I live in Cypress about a mile away from that Nader that destroyed all those 750kva lines in Houston/Harris County. I can't see any artificial light anywhere from the top of the 99/290 interchange, which is maybe 300 feet in the air. This place is lights out, man.

Sending the wife and kid to the northeast to stay with her family. I'm guessing we will be without power here for awhile. I'm loading mags at first light and I've already got a few makeshift pikes (made from street post poles that were uprooted down the street) for staking the heads of my competition at the beginning of my little neighborhood.

If I ever make it to the news I'm going to go by the nom de guerre of "Big T". Send well wishes my way. Thanks in advance.

First picture the obligatory Facebook vomit. Second picture actually in my neighborhood.

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Prime time to burn some brush.

Mags should have been loaded ages ago

Set claymores

Nods, generator, cheap booze, a carton of cigs, and keep the ice trays full ( generator ) is how you become a warlord.

He'll yeah borther

I’m The Duke Of Channelview so bow down and pay tribute or I’ll throw you to the Crack Ho’s.

I'm all good, thanks for asking. 100% power 100% of the time.

Oh, you going to be down and out for a week or two, but high transmission line's  tend to get priority.  Good call on sending the family out of town. Hopefully you got a quiet  genset that sips fuel and a small window shaker for the room you choose to make your bunker or the main room. Chain that bitch down and only run it at night when you are there. You're refrigerated products can go many hours without power. Unless you know you'll have reliable power, dump the ice bin. It sounds counterintuitive. But I've lost power multiple times, and thought, hey this is a big cooler,  let's keep it cool!. That ice/liquid needs to go somewhere.  If it's not designed that way you'll have water everywhere. If it's important stash it in a dedicated ice cooler, otherwise dump it and reduce your responsibility.

How much are you paying mercenaries?

Damn, that's bad.

Shit, they're paying me

That should plump up the paycheck of some lineman.

"loading mags"


WTF OP.

Don't look good for OP

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In Texas the doom is real!

Welcome fellow outlander.  Sitting here playing with the kids in Cypress while my generator hums in the driveway and my house is strewn with extension cords.


I have all the parts to put in an interlock but I have been busy with work.  Luckily it isn't too hot and everyone is happy.


My wife is down in South Padre with a bunch of girlfriends at our condo celebrating her 40th.

Tomorrow we are gonna venture out and try to find some propane.  Local guy is closed cause he doesn't have power.

BH
You did right sending the family up North.  It looks nasty on the repairs.

We're up North in the The Woodlands / Spring area.
Lost power for 5 hours yesterday.

But lots of people near us are still out of power and not looking too optimistic on when it will come back on.

We bought a whole house Stand By Genset, 26KW Generac fueled by Natural Gas when I retired 1-Feb-21.  Lifetime of living in East Texas and all along the Gulf Coast.....

When the power goes out in our neighborhood you can hear quite afew automatic starting of the Stand By Gensets firing up....

You have our full attention.

What do you power with 26kw? I have a single 5 ton AC, a couple fridges, a couple ceiling fans and some lights I'd like to run. I'm guessing a 10kw set isn't doing that but 26kw sounds huge.

I’m tagging this thread as my son is in Houston and we’re working on a plan A, B and C.

Going to be an interesting experience for a 19 year old.

As much info as you guys can share on the situation and what you hear would be greatly appreciated!

What part of Cypress? I went to Cy-Creek.

I guess a man's got to do what he's best at
Ain't found nothin' better so far
Been called mercenaries and men with no country
Just soldiers in search of a war

OP: how you set for machetes and hot young MILFs for your harem?

@CastleBravo91

I'm not too far from South Padre, I can go down there and check on them. See if they have power or need anything.

In order to be a Warlord, you must survive the first three days of chaos and looting.  Once the initial die off has happened, you will have to contend with the stronger ones who survived.  Conserve ammo and avoid injury.  You might also want to refrain from taking anyone alive for a week or two.  Focus on consolidating control over vital resources as well as teaching the locals their place.  Remember, for every Warlord there are 1,000 dead men who aspired for the title.  

Or you could just pay up your homeowners insurance and take a couple weeks off with the family.

Brother's-in-law are in the area.  Power company guy said it might take several weeks to get some of the neighborhoods electricity again - If they don't have hospitals they are not priorities.

Many will bitch that solar is impractical.  But with summer about to bite us in the ass, having a backup generator and solar would be mighty handy for these of these people.  Sure you can go to a hotel - nope, there is not that much hotel capacity (even it it cost you 2-3k a week to put your family up in AC).  Honestly, this might give our beach rental a huge boost...  Either that or it is going to cost me dearly as the brother's-in-law are co-owners and they might just be living in it till power is restored.  


Electrical wise, this is probably a bigger hit than Harvey was - the last hurricane to hit Houston.
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We have a 24kw on our rental property.  I think it is plenty, but it could be an issue on start up draws on the pair of AC's - we have them programmed to stagger.  The other issue is the house is 100% AC.  Hard to tell what the draw would be if the hot water heater, stove, oven, microwave, dishwasher, coffeemaker, etc... were all on at the same time.  I could wag - lets say the the AC and stove are all 30amp 240v.  The clothes dryer and hot water heater are 30 amp 120.  Then lets put in another 15 amps for the microwave, dishwasher, and other kitchen stuff.  280amps at 120 - so 33.6kw, so yes, could be an issue.  The 2 AC's are under 15kw - so if the stove is not full tilt and if the clothes dryer and hot water heater don't hit at the same time - the only real issue is the startup surge on the AC's.  


