In this episode of Fix It Radio, we explore the pressing issues surrounding power outages with a focus on personal responsibility and solutions. Join host John as he navigates the challenges homeowners face when dealing with unexpected power disruptions. From exploring the rationale behind utility company decisions to understanding the need for energy independence, this discussion provides valuable insights and firsthand experiences to better prepare and equip listeners for potential power outages.
SPEAKER 12 :
Walter? Upstairs! Are you alright?
SPEAKER 05 :
In the floor behind the chair. This is America.
SPEAKER 01 :
Does everybody know what time it is? Fix It Radio!
SPEAKER 11 :
And it’s Fix It Radio, KLZ 560. Appreciate you all listening and waking up with us on this Saturday morning. A little bit gray out. It was sunny earlier, and then it grayed up, and there’s little snowflakes floating around here or there. Temperature actually dropped this morning. If you’re listening to this on Tuesday, or sorry, on Monday, the replay, or any of the replays, by the way, I don’t know what it’s doing at that point in time. I can just tell you what it’s doing on Saturday morning at 9 o’clock. So, Larry Unger, how are you, sir? Good morning, John. How are you doing? Good. This will be our last live program of 2025. Of course, we’ll be back in 2026, but we’ll take a couple weeks off here as we go through the Christmas holidays. So if you’ve got any questions at all for us today, by all means, let us know. 303-477-5600. You can text us as well on text line 307. Two hundred eighty to twenty two. So one thing is this big on my ready radio program last night or yesterday afternoon at two o’clock is, of course, all of the power outages. So I thought I’d continue some of that on into fix it radio today and even take some questions, calls, things like that. Some of you that are on the west side of town are probably still without power. Power, most of the rest of the metro area, in fact, some areas were never affected by anything. But most folks on the west side of town and depending upon where you’re at from, you know, the Boulder area, mostly it was I believe Xcel Energy was the only one that did a mandatory, you know, power outage. I think there were some other other power companies that had some issues with downed lines and things like that where there were actual power outages. along those lines but uh in general it was an excel energy uh i can’t think there’s a name there’s an acronym for it and no offense it’s another made-up name if you ask me sorry i’m i’m very bitter against excel energy right now because i think they’re going way overboard in what they’re doing i think it’s a big poke in the eye because of the big lawsuit they had Over the Marshall Fire, which I didn’t pay out, they did. I would have fought that truthfully. I think the judge that took that case on was an absolute moron, should have thrown the case out in the first place. Xcel Energy, there never was proven they did anything wrong whatsoever. And some things just happen. It is what it is. Get over it, people. And if you’re underinsured… In that fire, that’s your problem, not Xcel Energy or my fault as a taxpayer or anybody else’s for that matter. Personal responsibility has to come into play at some point. So sorry to go off here on a tangent, but I feel the way Xcel Energy is handling these rolling blackouts, or not rolling, they’re not even rolling, they’re regional. uh you know basically they take an entire area and just shut the you know shut the entire power off and in my opinion there’s not any rhyme or reason as to why certain things are even getting shut off they’re just basically taking a map and saying okay everything from this direction you know everything from this road west or from you know this direction or whatever i mean some of the areas that they have shut off i’ll be quite honest There was about as little a risk of having any kind of a fire, even from a downed power line. It’s just, again, I’m not a power energy expert by any means, but I do have enough common sense to look around and say, okay, what are you guys doing here? And the reality is it’s a big poke in the eye. at their customer base, which, keep in mind, public utilities are always guaranteed a return. So no matter what happens, they’re going to get their return one way or the other, and we as customers pay. Larry mentioned this earlier. So we’re all, in a lot of cases, myself included, are without power this morning, and yet Xcel Energy is going back to the PUC looking for an increase in rates.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yep, exactly.
