A rare all-text post ...
We lost power this morning. That's not necessarily a "First World" problem. But our generator didn't start. That, too, may not be a "First World" problem -- we had a battery back-up system in India, and almost every business and apartment block in India has a diesel generator ("DG").
No problem --the generator's start-up battery was dead, so we jump-started the generator with our truck battery. But as soon as we disconnected the truck, the generator stopped. Clearly our generator battery (replaced in December 2016, so it's quite new) was out of juice. We have a battery charger, but that requires power -- circular problem! (Even more frustrating, we have solar panels -- 3 KW worth -- but because they are on net-metering, they don't give us power during power outages.)
So we re-connected and kept the truck running to keep the truck battery charged.
But -- we ran out of gas in the truck (we knew we were low on fuel). No problem -- we have gasoline stored in cans for our lawn mower, brush mower, chainsaw, and weed whacker.
But -- those fuel cans were empty. So we siphoned out of the brush mower. (The only yard machine that had gas in it.)
But -- the truck was on a slope. The gas tank wouldn't deliver gas to the engine. The truck wouldn't start even though it had enough gas in the tank.
So we let the truck roll down the hill to a relatively level spot.
Success! The truck started. We quickly backed it up to the top of the slope and our level parking area, then put all three empty gas cans in the back of the truck and headed to town and a gas station. (Fortunately, we can just about coast from our house to the gas station -- a drop of about 500 ft over 5 miles.)
Now we have a full tank of gas in the truck and three full cans of gas for our yard machines.
After three hours, the electricity came back on. (A tree had fallen on the power lines between here and Clifton Forge.)
And we need to find out why our generator is not charging the start-up battery. But that's for another day....
And we need to fill our gas cans before all three are empty!
We lost power this morning. That's not necessarily a "First World" problem. But our generator didn't start. That, too, may not be a "First World" problem -- we had a battery back-up system in India, and almost every business and apartment block in India has a diesel generator ("DG").
No problem --the generator's start-up battery was dead, so we jump-started the generator with our truck battery. But as soon as we disconnected the truck, the generator stopped. Clearly our generator battery (replaced in December 2016, so it's quite new) was out of juice. We have a battery charger, but that requires power -- circular problem! (Even more frustrating, we have solar panels -- 3 KW worth -- but because they are on net-metering, they don't give us power during power outages.)
So we re-connected and kept the truck running to keep the truck battery charged.
But -- we ran out of gas in the truck (we knew we were low on fuel). No problem -- we have gasoline stored in cans for our lawn mower, brush mower, chainsaw, and weed whacker.
But -- those fuel cans were empty. So we siphoned out of the brush mower. (The only yard machine that had gas in it.)
But -- the truck was on a slope. The gas tank wouldn't deliver gas to the engine. The truck wouldn't start even though it had enough gas in the tank.
So we let the truck roll down the hill to a relatively level spot.
Success! The truck started. We quickly backed it up to the top of the slope and our level parking area, then put all three empty gas cans in the back of the truck and headed to town and a gas station. (Fortunately, we can just about coast from our house to the gas station -- a drop of about 500 ft over 5 miles.)
Now we have a full tank of gas in the truck and three full cans of gas for our yard machines.
After three hours, the electricity came back on. (A tree had fallen on the power lines between here and Clifton Forge.)
And we need to find out why our generator is not charging the start-up battery. But that's for another day....
And we need to fill our gas cans before all three are empty!
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