In a perfect world, my new house will have inverter based AC's to limit the startup surge.  I will have some battery backup, so IF I need a little extra from the 24kwh generator - I will have a little overhead.  Meanwhile, most of the time that generator can just run at it's efficient use and peak off the batteries.  More annoying to me is the gas wasted on a 24kwh generator when the load is not present.  They drink fuel.  I think they run well over $100 dollars a day to quench their thirst.  If solar can run the AC's most of the day, the night load might be able to get by with 2-4hrs of generator use (owning enough batteries to go full overnight is fucking expensive).  2hr of generator vs $15k of batteries..., but you still need the generator for cloudy days.

You moving into wholesaling apocalypse supplies?

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This...

$100/day is like over a gallon of gas per hour. At no load I find that veeeerry hard to believe

only things i'm hoarding in 2024 are a couple pallets of bacon SPAM, a couple pallets of Zatarain's Red Beans & Rice, a couple pallets of Beef Flavour Cup O' Soups, a pallet of Chef Boyardee Mini Ravioli for top performing members of my post apocalyptic harem of hot young MILFs, couple pairs of well broken in black leather Austrian paratrooper boots, multiple five packs of razor sharp south merican machetes for arming my post apocalyptic harem of hot young fully shaved crossfit girls and 110-lb college rower chicks, couple cases of Coconut Mango Moisturizing Shave Cream and LadyBics so the harem can keep themselves as smoove as Tennessee whisky during the end of days, a three pack of cheap white tube socks, a pair of studded black leather chaps, a Bane coat, a gas mask, a Harbour Freight hatchet and Shitsburgh Pro framing hammer for hand weapons, and a gallon of baby oil.

i'm good to go, slick.

Hahah.  So generous.  I am getting regular updates that they are having fun.  Me, I'm here running generator power with three kids: 2, 5, 10.

Maybe not 100 but I could see it being alot.  Some of those big units are thirsty.  I run a 4500 dual fuel inverter.  I just burned less than 3/4 of a 20lb propane tank over 18hr of run.  But I don't run excessive things.  Stay comfortable and keep the fridges and freezers cold.  Mean while my neighbors 5k twice. generator that is loud as fuck has been filled up twice.

We used to lose power whenever there was a thunderstorm passing through.

This last one caused a few flickers / brownouts, but we kept power.

It is a 24kw propane unit.  Propane is more expensive to run a generator than gas.  Add to that, running at low load is not as efficient as running at proper load-yes it does use less per hour, but more per kw.  I forget the size of our above ground tank - perhaps it is only 120 gallons (basically the smallest above ground tank).  The generator will suck it dry in about 3 days.  We only have one source of delivery - I think the tank fill is about $350 (and that might be if the delivery guy has more jobs in our area - we are probably 50 miles from his home base - 20 miles from the town to the beach, 30 miles down the beach).  Of course that last part is kind of a mute point.  Virtually all the deliveries on the peninsula are for home generators - any good blackout will be emptying a decent percentage of them.


We rent for +/- 4k a week.  People demand their money back if they don't have AC.  The generator will pay for itself after only a couple of those.  I don't think one has happened yet - but we have had 3 family weekends where we lost power.  2 of those we only knew about because the generator kicked in - oh, and because we saw our neighbors without generators were dark.  More than a couple of our neighbors have generators though.  A handful of business were still open, most were closed (like the grocery store).  But even the ones with generators were struggling - the one restaurant's generator could not keep up.

Can anyone point me to a website that is showing the extent of the power outage and projected repair times?

Still trying to figure out how electric companies work down there (reseller v providers etc)

19 yr old son is not liking the camping in an apartment experience and looking to fly him back home depending on how long it will take to restore power ( hearing weeks but trying to confirm)

LOL - he's 19? At what age do you expect him to do man stuff? He has a roof over his head, he can make it without you flying him back home just because he doesn't have electricity.

GD being GD as I expected.

He’s down there for school and if power is going to be out for weeks he doesn’t need to be in the middle of that developing shitshow.

So can anyone point me to website for outages?

OP:

CenterPoint Outage Tracker

This is a man with a plan.

9.5 / 10.

8654

Thanks @Paddler112 👍

How many scalps for a case of mini-ravioli?

At 19, he should be encouraged to find a chick with electricity to stay with as long as he needs her, and if his school is out, he could make 500 bucks a day doing storm cleanup as a side hustle contract work. I agree it could well be a shitshow, but 19-year olds are grownups and should be encouraged to make their own opportunities.

$75-85 a day for my Echo 10,000 surge/7500 constant.
Let er run, it's only money.

This motherfucker knows how to party

850,000 without lights and power in the Houston area ... not good.

+ 520,000 without power in Harris County - 26.1% of customers.

CenterPoint Energy is the most affected provider.

I think you are a little light on the baby oil.

I’m assuming this weekend will be filled with rampant looting. Haven’t seen which parts are without power, but if it’s certain parts they are going to spread out pretty soon.

I have to drive through on 10 in a few days. Considering a long route around.