SPEAKER 11 :
Absolute, utter joke, nonsense. I have no other way to say it. It’s just absolute nonsense. So, but… Here’s my point with today’s program. Get used to it. So those of you that have Xcel Energy or, frankly, even some of the other power companies I think are going to pay attention to this because their understanding their liability factor now has risen greatly. No longer are these power companies going to be able to get by with, you know, quote, unquote, acts of God, you know, nature, whatever. They’re going to find themselves responsible for things that happen due to, you know, wind and things like that. So here’s my point. Figure out what you’re going to do in the case of a one, two, three-day or longer power outage in your particular area, and how are you going to handle that as far as keeping things up and running and so on. And trust me, after being through this for myself this past week, and I’ve already been looking at whole home generation, Bill Anderson and I have been talking about that now for a while, and I’m ready to pull the trigger. I’ll be honest, I haven’t done it up to this point because, frankly, in 10 years’ time, I’d never been without power.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it only takes once, right?
SPEAKER 11 :
Some of you that have EV vehicles, there’s the ability for you to, you know, quote unquote, back charge from your EV back into the house, depending upon, you know, your circumstances and the size of EV that you might actually have. Some of you may want to do whole home, you know, natural gas, propane. I would not do diesel, but I would do either natural gas or propane, you know, generation. And then in some cases, depending upon your budget, you may just want to go ahead and put a switch in where the meter is and do some sort of a, you know, anti-backflow thing. a device whereby if you plug your generator in, it’s running off of that. When the power comes back on, you turn the generator off and either manually flip a switch, or some of them are automated, depending upon what system you go with. But at the end of the day, there’s multiple ways to handle that, and everybody’s got a different budget. So I think, first of all, and what I wanted to go through today is, and I didn’t get a chance to do this on Ready Radio yesterday, is first things first, determine what is it you actually need When the power is out. Now, I can tell you from my wife and I’s experience over the last few days, truthfully, not as much as you think. I mean, we’re pretty spoiled. Don’t get me wrong. And I’m still, you know, even though my house was dark this morning, the habit of walking into the room and flipping the switch. It’s very, yeah, it’s very, yeah, I mean, it’s just habit forming, you just automatically are looking for that button, and you’re hitting it, and you’re like, Dodo head, that thing’s not going to work right now. So you get in this habit of just walking into a room and flipping a switch. So outside of that, I think what, you know, both, both her and I have learned is that Yeah, there’s a lot of things that are luxuries and we enjoy using and so on, but when it comes to the necessities of what do you really need on a day-to-day basis, frankly, not as much as what we all think. Hot water is nice. Of course, you like flushing toilet, which… Unless you’re on a well, you’re going to have that anyways. But some of you that have wells need to really think about, okay, how do you handle a backup situation in that area? I’ve got a good friend of mine whereby she was, before she knew the power was going out and was filling up the bathtubs because, in her case, with a well and no generation, there’s no water, meaning you can’t even flush a toilet. So that means you’re filling up the bowl of your toilet manually with a pitcher. out of the bathtub so you can actually still use the bathroom. So to her credit, by the way, this is a very resourceful lady because she’s figuring some of this stuff out on the front side. And there’s a lot of folks out there that probably, you know, either moved into a house, has a well, have never really experienced anything like this, don’t know exactly what to do if the power is out. So, you know, to her credit, she had all of that dialed in on the front side, Larry. So, you know, good for her. Yes, exactly. You know, thinking ahead. So here’s my point. You really need to sit down and really, you know, write out what it is you actually need. Somebody texted me, too, and said, is my power still out? Yes, it is. Of course, I just said that. And have I conceded and gone to a hotel? Shoot, no. I wouldn’t. No, me, I’m in it for the long haul. No, I’m not going to a hotel. I like my house, and I’ve got the ability to make things work, as I was just saying. There’s the ability for me to have certain things running, and I’ve got some generation at my house. I don’t have a whole house backup, but I’m keeping the refrigerators running and heat and things like that. So, yeah, at the end of the day, I’ve got enough handled even currently to where it’s working. Now, here’s what I will say. There’s a lot of manual effort in what I’m doing, which going to whole home generation, it’s automated. So that’s the plus side to doing whole home automation versus what I have. What I have, I’m dinking around, you know, continually filling up a generator with fuel, checking it in the middle of the night, you know, things like that, making sure everything’s up and running and so on, and it’s a pain in the neck. So I’m not going to do that in the future. I will avoid that by putting in a whole home generation system. And I had a couple of questions this week on, you know, I can’t believe you didn’t have one up to this point. Well… I’m one of those guys where I look at everything uniquely and cost-wise and so on, and honestly, if I don’t need to spend the money because I haven’t had a power outage in 10-plus years, then why?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, if you really look at the Colorado area, we’ve had very few power outages in the last 50 years.
