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Anecdote: All 7 developers in my Houston team (semi-geographically scattered in the city) lost power; half for >24 hrs (it's 10-25 degrees F here for the last 2

• tw04 6y ago
  >I don't think any lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. I'm curious how they didn't lose heat. Any furnace built in the last 30 years, even gas, has an electronic control board in order to ensure it doesn't accidentally turn on the gas without a functioning pilot light and/or heating element (which would blow up your house). No electricity = no heat, regardless of natural gas supply. I've got about a dozen coworkers in Texas, they've all been without power (which means no heat) for two days now. The power comes on long enough to at least warm their houses up to 50ish degrees before dropping back out so they're not completely screwed but I know they're scared.
  • mrfusion 6y ago
    My gas fireplace had a place you could put in D batteries to run it. Pretty cool feature if the power goes out.
    • koolba 6y ago
      Having grown up with wood fireplaces, the thought of having to change the batteries to turn it on is hilarious.
  • slfnflctd 6y ago
    I have a gas-only fireplace less than 20 years old that does not require power to function. There's a mechanical spark generator for lighting the pilot, but in colder months I keep the pilot on all the time. I believe the opening/closing of the valve for the gas to the main flame area is powered by a thermopile once the pilot is on.
  • gregw2 6y ago
    Good question. I am unclear about heaters but I do think some of them are out for some team members and you may be right on that. Ovens also are commonly gas but ones since 1990 require an electric light. But... stovetops which are gas do not require electronic ignition. The risk is of course carbon monoxide poisoning; hopefully you have such detectors as part of your in-home fire detectors. The problem is not so much the deliberate rotating blackouts who can get restored after a time, but large groups of people for whom power is out due to some other weather-related outage issue; there are large swaths of them in Houston at least according to the Centerpoint Energy outage map which distinguishes between the two (but does seem to be not the most timely updated data per various people I have talked to whose status has changed during today: http://gis.centerpointenergy.com/outagetracker/ http://gis.centerpointenergy.com/outagetracker/ )
  • monadic3 6y ago
    Gas heaters still require electricity for basic management. I'd imagine heaters have batteries for specifically this case. If they don't, it's frankly a miracle if we don't lose anyone, and someone needs to get prosecuted.
    • evan_ 6y ago
      gas furnaces do not have batteries.
      • monadic3 6y ago
        That's a failing of gas furnaces. I don't know why you'd design a system without them except to breed dependency.
        • adrianmonk 6y ago
          We're talking about forced air furnaces here, I think. Something has to force the air. A big blower motor that takes hundreds of watts. Forced air heat is not great in terms of comfort, but in Texas you already have all the ductwork and the blower motor and so on for AC, so it's simplest just to add a gas burner to that.
        • quickthrowman 6y ago
          Furnaces don’t come with batteries because a 12v 100Ah battery that costs $180 will run a 1/3rd HP (700w) fan for 2 hours. To sustain the fan for 3 days, you’d need 36 batteries. Lead-acid batteries have a limited lifespan. You would also need a transfer switch and enclosures and at that point you may as well buy a UPS or a natural gas generator to provide backup power. One thing the NEC 2020 update allowed is bi-directional power between an EV and its charger, you can set up an EV to provide backup power your house, with a transfer switch and everything. Radiant heating systems with boilers require electricity for the pump, even if they’re gas fired. Electric resistive heating needs electricity. Forced air heating needs electricity to run the fan. All heating systems require electric power, even if the heat is generated by burning natural gas.
  • JonathonW 6y ago
    The big issue isn't just the control board-- most forced-air furnaces (at least, of the type used in the southern US) use an electric blower to actually distribute hot air to the rest of the house. End result's the same, though-- no electricity = no heat, regardless of natural gas supply. (But, at least in this case, a relatively small generator can provide enough power to get the furnace up and running and heat the house; the electric furnaces and heat pumps that are most common in places like Texas would need something quite a bit beefier to run without grid power).
    • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      This is one reason why a gas fireplace is a great thing - even without electricity, you can at least heat half a room.
      • redisman 6y ago
        My gas fireplace still requires electricity to run. I know I can start it with a match if needed (and it has a pilot of course) but I'm not 100% sure if I can manually override the gas valve to open. It opens when I flip an electric switch.
        • JonathonW 6y ago
          Does it? Mine opens when I flip an electric switch, but it's self-powered via a thermopile on the pilot-- no AC connection whatsoever. Some other models (from the same manufacturer as mine) don't have a standing pilot, but either use a battery as the primary ignition source, or use AC power but take batteries as a backup.
