I want to thank you personally for injecting a PDF into the discussion, but also positively assert that it is not obvious what just happened this week. We don't yet know how many of the recommendations were ignored, what happened in the last decade regulator-wise or whether this round of failures are for the same or different reasons.
Speculation is much less useful than waiting a few months for the actual investigations. Emergencies are urgent, engineering (and political) decisions and assessments are never emergencies.
However, this problem is not at its root an engineering one; it is political. While the public attention is on this, we should point attention as close as possible to the most likely cause given the information we have at the time. It's bayesian truth and bayesian politics.
You'll note I didn't draw conclusions about which recommendations were ignored but having read through them all, there is no way they were all actually followed and we ended up where we are. I think some basics are fairly obvious. While some winterization perhaps was done, there is some degree of winterization that was never done; power plants in other states far north of us and colder than us are not having the same types of problems. Various professors in various cities in Texas who follow this stuff confirm this in various news outlets I haven't cited here. I also wouldn't be surprised if there was were issues with gas transport from wells through pipelines to plants that were noted in 2011 but much more severe this time due to even colder temps and unexpected by all. But still...
At the end of the day, Texas has optimized for cheap power and has not funded the work of reliable power. This is a political decision at the end of the day due to companies not paying for their externalities of poor service. I'm open to saying we shouldn't blame follower-type politicians who were scared of "raising electrical rates" and we should blame ourselves, but let's all acknowledge that some costs that weren't borne should have been borne and some oversight that should have occurred didn't occur. Is that so hard to concede at this early juncture?
If the utility company had a disclaimer on their bills, or a billing option to pay more or less depending on if you wanted to run this type of risk - maybe it would be a tradeoff people could make?
Instead this seems to be a complete failure of the regulated utility and it's governing political apparatus resulting in an entirely preventable 'major hurricane' level crisis.
I don't see why others states can do it and Texas couldn't or shouldn't. This is hindsight, but out past strategy, if it was intentional, was not optimal.
Even just numerically, I would bet money that the lost productivity and sales will be much more than the "ounce of prevention" costs, even ignoring the humanitatian aspects.
They're young and prepared, so they'll be fine. I expect there to be a lot of deaths. And then a wave of burst pipes and property damage. Many people may be going without running water for weeks or months to come.
Is this lowering cost or just shifting cost, given the huge amount of property damage being caused due to lack of power? The “stitch in time” would apply here. Not to mention how to calculate the cost of human suffering caused by trying to survive in freezing temps with no power for multiple days.
Re: everyone starts deciding what they believe to be truth within 48 hours of the outage.
Maybe, hopefully... the epidemic is humbling us. It's been significant and long lasting enough to rub our noses in whatever opinions we so brashly got behind too early. Professors and peasants alike. We're more likely to stop and say "I don't know."
The classic example of this is governments taking credit/blame for economic stuff. Low unemployment, high gdp, etc. Current government decisions are really unlikely to be affecting these, because stuff takes time. Meanwhile, short term data about the economy is both uncertain and fairly useless even if it wasn't. The whole thing is so disingenuous, yet I doubt there has ever been an democratic election where this wasn't a major factor.
I was wearing an n95 mask in the grocery store starting March 1st last year, there was no reason at that point to think it wouldn’t help and I still can’t comprehend why someone like Fauci who said in no uncertain terms not to wear a mask, it won’t help never faced any repercussions. I probably got a lot of things wrong that I don’t really remember. I still am a bit ocd about hand washing and hand sanitizer even though covid seems not to spread via surfaces very much, except for when it does, and I’ll probably keep doing that until the pandemic is over just because I have been.
My takeaway from this past year is certainly not that humans are rational or good at accountability.
I thought the general assumption was they were afraid of dramatically affecting supply for the people who were risking their lives taking care of sick patients.
That set of statements probably cost almost as many (or more) lives as the (very misleading) 'no such thing as asymptomatic spread' comments from WHO.
If you're in a position of authority and you DO come out and say something you know to be false then don't be surprised at having to deal with long running consequences for making such a statement.
You can decide for yourself, but to me he was pretty clearly trying to make people think masks don't work masks don't work while leaving a small sliver of plausible deniability.
This whole article makes a compelling case that he's really just as much of a calculating politician as anyone in Washington https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-case-against-fauci/. And he's done a great job branding himself because most people seem to think the opposite, until you look at him closer.
May I ask what exactly you were hoping for here?
If my bad advice cost thousands of lives, I would at least retire from public life.