SPEAKER 11 :
On a sustained basis, yes, that is correct. And so to Larry’s point, for me, I just did the math on it, and we’ve kind of ran through that, and there’s an expense there. And can I cover the expense? Sure. Are there other things that I can also do with that money? Absolutely. So at the end of the day, is it still a wise investment for me? And I think given where we’re at now with Xcel Energy, and this is something for a lot of you to think about, I think you need to have something for your home, especially those of you that are closer to the foothills or are in the foothills. Some of you are actually in the foothills that listen to us and or some of you are on, you know, I would say literally draw, draw a line. And if you’re, you know, west of 470 or, you know, you’re west of, say, you know, the Wadsworth area. You’re up in the Boulder, Louisville, Longmont, some of those areas. Yeah, I think you really need to look at, okay, what am I going to do if the power’s out, and do I need whole home generation? And for a lot of you, the answer to that’s going to be, yes, I actually do need that. And my point with this is that’s one of those areas. This is why it’s on Fix-It Radio right now while we’re talking about it. I think it’s one of those areas where you’re actually going to increase the value of your home, not decrease the value of your home. In other words, you’re going to be able to get more dollars out of your house by doing so. And I think that’s something that you need to really take a hard look at. Now, again, how do you do it? We talked to Bill Anderson. He’s kind of my cohort on Ready Radio and Electrician, by the way, Arc Electric. And you’ve heard Bill before. And really what it comes down to, and this is what I was saying a moment ago, do a checklist. What all do you need to run during an outage? Because there’s a lot of things that you can sacrifice and not have to. I mean, do you have to run the washing machine? Do you have to run the dryer? Well, in my case, where it’s natural gas, running the dryer is not a big deal. I’m not requiring much of a load because you’re not running a 240 engine. I’m running a gas dryer. So in my case, I could run a dryer pretty easily. And the washing machine doesn’t take much power either. So in my case, could I wash? Sure. Now, again, you’ve got to be thinking through what’s powering all of that. How much power do you need to run all of that? And, of course, there’s formulas and things. tools, what I’m saying there, calculation tools to determine exactly how much KW do you actually need. Yeah, you can look at your power bill or look and see how much do you use on a monthly basis and then kind of bring that back down and calculate it out on kind of a per day basis. But that’s kind of an overarching way to do it. I think I would get a little bit more dialed in and say, okay, I’ve got these things I’m going to run. during a power outage. And given that, you know, I’ve either got an electric stove or a gas stove, and am I going to run my oven or not? Probably not. Are you going to run the washer and dryer? Is it a gas dryer or an electric dryer? I mean, again, go through that whole exercise of what are those things that you would necessarily have to use during a power outage for multiple days, and then determine what’s that power usage.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you also have medical condition equipment that you’re going to have to run electronically.
SPEAKER 11 :
In some cases, yes. Thank you, Larry, for saying that. There’s some people that actually have different needs, and that’s a good thing to talk about. There’s different needs along those lines, and depending upon what your need is, yes, you may very well need to do something differently than what somebody else would be doing. So thank you, Larry, for saying that. Yes, for some of you, again, look at where are you at. What do you need to do specifically on your end to make things work? And then, you know, build your chart and then look at, okay, how am I going to supplement that during an outage? All right, I’ve got several text messages coming in that it’s hard for me to actually read and talk at the same time, so I will roll those through here in just one moment. Again, text line is open, 307. 200-82-22. If you’ve got a question on any of this, just a direct question or a comment or some feedback, something you’d like to tell the listeners and maybe share some of your experience and what you do, feel free to do that as well. 303-477-5600. We’ll be right back, though. This is Fix It Radio, KLZ 560.
