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Batten the hatches
Well, Still here in Raleigh seems we are in for another storm, 4-6 inches of snow today turning to sleet this evening and turning to freezing rain tonite and back to snow tommorow, Sure will be glad to get out of this place, still have not been able to get wabasto fixed and main slide room is in an not functioning. At least it will not be as cold as before, just upper 20’s so may be able to get some heat from heat pumps especially the mid ship one, seems it picks up the heat from the bay heater and blows warmer air, could this be? Just got to get through this week and then only two more weeks after that and hopefully I will be on my way to J-ville for some much needed repair. We will probably have some major power outages, Glad the Gen was serviced and I have a full tank of fuel, These buses are made pretty darn good with several ways to keep warm in a jam, wabasto, heat pumps, bus air, and bath heater and ceramic space heaters, just have to watch the amps you pull, I guess you can tell I am getting cabin fever, but the good thing is all is going well so far and look forward to getting back to the regular life, just rambling, Gary
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20 Replies
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Keep rambling Gary, always good to hear whats going on in your neck of the woods. I can’t tell you what the weather is like down here, you’ll stick pins in my voo doo doll. Everyone back home in GA are having a tough time, but where we live, the power is still up.
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Gary,
If you are in Raleigh the Gregory Poole shop in Garner, just east of Raleigh on I-40 can fix your issues. Take I-40 East to the Jones Sausage Road exit. Go left at the signal and left again at Integrity Drive, that would be the first street past the westbound I-40 on ramp. There is a Smithfield Bar-b-que restaurant across the street or if you prefer, a Burger King next door. They also have outside hook-ups for over nighting.
Give Steve Atwater a call at (919) 775-7056. I’d bet they could get you back to snuff before leaving for Jacksonville.
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For those that have never been thru a ICE Storm before..Don’t take it as a joke… We had one with 2 inches of ice 4 yrs ago.. tree limbs are still falling from damage… You can hear trees explode like bombs from the weight… smaller tree limbs will be so low to the road you can’t walk under them… For those that have been there.. IT sure lets you know who is really in charge… Be safe and stay alive…. Bob
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An ice storm is freezing rain. And as Bob points out there is no way anyone should be going anywhere via any means of transportation, including walking and flying because the dangers are so great.
Prepare for power outages and stay safe.
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Bob,
Been through one back around 1980 while living in Evansville, Indiana. Went through another here in NC back in the winter of ’02, 2002 that is not 1902!
We have very tall and very big pine trees with long, and I do mean long, needles. The forecast that night in ’02 was for 3″ of snow, period. Nothing else. Well at 2:00 AM the power went off. I’m nice and warm in bed with no way to do anything about it so went back to sleep until the morning sunrise.
Our three heat pumps are right outside the bedroom window so I raised the curtain and peeked out. There was three inches, only problem it was three inches of ICE. That is bad enough. On top of that was 20″ of wet snow. All of that was hanging on those long needles of every pine tree in Moore County. Oh yeah, the trees were going down all around, sounding like the 105’s at Fort Bragg, our neighbor to the east. Transformers were sounding off too. Our power was out for four days. We lived in the basement where there was a really nice warm Poppa Bear Vermont Castings wood stove. It had ducting to connect with our HVAC ductwork. Burned that Poppa Bear continuously while power was out. OnIy single digits for most of the outage but Poppa kept the house at 51 degrees. Now that is cold but sure not as cold as it would have been without him.
Carolina Power and Light (known locally as Crappy Power and Light) was our utility back then. Our service record was peppered with outages supposedly caused by squirrels electrocuting themselves on the contacts of transformers, or wisteria vines doing the same. So Carole solved that problem by installing a home generator. Now our house, at least the original part of it, is old – built in 1921. We still have remnants of the old spool and wire house distribution system. Well we initially wanted only certain circuits to be covered by the backup generator. Turned out to do that we would have to rewire both breaker panels. It was more cost effective to simply install a generator that could handle the whole house. The generator runs on natural gas, automatically senses a power outage and starts itself with 30 seconds. We both love it.
