.  Something to think about if your short term plan involves a portable generator.

That may work, you may need the 1000w + UPS for it.  My backup power route uses 2 very large batteries to power my whole house and I have a small dual fuel (propane) generator if I need to charge them.  Allows for pure sine wave power, 24 hr backup without any noise, and if I need to charge the batteries up I can run that during the day / early evening then have it off for quite some time.  I did of course spend a pretty penny for all of this, about $5K.

[mk162]

glad you guys are all good my business neighbor has family in Carolina that didn't fair so well is what she told my wife this morning, no life loss which is a blessing

Spartanburg, a suburb of Greenville isn't expected to have power restored until the 8th.

A lot of my family lives around Greenville.  It's bad. They at least have cell service. some of them can't leave their neighborhoods. One of my cousins has a generator so she can keep her freezer and fridge running.

Side note, newer fridges can trip GFCI breakers. My parents fridge won't stay running on the generator, but the chest freezer does. My only thought is running the generator power through a line conditioner or a UPS to even out the signal going back might help it.  Something to think about if your short term plan involves a portable generator.

That may work, you may need the 1000w + UPS for it.  My backup power route uses 2 very large batteries to power my whole house and I have a small dual fuel (propane) generator if I need to charge them.  Allows for pure sine wave power, 24 hr backup without any noise, and if I need to charge the batteries up I can run that during the day / early evening then have it off for quite some time.  I did of course spend a pretty penny for all of this, about $5K.

We run an inverter generator, hooked up to a 240v 100a transfer switch, so we bypass the GFCI on the generators.

What's the lifespan of those batteries? I feel like I keep swapping my UPS batteries every couple of years.

[Admiral]

glad you guys are all good my business neighbor has family in Carolina that didn't fair so well is what she told my wife this morning, no life loss which is a blessing

Spartanburg, a suburb of Greenville isn't expected to have power restored until the 8th.

A lot of my family lives around Greenville.  It's bad. They at least have cell service. some of them can't leave their neighborhoods. One of my cousins has a generator so she can keep her freezer and fridge running.

Side note, newer fridges can trip GFCI breakers. My parents fridge won't stay running on the generator, but the chest freezer does. My only thought is running the generator power through a line conditioner or a UPS to even out the signal going back might help it.  Something to think about if your short term plan involves a portable generator.

That may work, you may need the 1000w + UPS for it.  My backup power route uses 2 very large batteries to power my whole house and I have a small dual fuel (propane) generator if I need to charge them.  Allows for pure sine wave power, 24 hr backup without any noise, and if I need to charge the batteries up I can run that during the day / early evening then have it off for quite some time.  I did of course spend a pretty penny for all of this, about $5K.

We run an inverter generator, hooked up to a 240v 100a transfer switch, so we bypass the GFCI on the generators.

What's the lifespan of those batteries? I feel like I keep swapping my UPS batteries every couple of years.

UPS batteries are crap - those are sealed lead acid, only last a few years, especially if you let them go down to zero a couple of times.

Backup batteries for house / "solar generators" almost always use LFP (lithium iron phosphate) they can easily last 10+ years, 20 years shouldn't be a problem but other electronics may get iffy.  The professionally installed systems have 10-15 year warranties and are very reliable.  They can even go through 4,000+ cycles without trouble.  I just use them as backup so not even cycling these.  That can be done to save on energy though, take in when it's cheap and use during the expensive time of use on the grid.

[3Deep]

glad you guys are all good my business neighbor has family in Carolina that didn't fair so well is what she told my wife this morning, no life loss which is a blessing

Spartanburg, a suburb of Greenville isn't expected to have power restored until the 8th.

A lot of my family lives around Greenville.  It's bad. They at least have cell service. some of them can't leave their neighborhoods. One of my cousins has a generator so she can keep her freezer and fridge running.

Side note, newer fridges can trip GFCI breakers. My parents fridge won't stay running on the generator, but the chest freezer does. My only thought is running the generator power through a line conditioner or a UPS to even out the signal going back might help it.  Something to think about if your short term plan involves a portable generator.

Glad no one is hurt and hopefully they get power back quick, we were out of power for almost a week and ran a generator, I don't even like to look at the news, it just makes me sick to see all that devastation

[mk162]

glad you guys are all good my business neighbor has family in Carolina that didn't fair so well is what she told my wife this morning, no life loss which is a blessing

Spartanburg, a suburb of Greenville isn't expected to have power restored until the 8th.

A lot of my family lives around Greenville.  It's bad. They at least have cell service. some of them can't leave their neighborhoods. One of my cousins has a generator so she can keep her freezer and fridge running.

Side note, newer fridges can trip GFCI breakers. My parents fridge won't stay running on the generator, but the chest freezer does. My only thought is running the generator power through a line conditioner or a UPS to even out the signal going back might help it.  Something to think about if your short term plan involves a portable generator.

That may work, you may need the 1000w + UPS for it.  My backup power route uses 2 very large batteries to power my whole house and I have a small dual fuel (propane) generator if I need to charge them.  Allows for pure sine wave power, 24 hr backup without any noise, and if I need to charge the batteries up I can run that during the day / early evening then have it off for quite some time.  I did of course spend a pretty penny for all of this, about $5K.

We run an inverter generator, hooked up to a 240v 100a transfer switch, so we bypass the GFCI on the generators.

What's the lifespan of those batteries? I feel like I keep swapping my UPS batteries every couple of years.

UPS batteries are crap - those are sealed lead acid, only last a few years, especially if you let them go down to zero a couple of times.

Backup batteries for house / "solar generators" almost always use LFP (lithium iron phosphate) they can easily last 10+ years, 20 years shouldn't be a problem but other electronics may get iffy.  The professionally installed systems have 10-15 year warranties and are very reliable.  They can even go through 4,000+ cycles without trouble.  I just use them as backup so not even cycling these.  That can be done to save on energy though, take in when it's cheap and use during the expensive time of use on the grid.

Figured. I had some friends years ago that ran their system on deep cycle marine batteries.  My inlaws got stuck with one of those on their sump pump backup, it was kind of a joke.

I watched some videos last night and some of the stuff out there is impressive. What I gathered was it all boils down to quality cells and being able to service individual cells.  I've noticed in the cheaper tool battery packs they fail a lot faster than the name brand ones. 

[tonypep]

Back up and running but power outages all over. Chimney Rock is devastated. Airlift only way in or out. Expecting gas and food shortages here. Expecting power in Clemson by Friday. This was no joke. We were not expecting this.