The two people with the power to fire Dr Fauci are the NIH director, and the president (via his power over the NIH director). In fact by summer 2020 Dr Fauci had earned the ire of the White House, but for essentially the opposite reason (this was when the White House was still trying to underplay the pandemic as not-that-bad, going-away-soon, it'll be an Easter miracle, etc). As such the NIH director aligned with Dr Fauci against the White house, and Fauci was seen as the "defender of wearing masks" or somesuch. For example, consider the following article:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/16/francis-collins-defends-...
I don't think it's impossible to have seen Fauci fired if that's how Trump played it politically. But it's not.
Consider the following:
> Trump, in particular, has openly disagreed with Fauci’s guidance on whether fans should attend professional football games in the fall [...]
> In recent weeks, as the U.S. outbreak has spiraled out of control, Fauci has urged Americans to wear masks and to practice social distancing. The White House, however, has refused to amplify his advice, and instead has escalated its attacks on him.
The white house was trying to stimulate the economy by reassuring people it's okay to go out and spend money. Attacking Dr. Fauci for not being serious enough about masks sends the opposite signal. Hence, Fauci became the "wear a mask" guy (as viewed in opposition to the White House). Thus, everyone forgot / didn't care that early on he was wrong about masks.
Hope that cleared things up.
Can you imagine telling people to take care of covid positive patients without having any face masks?
We expected more from all health authorities all over. Fauci failed us, the WHO, the CDC. We needed more from all of them.
If you ever have the opportunity to visit Japan and see people wearing masks when they have a cold or flu on normal days. We don't do that. Heck, we are in a work culture where it is a bad thing to take days off when you are ill.
If you look at other countries where the government and the populace take pandemics seriously and lock down.
You see governors here being proud about not adhering to COVID-19 Protocols. You see Police in major cities of the country REFUSING to wear masks or intentionally wearing them wrong. You hear of them refusing to get the vaccine, when they are prioritized to do so.
You see a Pandemic become politicized because an incompetent man was President and it was part of his brand to not deal with it or set an example.
You have certain epidemiologists telling school teachers to get back to work and teach his daughters because, well only a small number of them will die from COVID, so get the fuck back to work.
I could go on, but it is what it is.
This is actually a perfect example of the difficulty of scientific communication to a large audience. You need to communicate concise easy to understand guidance about complex topics. Asking “are masks effective” isn’t a simple question and the answer is, it depends. The first part is “effective at what task”, the second is “to what extent”, third is “in what situation”, fourth is “with what risks and tradeoffs”. I’ll be talking about the non-N95 masks unless specifically stated, to avoid any confusion.
Masks are not very effective at preventing an uninfected person from contracting Covid when in proximity to someone infected with Covid. The masks do not form a seal around the mouth and nose, allowing significant amounts of air around the mask when breathing in, as well as not being able to prevent being infected through the eyes. They do provide some protection, including possibly reducing the severity of the infection if contracted while wearing the mask, but that is not their primary benefit.
Mask are effective at preventing the spread from an infected person (either asymptomatic or symptomatic) to others. Breathing out directly into a mask allows the material to catch and trap the majority of the virus carrying condensation, and what gets out around or through the mask is slowed down significantly, allowing the droplets to be pulled down by gravity before traveling as significant distance (or fog up your glasses). Especially when combined with social distancing, this is very effective at prevent the spread of the virus. This is the masks primary benefit and is effective when there is large scale adoption, so that people that have the virus but are not aware, don’t unknowingly pass it. Its effectiveness comes as an aggregate effect similar to herd immunity, rather than an individual effect, since the vast majority of transmission comes from people unaware they are carriers.
Mask come with risks. People tend to touch their face more while wearing masks, and contracting the virus by touching your face is a primary infection mode. People tend to relax other more effective protection methods when wearing a mask, both unconsciously and due to a false belief in the protective capabilities of a mask.
So, in March we had a situation where we were running a shortage of masks. We had people wearing masks (either homemade or surgical) because they believed the mask provided good protection from contracting the virus, which is not true, and may cause people to engage in risky behavior that would put them and others at more risk. We also didn’t have enough masks to be used for their actual benefit of “herd immunity”. The assessment was that non sick people wearing masks was likely to put the individual at greater risk, and deplete the resource from places it was needed, without providing a medical benefit to the individual greater than the risks. In March, the average non sick person should not be wearing a mask.
Now, we have a situation where we do not have a shortage of masks. We have a situation where the public has been educated through awareness campaigns on how masks work, like the “My mask protects you. Your mask protects me” campaign, so people are less likely to use the masks incorrectly and put themselves and others at greater risk. The assessment is that high compliance of mask wearing will have a greater positive effect through “herd immunity” to outweigh the risks and tradeoffs. But make no mistake, the risks are still there. Now the average non sick person should be wearing a mask.