          • bluGill 6y ago
            I've seen both styles. If it is a regular switch in the wall it uses mains to open the valve. If it has a switch on it, or a thermostat on the wall it probably is thermocouple powered. Though there are exceptions both ways.
  • 13of40 6y ago
    Maybe it's changed lately, but most of the medium sized gas heaters (thinking fireplace inserts, fake wood stoves, etc.) have a feedback loop where the pilot light heats a thermocouple that opens the pilot light valve, plus a thermopile for opening the main valve when the thermostat switch closes. The fan won't run, but you'll still get radiant heat without main electricity.
  • mythrwy 6y ago
    "No electricity = no heat, regardless of natural gas supply." For the furnace yes. The gas fireplace and gas ovens/stoves though probably don't need electricity.
    • kccqzy 6y ago
      I haven't seen a gas oven that can work without electricity. A gas stove, yes, you can simply turn on the gas and quickly use a kitchen lighter to ignite the gas manually and hope not too much poisonous gas escaped the stove. But ovens? How?
      • sithadmin 6y ago
        Many gas ovens (and stovetops) work just fine without electricity thanks to pilot lights.
      • throwawayboise 6y ago
        Older gas ovens used a standing pilot light. They would work without electrical power. Really old ones you light with a match. My kitchen has a gas range, the oven uses electical resistance/incandescent ignitors so it won't work without electrical power. The top burners have spark ignitors but of course I can light them with a match.
      • quickthrowman 6y ago
        The gas oven in my apartment has a pilot light that is always on, no electricity needed.
      • Dylan16807 6y ago
        It's not poisonous.
  • beerandt 6y ago
    Being close to the gulf a lot of people have generators that are likely big enough to power at least their fridge and one or more window/portable AC units. (For hurricanes.) That size is usually big enough to run a blower and control board (and maybe a few other circuits), but it wouldn't come close to powering an electric heating element. But having a gas heater makes it all doable. That's what we do, anyway.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      Though with a generator that big and some ingenuity you can plumb the radiator into the house and get heat from the engine. The more load on the genererator the more heat.
      • beerandt 6y ago
        Schemes like that are generally how CO poisoning stories start. Or fires. A door gets cracked to run a hose through... etc. Besides, at some point, you're just reinvinting an overly complicated combustion heater. Which I already have, is already hardwired for fuel, and only needs to be plugged in.
        • bluGill 6y ago
          Very much true. I didn't touch on safety which is a real issue. That doesn't make the idea bad though. There have been attempts to do this in commercial furnaces before, but the details are hard, and ultimately of questionable value in general. In this particular situation it might be useful, but that is a lot of complexity for something that only makes sense for a week every 10 years.
    • 8note 6y ago
      Maybe not a heating element, but heat punp?
      • agsnu 6y ago
        Heat pump efficiency drops a lot when the temperature goes significantly below zero celsius
  • gregmac 6y ago
    > No electricity = no heat, regardless of natural gas supply. You're confusing furnaces and fireplaces. A fireplace is soemthing that sits in a living space usually with a visible flame behind glass and is designed more for aesthetics than function. They typically run using a millivolt valve for the gas supply, with the voltage generated from a thermopile sitting in the pilot flame. They're often controlled by a regular light switch or a simple two-wire mechanical thermostat. There's natural gas and propane models, and they'll run so long as you have gas flowing. I upgraded mine to use an older wifi thermostat, but kept a light switch on a small cable underneath so I could always use it in case of a power outage, and it's come in handy a couple times. [1] Mine also has a mains-powered blower fan built in (that's the plug on the left), but electrically it's completely separate and controlled by its own thermostat. It turns on when a certain temperature is hit -- usually about 5-10 minutes after the fireplace is on -- and stays on for some time after the flames are off. Obviously the blower doesn't work when there's a power outage but the fireplace still generates a usable amount of heat for the room. On the other hand, my gas forced-air furnace -- which distributes heated air via ducts around the house -- is, as you describe, entirely useless without electricity. Even if it was running without the main blower fan, it would just be heating up the air sitting in the duct coming out of it. At best it might get some heat into the house via convection but I suspect it would cut out on thermal overload before actually doing anything useful. [1] https://i.imgur.com/secdqaR.jpg https://i.imgur.com/secdqaR.jpg
    • bluGill 6y ago
      They used go make furnances that didn't have a blower, hot air raises which gives circulation. You need bigger pipes and can never get high efficiency (went out of style before about 1960 is my guess ). If the furnace looks like it belongs in a horror film it might be this style.
