To Do

  • Call storm shutter company regarding sliding glass door shutter
  • Get quote for flood insurance
  • Buy trailer hitch and cargo carrier
  • Get extra 5 gallon water jugs
  • Research pricing on sandbags
  • Put the Kill-a-Watt on the refrigerator and see how much power it draws
  • Research how to connect the generator to my existing electrical (Without killing myself)
  • Get more gas cans?

Flood Insurance

Most people don’t think you need flood insurance unless you live in a flood zone. The truth is it’s a good idea for everyone. Water is all around us in Florida and it rains all the time. Flooding is a real possibility. If you’re not in a flood zone, it’s fairly inexpensive. I just got quoted the same number from two different companies: $450/yearly I’ve been told that no matter who I ask that’s the number I’ll get, so I’ll probably just go with the company who has our homeowners insurance.

Refrigerator

Apparently the refrigerator only uses 300W max. And 40W of that is the light bulb, so it’s really sitting down near 260W most of the time. I’m suspicious, but it’s safe to say I’ll be able to power the refrigerator with a 700W continuous generator (which costs $90 at Harbor Freight or less from Craigslist). The size of the fuel tank will be a concern. As will the noise level of the generator.

I will not be able to power the A/C and the refrigerator at the same time, certainly, but I don’t think I’ll need to. I won’t really need to power the refrigerator at night, but at night is when we’ll want the A/C (to sleep). There’s no conflict there.

Even better idea: screw the generator for the refrigerator: use batteries. I can find an inverter that will handle 300W easily, but I need extra overhead for peak currents. Some sites suggest 3x nominal, so 1KW should do it.

Harbor Freight has a 750W continuous/1500W peak inverter for $40 and I can use a 20% off coupon against it too, maybe 25% off if I’m lucky. And those coupons don’t apply to generators most of the time, so I’m practicing peak coupon efficiency by buying another big ticket item.

I can pair this with an astronomic timer as well, so I can program it to only run for certain periods at certain times of the day - even turning on and off at sunrise and sunset. Then I could program it to be on more at different times of the day. I’m not sure whether it would be better to have it on more during the day or at night. If it goes during the day, could it interfere with the battery charging? Yes it will slow it, but it’ll be hotter during the day too and we might HAVE to run it more to maintain temperature. I’ll have to try it out and see what kind of strategy works. The solar panel would only be a benefit to the setup if I attach one.

I wonder if the refrigerator will complain about a non-true sine wave inverter? One article suggests that the motors in the refrigerator will get hot if you use a modified sine wave (MSW) inverter. I could monitor that and counteract it by turning the refrigerator off at intervals.

Some of the RV people here suggest it shouldn’t be a problem at all.

So let’s figure here: If my numbers about my refrigerator are true, then it uses 260W/115V = 2.2A when the compressor is on. Since we’ll be running the refrigerator intermittently, I’m going to assume worst case that whenever the refrigerator is powered, the compressor will be on. I will NOT assume that the light is on, because we’ll be in hurricane mode: only open the door if necessary. Most of the time it will be closed. Additionally, this will help keep the cold in. Plus, we will use the freezer to freeze lots of water and put it in the refrigerator side to help add thermal mass. That will help the temperature low. I need thermometers to monitor the temperature in each side. I’m assuming all of this just helps keep the food from spoiling and not keep the compressor from running, so it’s really not relevant to these calculations.

So, it uses 2.2A at a time and my timer allows 7 different on/off slots. I’m going to pick the simplest solution first: run it for one hour seven times every day and have it turn on 5 times in the day and 2 in the night. It may not keep the refrigerator cool enough, but we have to start somewhere. that’s 2.2A * 7 hours = 15.4AH of energy. Let’s round it up to 20AH for overhead and spikes when starting the motor starts and so forth. Well, such a battery exists and costs $40. That’s not an awful price. It theoretically should power the refrigerator all day, but only once. You’ll have to have a generator or some other means to recharge the battery every day.

Recharging is tricky too. The generator I’m looking at has a run time of 5 hours at 50% capacity, others in the reviews are saying 1 gallon of gas per 5 hours of run time at 90% capacity. It must be a 1 gallon tank? Either way, I’ll use 50% for 5 hours as the conservative standard. If it ran for 5 hours and devoted all of its capacity to charging the batteries, then it was be 350W * 5 hours = 1750 Watt-Hours which, if you divide it by 115V gives you 15.2AH which is less than the amount of power you need to restore to the battery. I’ll have to run the generator twice each day to keep the batteries powered fully - worst case.

Speaking of worst case, how much fuel is that? 2 gallons per day for 10 hours of electricity. We could be weeks without power in a bad hurricane (but would we be weeks without gasoline?). If we had to store all the gasoline we needed for let’s say, two weeks, that would be 237 = 42 gallons. A 50 gallon gas tank would do the job, but they’re many hundreds of dollars. I could do (almost) one week’s worth: 20 gallons. Four 5-gallon gas cans will do it - and I already have one. Plus, our cars will have gas in their tanks, so if I get a siphon then I can get gas out of there as well - that’s 23 gallons. We only need one vehicle to leave.

Here’s how this will go: in week 1, burn 14 gallons of gas and retrieve 10 gallons of gas to replace it from one car. Now you’re only short 4 gallons from before, leaving you with 16 gallons. I’d want to take ten with me if we left, so that leaves 6 gallons left to burn in week 2. That will last 3.5 days. That means we can store enough fuel for a week and a half and still have enough to leave. A week and a half should be enough time to tell if things are going to get worse or better, but where can we go if we leave?

If we left and had 23 gallons of gas on us I estimate that could get us to Atlanta before needing fuel. In addition to being well away from the coasts and insulated from hurricanes, that’s also 10 hours of driving: we will probably be stopping long before that. Plus if there’s no gas there we’re sunk anyway. The farthest we can go AND get back on the same supply of gas is roughly the Florida/Georgia border. I’m not sure why we’d want to do that, but that’s the limit.

These numbers may tighten up significantly and I’m way overpreparing or they can loosen up and we will only have a few days of fuel on hand before we need to make a decision. I think that 20 gallons of fuel on hand will be my first estimate. I need to get that refrigerator on an inverter/battery/timer/charger combination to determine specific value for power usage and battery recharging time.

UPDATE: Why did I do the calculation like that? It’s wrong! DC amps != AC amps! I’m working more on it in the next post

Storm Shutters

Apparently the company that did our work no longer exists. I’ll have to find another.

To Do

  • Find a temperature sensor to put on the outside of the refrigerator - two of them: freezer and refrigerator side.
  • Get 4 more 5-gallon gas cans - need one extra to mix special fuel for the generator in
  • Buy 1500W inverter
  • Review batteries I have on-hand
  • Find battery charger
  • Buy another 20A solar charge controller
  • Get more wire for DC power systems
  • Buy trailer hitch and cargo carrier
  • Get extra 5 gallon water jugs
  • Research pricing on sandbags
  • Find new storm shutter company