If you don’t understand the underlying medical complexities of the situation, it seems like they can’t both be true. And when an expert organization is trying to provide a clear, short, easy to understand list of recommendations from analyzing and evaluating all those data, they can’t go into to a 45 min presentation every time. Dr. Fauci even tried to add context in March. He talked about how the masks don’t provide protection in the way people think they do, how it can cause people to put themselves at greater risk, both through a false sense of protection and other behaviors like face touching, and how masks primarily protect you from infecting others, not the other way around. If you go back and look at his quotes at the time, he consistently tries to bring that additional context into it, but since it is a complex issue of competing risks and benefits, it’s hard to convey how masks can be good in some cases and bad in others.
> Dr. Fauci in March. “When we get in a situation where we have enough masks, I believe there will be some very serious consideration about more broadening this recommendation of using masks. We're not there yet, but I think we're close to coming to some determination. Because if, in fact, a person who may or may not be infected wants to prevent infecting someone else, one of the best ways to do that is with a mask, so perhaps that's the way to go.” [1]
> And of course his 60 Minutes interview. “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”
[1] https://www.axios.com/anthony-fauci-masks-coronavirus-f77c30...
I'm not predicting any kind of revolution, and this is all at the margin. I don't expect TV takestars or politicians to be the vanguard. That said, I have noticed people pondering the unknowability of it all. More interest in margin or error equivalents. Stuff like that.
Example: Covid conversations (the one I have in mind was with my aunt) 6 months ago were along the lines of "the government did X, Y happened." Now, it's wondering whether X impacted Y... counterfactual thinking.
I have yet to encounter this in my work/corporate life though, and honestly, that's where it's most needed.
It kind of feels like the problems are evident, and waiting for time to lull people back into complacency on the issue seems like it will just set up the next such disaster.
[0] https://twitter.com/MikeZaccardi/status/1362038182234251267?...
It’s tricky - I also have a problem waiting months for a slow inefficient government agency to figure out how to cover their collective asses (or find the right scapegoat). I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make systems we can monitor, analyze and draw conclusions from much quicker.
There needs to be a happy medium- find the problems and “trust the experts” for sure, but do so without being so damn _loud_.
"I also have a problem waiting months for a slow inefficient government agency to figure out how to cover their collective asses"
We don't deal with school shooting massacres here right after they occur. We don't deal with them after they happen.
What stopped school shootings? Not having children in schools.
You just had a group of militias, white supremacists et al, invade a branch of government, terrorize they staff, representatives and security--and nothing comes of it in terms of accountability and responsibility by Trump.
You have those on the political right saying nothing big happened. You have people whining why is the national guard still there?
As a nation, we don't prioritize efficiency, competence and reaction time. We don't want to measure and improve our infrastructure and policies.
Legislators have a terrible habit of using a crisis to:
1) Make something that was already illegal super-dooper illegal (see: terrorism).
2) Mucking up traditional safeguards against bad government - like evidence requirements, reasonable process, human rights in some cases, debating the legislation, reading the bill before voting on it, etc.
In emergencies, legislators are just going to rubber-stamp things technical experts wave under their nose/hand power to some executive. They aren't needed.
Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it.
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 haven't found clear findings on what determines whether your fireplace net-warms or net-cools your house in super-cold weather (by sucking heat out of adjacent rooms and pulling cool air from the outside and sending hot air up your chimney). Pointers welcome.)
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.
I can assure you that most new construction in Oslo (pretty much only apartments these days) don't include fireplaces. And why would they? With steam pipes running through much of the city, there's no need for the expense and pollution involved with a fireplace except for show anyway.
The fact is that cities in the US, like in Europe, generally have very reliable power and gas supplies, so they don't need to build fireplaces designed to actually heat the place, and we don't want to encourage people in cities to burn wood to heat their place anyway. So showplace fireplaces, especially the gas ones, are a better solution for allowing people to have the cozy feeling when they want it.
I do have a fireplace and a wood stove which provide something of a backup but won't heat the whole house and only work if I'm there.
The modern ones with afterburn contour are also quite efficient in energy output per unit fuel burned.
The considerations are different, though. Cast iron is great if you want to radiate as much heat as possible as fast as possible or need to heat a small area (e.g. single room per heater). There's a reason small cast-iron Jøtul fireplaces used to be the stereotypical heater for cabins etc. in Norway.