    • 8note 6y ago
      For a full on description of how a good portion of furnaces, tech connections made a video not long ago: https://youtu.be/lBVvnDfW2Xo https://youtu.be/lBVvnDfW2Xo
  • tharkun__ 6y ago
    This seems to be a problem specifically with whole house furnaces. I don't quite get why but I'm guessing cheap companies. Our gas fireplace has no such problems. Piezo electric knob to start the pilot (like your Coleman camping stove but it actually works - ask me how I know) and the pilot generates the electricity needed to actually let the gas flow. If the pilot isn't able to generate the electricity to open the gas valve then no gas ever enters the burn chamber. Again ask me how I know - yes those things gunk up and then can't supply the current you need to open the valve. Easy fix tho. Zero electricity needed and the upstairs stays warm. Also no cold air sucked into the house. The whole system is closed off towards the house. Love this thing!
• ip26 6y ago
  Gas furnaces need power for the circuitry & blower. My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder, but you can warm yourself with radiant heat while it burns. Freestanding wood stoves on the other hand are very capable of warming a large space.
  • dwohnitmok 6y ago
    > My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder Why is that? EDIT: Oh are you saying that the rate of heating provided by the fire is less than the overall rate of heat leaving the entire house?
    • jcims 6y ago
      No, the issue is that the draw of the heated air up through the flue creates a negative pressure inside the home, which gets made up through all the little nooks and crannies around the house. As a result, the room where the fireplace is will be warmer but the rest the house is typically colder.
      • dwohnitmok 6y ago
        Oh interesting. So you're saying it actually accelerates net heat loss to the environment?
        • jcims 6y ago
          Probably to a small extent but the more pronounced effect is the heat gradient. The rest of the house becoming quite a bit colder just sends you back to the fireplace, which is generally not a bad place to be, so overall it's not a major issue.
          • KMag 6y ago
            > so overall it's not a major issue ... unless the extra peripheral heat loss freezes pipes.
• deleted 6y ago
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• foxtr0t 6y ago
  >Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it. This is extremely problematic. Power going out for periods of time less than 48 hours is one thing, losing water from the utility is a problem 3rd world countries have. You sure these people's pipes didn't simply freeze. If its the utility, shame on Texas.
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    Even if your pipes didn't freeze, the upstream pipes could have frozen, or enough of your neighbors' pipes could have frozen, burst, and gotten thawed again, allowing water to flow freely out of the system.
    • tharkun__ 6y ago
      Funny you mention that. Quebec is used to cold weather. Aging infrastructure. There's not a single winter that you don't hear about water main breaks ;) Seen a few parking lot lakes myself over the years.
  • jcranmer 6y ago
    Having worked at a water treatment plant in the past: if the power is out for a sufficiently long time, then your water is going to go dry. The time it takes is dependent on the distribution system (and time of year, you consume about twice as much water in summer as in winter), but where I worked, it was about 12 hours. Also, we had no generators. Why? Because a) power outages of that length are extremely uncommon (2 in 70 years, IIRC) and b) the power draw of a large water treatment plant is insanely high. The water company was literally the largest consumer of power in the entire state, and turning on some of the pumps require the power company's permission because it draws that much power. It's not very feasible to keep a backup power system for such a large facility when the need for it is so very low.
• hotsauceror 6y ago
  We had an incident early this AM and of the eight people we paged, only one had power. I’ve been without power, heat, internet, water, or septic more than 90 minutes at a time for two days. My house was 44 degrees this morning when I woke up. Sunday night we were without power or heat for seven and a half hours. Our DR plan didn’t really account for all of our staff being on the same power grid!
  • geoduck14 6y ago
    >Our DR plan didn’t really account for all of our staff being on the same power grid Yup. I hear you loud and clear.
  • arrosenberg 6y ago
    Remote workers just became a resiliency requirement for businesses.
    • tjr225 6y ago
      You would think so but there were rolling blackouts during the bay area/socal fire season last year and nobody seemed to change course. I wonder if it’s because a lot of companies in the Bay Area already had remote workers?
      • gtaylor 6y ago
        Those were fairly short and did not take out the entirety of the Bay at once.
    • bushbaba 6y ago
      It already was. 24x7x365 geo redundancy SRE and Ops teams is pretty common place. Texas was actually a preferred location as the time zone allowed both west coast and east coast work hours.
  • pault 6y ago
    I’m in Austin, without power for almost 48 hours now. There’s ice in my roommate’s bedroom. It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I’m hearing that we won’t have power until Thursday at the earliest. I’ve gone beyond furious to just horribly depressed.