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SPEAKER 11 :
All right, we are back. Fix-It Radio, KLZ 560. By the way, thanks for all the text messages. I’ll go through a few of those here, some of you on recommendations on what to do with the whole home generation and so on. Got a couple of calls, though. In the meantime, Jeff, go ahead, sir.
SPEAKER 13 :
Hey, good morning, John. I’ve often said that western Montana is a lot like Colorado except fewer people and more oxygen, and that stands true for this week because we had some really, really high wind activity up here as well. In fact, we’re on a community well, and I think the power fluctuations caused by the high wind knocked out the well pumps. So we’ve got a local company busy taking care of that. So we’re on water rationing until further notice. So it’s not a power issue for us. It’s water. But it’s a water issue because of power. But, yeah, I… I’ve toyed with the idea. I have a backup generator. It’s propane run. I learned years ago that I want to use propane because it’s been on the ground for millions of years. It’s not going to deteriorate in a tank. And since the house has it all along right now, it’s just the best way to go for me.
SPEAKER 11 :
Gotcha. Makes sense.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah. And for folks out there, even if you’re in a residential area and you want one, it’s important to know that natural gas doesn’t stop flowing. if there’s a power outage. Pipelines are pressurized and it’s only at something like 0.5 psi. I mean, it’s very, very low pressure. So it’s not going to go away anytime soon.
SPEAKER 11 :
True. Good point.
SPEAKER 13 :
And you talked about what you need for a house. A lot of times they’ll try to tell you a 24,000 watt generator and I’ve been kind of going back and forth on that. What do we really need? Like you talked about earlier, what, what do I need to power? You know, do I need to run a dryer? No. Um, that sort of thing. And I think I’m settling on that. I’m going to get one. I just decided this morning. partially after listening to you, but also with our water issue, I just, I want to become more self-sufficient.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, well, and I think, Jeff, I was talking to several people yesterday about this, outside of the shows, by the way, just friends, and, you know, I just think we’ve now entered into a different era, whereby because of, I’m just going to say it as it is, because of mismanagement by one political party, who really, I believe, forced this upon us and want it this way, because it’s a control factor at the end of the day, and I always talk about, you know, Freedom versus force. One side believes in freedom, our side. The other side believes in force. And when you can force people into doing certain things because they have no power, Jeff, I hate to say this, but a lot of this is by design. So given that’s the fact, then figure out how to counter it.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’m sorry. I’m not trying to politicize this, but it is in and of itself, Jeff.
SPEAKER 13 :
No, the whole issue of power has been politicized, and it initially wasn’t.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 13 :
I mean, Americans understood we needed a good, strong, robust power grid. We, as Americans, were behind nuclear energy. We, as Americans, wanted lower price. We would, as Americans, love to have power too cheap to meter. They charge you a base rate no matter how much you use. That was the promise back in the 50s and 60s. And then due to political considerations, all that went away. We knocked out, reduced the number of nuclear plants being built. We had a lot of coal fire, a lot of natural gas plants actually at the time. But then with the oil embargo and all that issue around natural gas, President Jimmy Carter said, A Democrat moved us to coal back in the 70s and 80s. And now, look, here it is 40 years later, and oh no, we’ve got to get off coal and go back to natural gas. We’ve been jerked around, pushed around, knocked around. And meanwhile, we argue about, well, how are we going to… New York won’t allow pipelines for natural gas to come up into New England. And so… The people up there are paying outrageous costs. California just shut down their, what, Valero and Exxon, I think.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s correct.