I have natural gas heating and a combi smart boiler which runs on electricity. Even if I still have the gas link operational, if my power goes down then my heating is dead.
This news of Texas actually reminded, that I should have some sort of emergency winter heating backup, and a boat or camping kerosene heater is a actually a pretty solid idea for emergencies.
You don't need to go overboard with tons of dried food and a nuclear fallout shelter. Just a cheap multi-fuel camping stove and some canned food will last you a few days easily.
I think Cast Iron or stone fireplaces serve a different purpose, in most cases. They're for show, and novelty.
But more importantly - the gas fireplaces are intended to look nice with minimal effort. They are explicitly not intended to change the indoor climate much if at all. They're usually built in very new homes that have dedicated, reliable climate control systems or in cities that don't require much heating.
They are a bit like windows: not energy efficient but nice to look at/through.
During the historic cold weather going on this week, I have no confidence that they would help if the power went off.
Yeah. There are decorative fireplaces. The Norwegian company Rais sells some great decorative ones.
There are also incredibly efficient cast iron stoves that some people use for heat. You made fun of them in another comment, but they are much more efficient than a fireplace, and can use a variety of fuels like pellets or gas in addition to wood.
Of course, there are also people that have a standard wood fireplace that you imply is in every Norwegian home. Most people don’t use them here since they are so inefficient, dangerous and illegal in cities due to the pollution.
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.)
There are actually a lot of ice/ freezing-rain downed powerlines happening simultaneously with the rolling blackouts, and that's a huge part of the problem.
The grid/supply is being blamed for both. Of course if the lines weren't down, it would increase demand and there wouldn't magically be any more supply to feed them... but it does explain why a lot of people's blackouts aren't "rolling."
I don't know anyone who is affected by a downed powerline and I know 12 people without power.
Have not had even a blip of outage for anything. Last year I believe something damaged a large power pole and we were out for 3 hours.
If warmer states took notes on how north states do it we wouldn't be in this pickle I assume. Also warm states need to bury their water lines deeper.
They loose heat to the outdoors as you say and since they cool down a lot faster than the internal chimneys it is also generally harder to get the fire going when re-lighting. The chimney on my house is on an outer wall and when it's below 0C I have to light a fire every day or it becomes too much of a hassle to get it going.
Houses in southern states were built with external chimneys which made sense for a couple reasons. Back in the day people would keep a fire 24/7 for cooking and that fire + southern heat is uncomfortable. Because of the shorter cold season the chimney was on the outside of the house. Also, in the case of chimney fires you could tie a chain around an external chimney and rip it down with a horse, hopefully saving your home.
Last place I rented with a fireplace, there was a metal door in brickwork below it in the basement. It wasn’t until after I moved out that I realized what it was for.
A massive stone fireplace that's heated with a single load of fuel, then has its chimney flaps closed to keep the heat from escaping, is going to be much more efficient. I wonder if maybe the fireplaces in many parts of the USA are actually designed to not heat the house too much, given the usual weather in e.g. Texas.
Outdoor fires well, are outdoors, so there's plenty of oxygen.
People die nearly every year in the brutal cold from getting desperate and bringing grills and such indoors to light, which is a big no no.
Otherwise - no, if there is enough oxygen coming in. When fireplace is done properly it is not a problem.
If you have a tank toilet you might be able to adjust the floater (bend the rod upwards) so it never quite turns off the supply valve. Failing that, you can just manually prop the flap open with something.
If you have a flushometer, remove the nut over the valve and adjust the screw underneath until the valve never quite shuts off.
Warning: Take careful note of exactly how things were before. A toilet that never stops running can be just as hard on the spirit as a toilet that doesn't work at all.
Alternatively, why doesn't the grinder have a higher minimum triggering flow rate? It seems it's falsely detecting potential solids arrival.
Trickling your faucets (just a drip-drip-drip) for a few days is a small amount of extra wear on your pump in exchange for not rupturing pipes.
It sounds like the answer is that to be effective, you'd have to put too many of them along the length of the pipework.
(Edit: Houston only.)
[1] https://www.wfaa.com/article/weather/if-dripping-faucets-sav...
Texas was actually a preferred location as the time zone allowed both west coast and east coast work hours.
Yup. I hear you loud and clear.
If you've ever seen a septic system with an audible alarm, this is probably why.
There is a significant overlap of septic installations and wells and most modern wells run on electric. But if you’re toilet’s basin is full, it doesn’t need any power to flush and drain. It just won’t fill again.
typically there is enough pressure in the tank to allow a flush or two. you don't operate the well pump every time there is demand.
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
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.
Sadly, most wood stoves are not tight, nor are most users experienced.