• killjoywashere 6y ago
  My brother's house is currently 38°. Inside. Also, gas is not useful for a central, forced air system because it depends on the electric motor driving the blower.
• sjg007 6y ago
  For natural gas you want a sealed one so effluent goes up the chimney but the heat radiates through the glass. But heat rises so you create convection. I think a fireplace is an 80% loss so for $10 spent you get $2 heat.
• brk 6y ago
  A "decorative" residential fireplace typically won't do much to provide real heat. If you want something that will make a difference it is usually going to be a sealed unit or something a little more purpose-built. Still, when you compare the burner in the average small fireplace to what you have in a typical furnace, it becomes clear pretty quickly that a fireplace is not likely to be a heat source of much merit, and even if it did have a decent BTU output, it's unlikely to be evenly distributed around the house. tl;dr - a typical residential fireplace isn't an alternative to a furnace.
• kelnos 6y ago
  In 1996 (or thereabouts), I lived in Maryland, and my family lost power for 6 days due to a snow/ice storm that took out a ton of power lines (water froze on them and the added weight pulled them down). We had no natural gas service, and our running water was provided by a well in the backyard that had an electric pump. So no electricity, heat, or running water for 6 days in ~20-30°F weather. (Fortunately we'd prepared by buying many gallons of drinking water, and filling up bathtubs and buckets with water earlier in the week.) We had two fireplaces in the house, one each in the living room and master bedroom, so we kept all doors closed and all slept in the master bedroom. They did a decent enough job keeping us somewhat comfortable while wearing several layers and winter coats at all times, and sleeping in sleeping bags and with extra blankets. (An oddity of our house was that the chimney ran through the middle of it, not outside an exterior wall, so even some of the heat going up it would warm the house a bit.) After 4 days my dad felt the roads were clear enough for us to go to a motel where we could shower and experience some heat. Going back to the house after that (before power was restored) was in some ways worse than enduring the first 4 days. Granted, the reason for that outage was very different from what happened in Texas, but I just wanted to highlight that our power grid everywhere is still very susceptible to bad weather. (Well, ok, this story is 25 years old, but I suspect things haven't changed all that much.)
  • blabitty 6y ago
    I remember that storm! Week off of school and you could skate right on the sidewalk.
    • VonGuard 6y ago
      I remember trees encased in beautiful ice. Freezing rain, basically encased everything in that ice: powerlines, trees, roads, it was a monster.
  • sizzle 6y ago
    Is there no CO2 danger from sleeping with gas stove on? Don’t people die from carbon monoxide poisoning from sleeping with open flames?
• JamesBarney 6y ago
  I'm surprised they have natural gas heat. Everyone I know has electric heat. I've been without power for 2 days and it sucks. My house was 34 degrees this morning. No water for 2 days. Most of my friends are in the same boat.
• ewams 6y ago
  Re fireplace - check out a ventless system. They can change existing burner and logs with ventless which gives you lots of heat that a vented system won't. Can get a decent one for 600-1200 bucks.
• hedora 6y ago
  Modern fireplaces can be >90% efficient. Some pull feed air from the outside, creating no draft inside.
• Johnny555 6y ago
  at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. I have a gas fireplace, it's vented to the outside through a chimney. If you sit right in front of it, you can feel a little radiant heat, but the true warmth comes from the electric fan that circulates air through the firebox that's heated from the gas flames. I'd always figured that if there was an extended power failure, I'd set up a 5V fan from my computer to blow air through the the fireplace. Some gas fireplaces are "direct vent", which means that they vent the exhaust right into the room. I'd never trust one of those not to fill the room with Carbon Monoxide.
  • KMag 6y ago
    I'm honestly surprised direct vent gas fireplaces are legal.
• theshrike79 6y ago
  > I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. American fireplaces in general are a joke. You are just spending way too much energy and not really storing it anywhere except the air around it. They are built to look good, not to actually heat anything properly. Check any Nordic country, we don't have gas fireplaces nor do we have the silly tiny iron things you have. What we do have is stone fireplaces. [1] How it works is this: You heat the multi-hundred kg stone mass using any material you want, for us it's usually wood in some form. After the stone is hot enough, you stop wasting wood and close the chimney when the fire has burned out to prevent heat from escaping. The stone mass will store heat and distribute it slowly and evenly over many hours, keeping everyone warm without electricity. If you want to distribute it, there are fans that operate on the radiant heat coming from the fireplace. A properly installed fireplace (central to the house) will keep a normal home toasty warm for a day or two with one proper heating cycle depending on how cold it's outside. [1] https://www.tulikivi.com/en https://www.tulikivi.com/en
  • paraselene_ 6y ago
    Or you know, instead of having a whole fireplace, just get a kerosene heater? Enough to heat a whole room in case of power&gas outages, last long enough through the night on one fill, and kerosene can be had at a gas station.