SPEAKER 13 :
Was it Exxon?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I believe that’s correct. But basically the refinery, so they’re having to import everything in now from other states. It’s just, that’s just, again, Jeff goes back to my whole comment a moment ago about the whole, you know, control issue. And again, Fix-It Radio is a neutral, you know, program. I try to help people just around the house and so on. But this whole power outage thing, it is very political. You look at Colorado and the PUC and who runs that and what they allow Excel to get by with and so on. It definitely is political. And you can say it’s not all day long, but it definitely is, Jeff. And given that fact, then my recommendation to folks is if you want to be standalone, up and running, no matter what, regardless of what happens on that end of things, then figure out how to do some sort of a whole home generation.
SPEAKER 13 :
Right, and… And the California thing is even more dire than people realize because those California refiners also feed Oregon and Washington State.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 13 :
So the west, the left coast, the west coast is about ready to get, I don’t think $10 gasoline is going to be out of the picture for them because there’s no other way for them to get it outside of, get this, shipping it in from Asia. So.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yep.
SPEAKER 13 :
The United States, left coast of the United States, may be getting their gasoline and energy needs met from Asia. It just boggles my mind that that would be the case. But that’s all those years of mismanagement. And, yeah, to get back to the point, yeah, we’re going to become as independent as possible to the point that I’m trying to figure out how to rig up a cistern. So that in the event that we have welfare years, I can at least have water available.
SPEAKER 11 :
Actually, basically the last two houses I’ve owned, I’ve done that as well. And I don’t know if I really needed to, Jeff, never really quote-unquote used them, but always had that ability to have fresh water no matter what and to have that even currently. So the water side I’m good on. And again, I’ve got enough portable generation to make what I’ve got work even these last few days. Like I said earlier, my biggest thing is I’m just tired of it. I’m getting old enough where I’m tired of all the extra work it takes to make that happen. I want it to be automated, so that’s my next step.
SPEAKER 13 :
That’s exactly my mindset as well. After a certain age, you say, I’m just not willing to.
SPEAKER 11 :
I mean, I can make it work, and I have been, and I’ve been doing it, but I’m just like, okay, this is enough for me. I’m going to make this automated from this point forward. And that’s what, by the way, Jeff and everybody else listening, that’s what pain does. When you have a pain point, you go to solve the pain. For me, the pain is I want it automated.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yep. And when you do that, this is one of the points I wanted to make when I first called in, is you don’t look and say, well, I’ve got 1,800 watts, so I’m going to get an 1,800-watt generator. You need to put a fudge factor in there. When we were doing defense contracting work, the requirement was that we could not have, for example, an equipment rack. Couldn’t draw more than 80% of… of the available power. So if you had 800 watts in a rack, you needed 1,000 watts to the rack. So there’s an 80% rule on that. And that’s to govern yourself against things like when motors start up, they drag a little more power until they come up to running speed. And it’s a safety factor. So when people are planning a whole home generator or any generation, you need to take that into account. What’s my max? And then add a 20% buffer.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yep, that’s exactly right. And again, for a lot of you listening, please hear me on this. There are ways to simplify this and not spend as much money as what you would on whole home generation. You can do, I’ve got a Jackery device, for example. It’s a small one, but for me, Jeff, it’s enough to even run my main refrigerator all day. As long as I keep the door opening and closing minimized, it’ll run it all day long. And I can charge it with my generator in about three hours, which typically the fridge will be good for two or three hours as long as you don’t open the doors. So then, you know, you’re back up and going. And again, I’m doing that and making it all work. But like I said a moment ago, it’s just a lot of extra work that you don’t have to do. But my point is, if you’re on a really, really, really tight budget and you’re trying to figure out how do I get by with some of these things? You don’t even need to go out and buy a gas generator. There’s enough of these, you know, power packs, I guess you could say, quote, unquote, Jeff, to allow you to do these things pretty easily, whereby you just need them, again, go back to making a list of what are the things that I actually need to run during an outage that would allow me to, you know, to stay up and running in a situation like that.