It does require yearly maintenance to grease the motor and I had to undergo some repairs when we bought it (used, it came with the house) because the previous owners did some really dodgy stuff like using a completely wrong sized fuse and taping it in with duct tape, mangling the fuse holder, but it has been reliable for over a decade now.
For Power outages and also coz its just awesomely warm: propane fireplace. All the benefits of a wood fireplace with none of the downsides.
What this means is that we don't worry about "oh how about we all go ice skating" just turn the fireplace off without worrying about a fire. No indoor air quality issues. Electricity is out? Sure no fan but who cares. Still warm (and some have battery backup fans). Have to start it up without electricity? No problem, pilot lights w/ piezo starter. Propane delivery isn't that different from having to stockpile the firewood.
Edit: Downvote? I really want to know why you disagree, please respond! What am I missing?
Also, either the "way to keep the tank warm" would probably be an electric heater (which would fail in these corner cases) or else a small burner... next to your tank of highly flammable gas with lots of no-smoking signs around.
Though, I would guess in colder climates, if you really wanted to use LPG, you could put an electric fuel pump in your tank (so it doesn't rely on vapour pressure to feed) and have a burner that pre-warms the fuel and includes a small electric heater for starting.
It's more or less a one-time cost and you might want the simplicity. Tradeoffs rather than it being inevitable.
And multiple fuel jets aren't enough. If you can't depend on the propane, then you need a lot of backup fuel.
> small burner... next to your tank of highly flammable gas with lots of no-smoking signs around.
You have fire that's not very far anyway. It's not hard for an expert to design something that's safe, since you don't need all that much heat.
> Though, I would guess in colder climates, if you really wanted to use LPG, you could put an electric fuel pump in your tank (so it doesn't rely on vapour pressure to feed) and have a burner that pre-warms the fuel and includes a small electric heater for starting.
If you prefer keeping the tank design the same, that sounds fine. A tiny pump would take barely any power, so a cheap solid-state generator attached to the burner could run it and charge your phone too. You don't even need a battery to get things going; a 1 pound tank could be warmed by hand if everything else goes wrong.
(Farmers buy diesel in bulk and don't pay road tax on it. It's illegal to put the untaxed diesel into a pickup that ever leaves the farm.)
I just replaced the old stove in my house with a new catalyst model and I burn 30% less wood while providing more steady even heat. I am heating 4000 sqft 2 story with only wood heat, one load every 12 hours, house between 80 and 64 degrees depending on location.
Wood heat is great!
I opted for a blaze king catalyst stove. It’s probably the nicest stove utilitarian stove you can buy if you want to heat a large space and want to control temp outputs. Downside is cat replacements every 5 or so years, but that’s not a big deal and worth the benefits.
Lots of good options out there!
When you start a fire you want to quickly get the stove up to temperature. Use small split logs and kindling sticks along with some kind of “candle” that burns long enough to get the flames going. Commercial fire lighters (kerosine wax bricks) or even just a bit of kitchen towel with a tablespoon of vegetable oil will do.
The kindling and your first log will burn hot and bright with an attractive yellow flame — like a campfire. At the end of this first burn you will build up a layer of red hot wood embers in the base of the firebox and the ironwork will be about half way to temperature.
The next stage and each stage after that is to put on a much smaller load — often I will just use a single large log — and leave the air intake or door ajar, temporarily. The hot embers will rapidly get the new log hot and the whole thing will instantly go from glowing red to an inferno in under a minute.
At that point you have achieved a self sustaining reactor. You can leave it running full throttle if you want the pretty yellow flames. It will only last 20 minutes though and all the energy will blast up the chimney.
Much better, and indeed the whole reason for having a wood stove over an open grate, is to now shut off almost all of the airflow to the firebox. Low airflow means the combustion goes right down — you may not even see any flames if you go super low — but it also means the stove isn’t being constantly cooled by a high volume of airflow.
If you balance it just right then the flame front of burning wood gas will sit above the logs and permeate the whole chamber. It looks like a cross between Aurora borealis and a Backdraft (1991) slo-mo sequence — a deep red wraith that flaps around slowly, completely unlike the sooty yellow flames you began with. You get a real feeling for how it’s the gas not the wood that’s burning. (Having a stove with a glass viewing window really opened my eyes to their operation.)
A single 10” log — quarter split from a 20” diameter ash tree and air dried for 18 months to <20% moisture content — will now produce 10kW for an hour or more and stay burning for eight. The fire will “keep” overnight and in the morning you can put on a new log, fire it up with the door ajar, and be back at full capacity in minutes.