    • theshrike79 6y ago
      Pretty much anything actually built to heat stuff is better than the all-looks-no-function "fireplaces" the Americans seem to be in love with. The ones they like to mount their TVs over, despite the neck pain.
      • Cederfjard 6y ago
        You have a slightly condescending tone here that I'm not sure is necessary. Perhaps they're "all-looks-no-function" because they're mostly meant to be decorative rather than functional?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jdc 6y ago
  My dad's heated with nothing but wood for at least a couple winters. The fireplace is never lit, but he'd run his airtight stoves would non-stop.
• lmilcin 6y ago
  I have seen some fireplaces in US (I am from Poland) and outside of northern states they are all decorative pieces not designed to heat the home. A good fireplace is completely closed (yes! no fire visible!) and is built to recover and store as much heat as possible. * the fireplace must be enclosed completely so that it is possible to regulate amount of air going inside and especially to close it completely and SAFELY when you go to sleep. You need to close it so that it does not suck air out of your house. The fireplace stores heat but it does not make any sense if, once it burns out, the air takes all that stored heat out. * the hot gasses go through a complicated tunnel (not directly into chimney) to heat up a large amount of bricks made from material that has high energy capacity. That's why here in Europe we don't tell silly stories about Santa coming through the chimney, because that would be totally ridiculous. He could just as well be coming through water pipes, it is just as accessible. * the fireplace is built on a steel bed so that you can easily take out the ash WHILE it is burning. Also, it supplies the fire from beneath which makes for much better heating. * traditionally, if you made effort to keep fire on throughout the day, you want to make as much use of it as possible. That's why you will see these frequently performing multiple functions: separate space for oven, large top to be able to heat multitude of things, maybe even place to sleep (that especially in really cold climate in Russia, in Poland much less popular). Here are pictures of traditional fireplaces you could expect to heat well: https://images.app.goo.gl/Ka9uiuNTU3LxMHqa6 https://images.app.goo.gl/Ka9uiuNTU3LxMHqa6 https://images.app.goo.gl/rWrvoqGxzcJHC5P77 https://images.app.goo.gl/rWrvoqGxzcJHC5P77 The first one is something you would expect heating the kitchen and the main/dining room and provide most of the heating for the house throughout the day. The second one is something to put in individual rooms that are too far from the kitchen. It is easy to light it up and it heats extremely quickly but also stores absolutely no heat.
  • evgen 6y ago
    There is a difference between a fireplace and a wood-fueled heater. You have described the latter. No one would ever call what you have shown in those images a 'fireplace' in English. There are wood-fueled heaters but they have mostly been replaced by ones that use composite wood pellets, these are popular for off-grid heating in the US.
• throwaway189262 6y ago
  I've been out of power since Sunday night. Water out since yesterday. I'm on the seventh floor too. Most of my friends are in even worse situation. I'm a paranoid near doomsday prepped and my batteries are still low. Walking out of my apartment is indistinguishable from an apocalypse. The emergency system batteries died days ago. Police don't come. The roads are pure ice. Nothing is open. All essential supplies are sold out. Fire systems are all disabled because pipes have burst. Elevators have been gone for a long time. Without a flashlight you might as well be in a cave. Pray for us. People are going to die
• LgWoodenBadger 6y ago
  I can't speak to a fireplace by itself, but anyone who uses wood as a primary source for heat will have a wood stove or furnace. Wood stoves and furnaces are pretty advanced these days, some of them have catalytic "converters" (I guess that's the term). A fireplace looks nice, but doesn't do much else other than that.
• fuzzfactor 6y ago
  Power down at home in west Houston before daylight Monday. Lost water before daylight Tuesday. Power came back on just before daylight Wednesday, off just over 48 hrs, not as bad as some hurricanes. Water service unlikely for a few more days, worse than any hurricane this century.
• bjacobt 6y ago
  > I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. I believe fireplaces in Texas are for decoration. I live in a relatively new house in North Dallas, read open floor plan, and turning on the fireplace make absolutely no difference. We managed to turn it on by replacing the igniter batteries and turned it back off after an hour because you don't get any heat unless you sit within 1 feet of it.