SPEAKER 13 :
Right. And those generators, the ones I’ve looked at, the Generac, this is kind of the, I guess, the… Chevrolet, I think, of the Generac.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and somebody mentioned a moment ago, too, that one of the things to think about in a Generac is this is a text message coming in, so I’m relying off of what somebody’s telling me. They have to have an annual service done by an authorized Generac dealer or you don’t keep your warranty in effect. So that’s something to think about with Generac. And I don’t know if everybody else is the same way, but this texter said Generac is for sure.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m sure it is because I’ve seen it in their advertising.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, so there you go, Jeff, on that one.
SPEAKER 13 :
That’s good to know. The other thing is the size of them. When I looked, I was thinking of a monster’s gas to go out there by my house, but it’s really a two-by-two-by-four box.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s not very big. That’s exactly right.
SPEAKER 13 :
The main thing is getting it close to the power panel. How do you get fuel to it if you’re running natural gas or propane? We had a house down in Missoula about 70 miles from here 15 years ago we bought it, and it had a power outage some three or four years later, and we had tenants in it at the time, but the power outage was three days, and so all the freezers, you know, they lost all their food. And it’s so funny because I thought about putting a generator in, and my brother had said, what do you think we do, live in a third world nation? And, you know, the point is, I think I would reply now is that The veneer of civilization is very, very thin. We’re never very far from becoming a third world nation with natural disasters. As you said, prepare accordingly.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s right. Great point. Jeff, as always, appreciate your input very much.
SPEAKER 13 :
Cheers.
SPEAKER 11 :
You bet. Have a great one. Appreciate you. Steve is next. Go ahead, Steve.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good morning. Hey, how are you, sir? Good. Merry Christmas to all you guys. Merry Christmas to you, Steve. Well, thank you. My question kind of dovetails from what this gentleman just said, is that I’m not convinced. I got calls into Springs Utilities. As you know, we’re a ratepayer-owned public utility. But on the issue of natural gas supply, I don’t know about, I can’t speak to XL, but our natural gas comes up 3.4 miles from the Permian Basin down around Amarillo area. And you have to have compressors run by electricity to get that stuff, keep it moving through the pipeline. And I’ve had two mixed opinions, not gas guys, but utilities guys, that yes, it’ll keep blowing and no, it won’t without those compressors working. So that’s a major, major issue in a power outage is they’re the power. Necessary to run the compressors to keep the pipeline.
SPEAKER 11 :
And the one thing that I’ve heard, and again, I’m like you, Steve. I’ve heard mixed things on this, and I am not an expert in this. I really need somebody that’s in that world to either text or call in as to how this works. But I thought the natural gas facilities and the way they run the pump stations run their own electricity off of the natural gas. In other words, they’re generating their own power. So essentially, once it’s up and running, it just keeps rolling. But I don’t know that for positive, Steve.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, not always. You look at the hundreds and hundreds of wells, natural gas wells, and collectively they don’t have, they have to have their individual ways of keeping the pressure up to get to a central position where you’re going to transport that stuff through your 400 miles. And then without getting on a soapbox, personal opinion, I just think these utilities, both private and public, have abdicated their basic responsibility by knuckling under to all bureaucrats. You’re right. EPA, et cetera. You’re 100% correct. I mean, they’ve got a legion of attorneys. They should have been bucking this stuff from the get-go. I agree. And they said, oh, okay.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yep, you’re right, Steve.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, you know what?
SPEAKER 11 :
You are bringing up something I don’t talk much about, but you are a thousand percent correct. These guys should have fought a lot of this nonsense. They didn’t. They bought in. And here’s why they bought in, because they’ve got a lot of of what I’ll just call, you know, leftist greenies that serve on these boards and so on that have bought into all of this nonsense. And my opinion, Steve, is that’s why the majority of them haven’t fought back is because they’ve bought into it, just like all of the knuckleheads in government have. Well, the markets are winning, and we’ve got to turn that around. You’re right, Steve. It’s not a good ending, not a positive ending.