What’s interesting is that if you run the stove in pretty mode — like a cartoon open fireplace with crackling and burning and yellow flames with the vents or even the whole front door open — you’ll notice that parts of the stove might not even get hot. The iron air intake grill on mine will remain at room temperature because although the flames are vigorous, the airflow is so fast it keeps the stove body cool.
Conversely, once the stove has been running for an hour in slow burn mode, the entire body is practically glowing and requires thick gloves to handle. It is wonderful.
Would love a video if you can find one to see exactly what you're talking about.
For the uninitiated, take a look at the forums at hearth.com.
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?
The smoke is poison, and unlike a furnace, gas fireplace, firebox, or wood stove, there is no heat exchanger, so you can't capture any of the heat out of the flue gasses.
It's counter-intuitive, I know. But this is why everybody congregated around the hearth in the days of fireplaces.
Seems like it could be fixed with a simple design change.
But I am not a fireplace lawyer so I won't profess to know.
Almost without comment. All I will say is that we have some friends in Germany living in the 'countryside' (as much as that's still a thing in densely populated Germany) that heat their main living area with one of these (way less elaborate design lol). My grandma had one of these sitting in the wall between kitchen (right next to the eating area) and the living room.
We had fireplace powered central heating -— radiators throughout the house linked to pipes behind the firebox. In the morning I’d wake up to ice on the inside of the windows, and by my teenage years it was my job to head downstairs and light the coal fire first thing in the morning. It worked well once the fire was up and running.
This was in the ‘90s btw, I’m not _that_ old.
Different places, different 'customs' i.e. systems we are used to. All have their pros and cons and sometimes it's just that we don't know that different systems exist.
Back in the day (i.e. 1700s) everyone heated with fireplaces. And many of them (e.g. 2nd floor ones) weren't that big.
How this works out in terms of net heat gained/lost will depend on the fireplace design, but, from what I hear, it's not uncommon for this to be a net-loss type of situation.
As a result, the room where the fireplace is will be warmer but the rest the house is typically colder.
... unless the extra peripheral heat loss freezes pipes.
AFAIK in europe having outside air intake in stove is mandated by law. You can not use it, but all newly built houses have outside intake if someone was planning on adding wood stove. You also need to have proper vent near your stove, so even if it uses inside air, it will typically get it through that. I have automatic pellet burning furnace in basement for normal heating needs (it starts automatically when needed, uses 3 temperature sensors on floors and in basement) and wood stove for "romantic" purposes, but when it's fired, it heats up almost whole house and pellet stove sees that no more heating is needed. I have lots of leftover wood from construction phase, so wood stove will pay itself back from reduced use of pellet.
As for losing heat through chimney - properly mounted and operated wood stove doesn't lose that much heat through chimney. Most of them have long enough steel pipe from stove to chimney, which reuses some heat from exhaust and ventilation channels in chimney, which are heating incoming air.
Then again Ben Franklin figured out how to make a fireplace that worked yet most don't.
[1] https://www.heatilator.com/owner-support/troubleshooting-and...
I suppose if you can afford it, go for both and have multiple reduncancy.
Ride the bike to start the heater in a blackout
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/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.
You will find western style "fireplaces" in some new homes which are nothing more than show pieces to have cosy atmosphere but are utterly impractical for the task of heating the home.
Now, what what we would call "heater" is usually placed in the basement for practical purposes. The ones I showed above are placed directly in living area and are way more efficient.
Traditionally, you did not heat entire home, only the area where you live which contracts during winter. There might be other rooms which you only heat in the evening before you go to bed and then it gets extremely cold (but that's fine, you just put good enough featherbed to keep warm). This is practical aspect because heating entire home requires huge amount of resources.
This is 101 of building a functional fireplace designed to heat the house.
My folks simply bought a really nice fireplace insert. It works extremely well. These are not uncommon, even in the south, and my parent's place is far from 'off grid'. They absolutely do use it to 'heat the house', and we only supplement with radiant heaters in the far bedrooms.
In my current appartment (also in Switzerland), this is the stove we have: https://imgur.com/a/SVKahw5 We also have an oil based central heating system, so it's not really needed anymore, but on very cold days it allows to get the living room warm and cozy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Even with the valve barely open you have maybe 3 to 5 seconds to get it lit in a normal fashion. Heh mess around too long and you’re in for a big woosh and plenty of singed arm hair.
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.
Sooo many different systems and many are just not well thought out. Especially in climates where it usually doesn't matter.
Here in Quebec it does matter so the one we have works in all conditions with various levels of manual intervention. We don't even have the one with a battery operated fan but even that exists.