So we are ready for tonight’s ice. As long as one of those remaining tall pines doesn’t fall onto the house. There are two, one on each neighbor’s property that could be a problem if they come down. We have asked the neighbors to let us take them down but they are tree hugging them. I guess we will have to let the insurance companies work it out if that were to happen.
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I recently got caught in the Carolina Mountains with sub freezing and some nights sub zero weather with snow and ice. The reason I got caught is I don’t know how well a Prevost handles on Icy roads and didn’t want to learn! So I set it out.
My advice to anyone in their bus in that weather – don’t leave your slides out as the snowfall will gradually melt in the daytime and the night time run off will freeze and then if the roads clear and you plan to hit the road you could damage your slide seals with the ice when you retract them.
with the slides retracted the coach is easier to heat – less square footage.
Don’t extend the batwing antennae – another potential problem with the snow build up – it can’t/won’t come down.
Don’t raise the bathroom roof vent – another potential problem with the wife.
Don’t be dependent on your GPS with a roof mounted antennae – its not going to work if snow covered.
And this happened to me: Make sure the run off from the roof is directed away from the entrance door. The runoff refreezes during the night and froze the door closed with build up of ice. Not impossible to deal with but life sure nicer if if avoided.
These buses are pretty amazing pieces of equipment.
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Will, The number you gave me is not right it is a private residence, please give me the number and I will call steve to see if he can fix my problems, thanks Gary
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Will, I called the office and got the number, I did not know they work on buses but they say they do, do not know if I want them to work on slide or not but certainly the wabasto, They are closed today because of weather, but will call tommorow, thank you very much for the tip, Gary
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Sitting here in the sun room of our North Carolina foothills home and watching some of the biggest snowflakes I think I have ever seen. They are beautiful! We are supposed to have 10 inches of snow by mid morning Thursday and I have the Prevost generator wired to back feed the house if we lose power. Since it is in it’s garage I also have the exhaust plumbed to the outside. Let it snow!
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What Tom said, but our snow is just the garden variety of wet flakes now, and our forecast is for 5 to 9″.
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Gary,
I spoke with Steve at that number this morning. Here is another number for you (919) 219-1598. That is his mobile number and I have spoken with him on that number before also. Website has (919) 755-7010 for the general access phone line.
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Couple of years ago one of our friends bus was parked outside.. They were getting ready to head south for winter. put heat in bus to melt snow off roff–rest of story=went out next morning to leave and door was frozen shut from melting snow running off .. Got to find a little humor! not as good as frozen inside… Be safe…upside it is supose to be short lived down your way(temp) We have a inch of ice on drive for over 8 days now and should get above freezing sunday..
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Freezing rain here in SC since about 6:00am. Lost power at 8:30am and still out. couple of inches of sleet on the ground and 3/8 inch ice on all tree branches. Could be a lot worse.
Pines sould like cannons when they snap. I have at least a dozen across my drive to the main road ~1/4 mile.
Will take me all day Thursday to cut my way out.
Thank goodness for gas logs and cooktop.
Need to figure out the backfeed from the genny to the house but didn’t want to get the bus out of the barn today with all the breaking pines.
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We got lucky.
Instead of the 5″ to 9″ the last forecast called for we only got about 4 to 5″. Some accumulation on trees, but no power outage.
Due to the slope of our driveway we aren’t going anywhere, so we might take a day off and just read and relax in front of the fireplace.
The warnings were so dire I haven’t seen a single car go by our driveway since I have been up for about an hour and 15 minutes. It really looks pretty, but it is the wet snow that packs easy and gets real slippery when packed.
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Glad no ice Jon , last weekend it was cold and 8 inches of snow. Today it’s going to be 47 degree’s today melting snow , weirded winter. In the last 15 years with all the wind and snow sometimes, we only have had power out two times for about half hour.We have Gen for power outage never use it , just run it every month for 2 hours to keep it good , guess we are just lucky.
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