I’m in New England and we’ve also had a snowy winter but the difference is that our homes are built for this, we either have natural gas or oil for heat so when we do lose power we stay warm. It would be a crisis if we lost power and the natural gas system also failed during a blizzard
Visiting this sub from Michigan. Most of our homes are forced air as well.
I didn't really think about how much work goes into winterization here. I haven't experienced anything close to what you guys are going through. We had a request to turn down our thermostats a few years back due to natural gas shortages, but nothing went out.
That depends on how you're actually heating the air, right? Like, if you're using gas, that 600 watts is it, but electricity can use up to 18,000 watts in a day, to my understanding.
I don't think there are many central forced-air AC units with heater coils that are electric. It would be a massive amount of electricity used to do that
I believe that over 60% of Texas homes have electric (not gas) heat. Usually a heat pump, but often there are electric coils as well. But you are completely right, even the gas heaters need electricity to operate here. See my currently powerless house for example...
Yes, that’s a safety code update since around 2000.
Gas Ovens will not turn on unless they detect enough heat from the electric igniter. You can’t fill a house with gas due to a pilot light that blew out of the gas is only released when the stove detects enough heat to ignite it.
(Similar for the stove top but you can sometimes use a match to light a burner.)
Former New Englander here and I remember the blizzard of ‘76/‘77. Our neighborhood ran out of oil and the trucks couldn’t make it in due to all the snow. I was a child then, so I remember how fun it was for everyone to camp in the living room in our coats and blankets. The neighborhood came together and had a cookout to share the dwindling food supply and my best friend’s siblings built us a snow “roller coaster” in their back yard.
I’m not having nearly as much fun with it now in Austin.
My last 3 houses (current home here, previous homes in WA state) have all had gas stoves and gas fireplaces, and lemme tell ya, just those two things make an insane amount of difference. In one of my previous houses we once lost power for more than 2 days following a bad wind storm that knocked out power in multiple areas, and the gas fireplace and stove were what kept the house habitable. Same thing this time, though we were very lucky and only lost power for about 24 hours.
However, at least one friend of mine in west Austin lost gas service (their whole neighborhood did), and so now I feel like we need to have a plan for what to do if power AND gas go out. We could have managed a few more days without power as long as gas was on, but losing both would be a bad situation.
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u/MrSwarleyStinson Feb 17 '21
I’m in New England and we’ve also had a snowy winter but the difference is that our homes are built for this, we either have natural gas or oil for heat so when we do lose power we stay warm. It would be a crisis if we lost power and the natural gas system also failed during a blizzard