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.
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.
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.
Plus having a continuous plug-in (natural gas) fuel source is a big advantage over refilling a gasoline generator, which most portable generators are.
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.
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/ )
For the furnace yes.
The gas fireplace and gas ovens/stoves though probably don't need electricity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
tl;dr - a typical residential fireplace isn't an alternative to a 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.
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.
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.
The summary is: Regularly inspect and maintain your equipment, here are the obvious things that must be done. (Unstated: We feel a need to say this, because obviously it didn't happen in at least one place...)
Probably got cut by the bean counters and a cut-throat market that didn't require safety and availability as considerations.
What's needed is real incentives, carrots and/or sticks, with real enforcement and follow-through. Speak softly, and all.
This argument to incentivize rather than punish applies to many issues with legislative bodies across all complex industries like Big Tech and other Engineering fields. You pass a law that drinking water cannot have over 10ppm of XXX carcinogen? There is most likely going to be 9.99ppm because that's the bare minimum.
We really need to move from stick to carrot.
The problem is that Texas is an outlier. Other governments, broadly, get this right. Those FERC recommendations mentioned upthread? They're the work of the government (hell, NERC is even a multinational globalist thing). That argues less that "governments are bad" than it does for "THIS government was bad".
But also the company decides that they're okay with only getting that carrot 95% of the time because filtering costs money. So 5% of the time it's much worse.
The real power of a stick over a carrot is the incentives can be much bigger. If you're selling widgets, and 1% catching on fire just means you're paid 1% less, you don't care very much. If you're fined 50 times the purchase price for each widget that catches fire, you care a lot.
Their incentive structure rewards short term budget savings at the expense of long term preparedness. The real fix is to have a non-partisan body staffed by actual engineers setting this kind of policy, isn't it?
In my experience running capital projects, you get performance by paying modest performance bonuses and assessing tough penalties for non-performance.
Local monopoly.
1. Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Holding_Company...
Limited the profits of a utility holding company, spurring the formation of additional shell companies to each get the maximum allowed.
Overturned in 2005, when today's highly increased risk was cemented.
2. Houston Industries, Inc.
https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/67/HOUSTON-IND...
3. The Public Utility Commission of Texas
Still exists in more toothless form after 2005.
4. Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Reliability_Council_o...
Est. 1970 just in case of unreliability (for utility shareholders), not much of a factor until recently. Given more leeway to disappoint consumers after 2002.
5. Public Utility Regulatory Act (PURA)
https://www.lawinsider.com/documents/5KMbhJATuC2
Est. 1975.
Modified 1995, 1997, 1999, restructured 2007, latest edition effective as of September 1, 2017.
Straight downhill as far as reliability goes.
https://www.electricchoice.com/blog/guide-texas-electricity-...
Up until 1995, under the HL&P monopoly the first 675 kWh remained extremely low cost for residential consumers as had been agreed with PUC to allow jacking up further residential kWh, and business accounts, into rates beyond the reach of low-income households. Check your old bills. Of course 675 kWh is not enough for air conditioning but otherwise a small household could remain within that tier if they could conserve effectively, and had gas heat for the normally mild winters. As soon as deregulation started, HL&P then began the agressive promotion of new plans to all their established customers, similar to the limited number of newly allowed competitors where giving a break for the first bunch of kWh was no longer required. For a while there it was still required for HL&P consumers who had not opted out of their 1980's plan, but they made whatever straight-rate deals were necessary to get this info off of people's bills ASAP.
6. Deregulation of the Texas electricity market
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_elec...
Headed us in the current direction starting in 2002.
New company Centerpoint took over the energy delivery infrastructure. Transmission assets from HL&P and others, delivery pipelines from gas suppliers, all of it.
As the name implies, pay no attention to a central point of failure. Nothing to see here.
By 1983 in the other most air-conditioned state, FPL the Florida state monopoly in a number of power plants was consuming the same grade of fuel oil as the Houston monopoly. A fuel oil vessel could be loaded from a Houston refinery, and with freight to FL the consumers there were paying half the price as in Houston using the same fuel without the added cost of sea freight.
7. As we have seen, Gov. Abbot has never been good enough for Texas, Lt. Gov. Patrick experienced his high point as a failed sports announcer, and Atty. Gen Paxton has only enough integrity for an uninhabited island.
Don't get me started on the equally compromised Ex. Rep. DeLay who in 2002 became US House Majority "Leader". Left in disgrace over lack of ethics himself.
No garage doors to keep the cold air in since it didn't really matter to the power company.
No mayor has ever wanted citizens to be very aware of that since the city took over the building in 1999.
>Reliant Energy Inc.--formerly Houston Industries Inc.--operates among the top five power and natural gas marketers in the United States. With over $32 billion in assets, the company serves nearly four million customers in the southern United States and Minnesota. After the Texas Electric Choice Act was passed in 1999, Reliant Energy rolled its non-regulated operations into Reliant Resources, a majority owned subsidiary with power plants it the United States as well as the Netherlands. Reliant Resources also markets and trades energy in Germany, the United Kingdom, and in the United States. Reliant Energy Communications, an Internet-related division, provides Texans with Internet, data, voice, and other telecommunications services.
https://investors.centerpointenergy.com/corporate-transactio...
Interconnect with neighbour grids does not cost 20% more, AC or DC. In fact the huge peaking capability of a state with ~50% gas generation would generate revenue supplying peak demand and variations in renewable supply.
Pricing systems (i.e. market rules) that encourage reliability doesn't automatically lead to gold plating.
There are definitely points on such curves, of course, where you've exhausted the sweet spot and just have the option of paying e.g. 3x as much for a very modest marginal decrease in risk. But that doesn't sound like the case here.
Was the 20% cost savings they just stopped winterizing the generators?
It certainly could raise your electrical costs by 20% for weatherization, but there's nothing stopping the utility from raising your costs for any other reason. If weatherization doesn't completely eat into their profit margins, they don't HAVE to raise prices at all. The government could also fund it as a one-time expense.
Exactly the same thing happened in South Australia in 2016
1) Renewables % of generation mix grows (wind + solar)
2) Base generation sources get pushed out by economics and regulation (coal)
3) Peak generation sources get squeezed by the economics of wind + solar over summer (lots of wind, lots of sun) and begin to be relegated to backup roles
4) Something bad happens (in SA it was software misconfiguration across multiple wind generation sources)
5) The backup generation gets used for the first time, suprise suprise it doesnt work
6) chaos
2/3rds of the power that went offline from the storm was fossil.
Moreover, Texas's independent grid (not connected to the rest of the US) makes it difficult for them to import power from neighboring states.
Stop trying to push political tribalist stories that blame renewables for bog standard failures in traditional systems that could have been avoided.
https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the...
"The report also addresses the interdependency of the electric and natural gas industries. “Utilities are becoming increasingly reliant on gas-fired generation, in large part because shale production has dramatically reduced the cost of gas,”
In 2011 when this happened before, Texas had even less renewables. I realize you're trying to hard to sell an ideology to blame renewables for what is really, gross mismanagement of the Texas grid, including fossil and nuclear power, but the reality is much more complex than your simple narrative.
Frankly, it seems like you've decided that the issue is renewables and you're searching around for an argument to justify a conclusion you've already come to. Because what you're saying is simply not actually supported by the evidence or consistent with the current situation.
Renewables are down from their peak capacity in Texas, but they're actually performing above what the grid thought they'd do. So it's not like ERCOT got caught with their pants down when it comes to renewable generation.
Instead the issue appears to be that thermal (gas, coal, and nuclear) plants all over Texas are failing in the face of cold weather, and because Texas has its own grid it can't shift enough power from nearby states in order to cover the demand.
And it's not like these plants were off and everyone is surprised that they didn't turn on; Texas gets most of its power from natural gas most of the time. More to the point cold weather specific recommendations from back in 2011 weren't followed with sadly predictable consequences.
> Most of the power knocked offline came from thermal sources, Woodfin said, particularly natural gas.
Strangely the rules under which some of them operate involve them paying for gas at spot prices (or at least during peak demand), and with spot gas prices being so high (due to pipeline failures limiting supply, and gas for heating having precedence) they had the option to stop generating...
How many of the 24+6 recommendations from the NERC/FERC review of last time this happened in Texas (hint:2011) were taken up by the legislature or those at ERCOT they delegated responsibility to or the power generation providers?
https://www.nerc.com/pa/rrm/ea/ColdWeatherTrainingMaterials/...
The eye opener to me from skimming the 2011 recommendations is that there was no explicit rating/SLA for a power plant's acceptable temperature operating that could be used by planners for assessing the risks of an upcoming weather event by policy planners. It'd seem pretty basic to be able to ask "How many plants do we lose when temperature drops below X"? Dunno whether they fixed trying to create such a basic measurement for Texas plants, but it doesn't seem like it.
If you want to know some of the specifics about what "winterization" means in practice for a power plant including natural gas ones, you can read some of the details in that report. It's kinda interesting.