SPEAKER 05 :
Nope, we’re seeing it right now. One last thing, if you’ve got a second. You’re fine. Go ahead. Subject is metal roofs. We’ve talked about it. And I listened to a metal roof expert for a company, and some of the things we talked about have already happened. I did not know metal roofs save about 20% energy in the summertime, number one. Number two, they do have architectural treatments that can make that roof look like Anything from asphaltic jingles to wood shake jingles, whatever. So that’s a big, big deal. And I think with what’s going on with the devastating costs with asphaltic jingles and insurance companies playing their games on depreciation and da-da-da, you’re going to see a lot more usage of metal roofs.
SPEAKER 11 :
I think you’re right on that. 100% agree.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Hey, have a great Christmas, you and your family.
SPEAKER 11 :
We’ll do it, Steve. You do the same, man. Appreciate you very much. Thanks for all you do. Joe, you’re next. Go ahead, Joe.
SPEAKER 04 :
John, just a couple things. One, the gas in Denver doesn’t come from the Permian in Texas. It comes from Wyoming. There’s almost no natural gas in the Permian, but Wyoming’s got almost nothing but natural gas, and those compression stations do have backed-up generators. So your gas is coming out of Wyoming, and even if there’s a power outage, which is rare up in Wyoming because there’s not a lot of trees up there. But, yeah, they have a backup. Second, even if you get a generator, which I’ve had now. I had one in Colorado for $25, and I’ve had one in Jersey now for $5. And, yes, you have to have an oil change once a year, but it’s $300, and they come and they run a whole test and everything. So, yeah, $300 a year. They’ll come and do an annual check and change your oil for $300. So I think it’s cheap. So I’ve had Generac. the local rep do that but even with that one more thing um for 69 dollars um even if you get a one second blip in your power your lights blink if you’re working on your computer you’re going to lose everything if you don’t have a ups backup and i’ve got a friend who’s working on some show prep and he lost his show prep because the power went out five minutes before he was supposed to be finished and i’ve always had for six you go to staples for 69 you get a little box that’s got a little 6×6, 4×6 battery in it, and it will run your computer, your monitor, and your printer for 10 to 15 minutes, which gives you time to save your work. If you want to email it to yourself, you know, so you can go pick it up at a different location. But even with a generator, it’s going to be 60 to 90 seconds from the time you lose power until the generator kicks on and restores it. So for $69, I think you’re foolish not to have a a little UPS box under your desk to plug in your computer, your monitor, and your printer. You know anybody that’s ever happened to, John?
SPEAKER 11 :
It happened to me, but only because I was using a different computer that I rarely use, my laptop, which, of course, are battery-powered. I don’t normally ever have to worry about. This happened to be a situation where, and again, I was gauging this based upon what Excel told me they were going to do. They just ended up being about 15 minutes prior to what they told us. So again, you know, and for me, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was frustrating more than anything. I think for me, the biggest frustration is just the fact that you know, these guys can willy-nilly do whatever they want to. And, you know, basically the conversations we’ve been having, Joe, about where we’re at as a society and what the PUCs and these electric companies are doing, that’s the bigger frustration. For me, using a laptop 99% of the time, yeah, I don’t need a UPS backup.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, well, and particularly on a laptop, since it has its own internal battery, you shouldn’t lose your laptop if there’s a momentary, you know, we’re in a five-minute power break. If your laptop battery can’t carry you through, then there’s something wrong with your laptop battery.
SPEAKER 11 :
Correct.
SPEAKER 04 :
But on a desktop, yeah, for $69… Yep, good point. You know, it’s got six…
SPEAKER 11 :
got six outlets in it it’ll save your work yeah and i use i use that the dumb thing is i use that for you know the modems and the rest of the stuff but you know the reality is when um when the power goes out and because i get notices from the internet company immediately because all of their you know all of their substations and so on the reality is as much as they try to do backup generation and so on joe as soon as the power went outside of the internet
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and even if the power company, you know, if you get, the other thing, ice storms, ice storms have been responsible for some of the biggest and most prolonged power outages, you know, days and days. Because you get ice and it brings down the trees, and that’s something that’ll even happen in the spring, where you get ice on the branches that have leaves on them and all. Right. That’ll take it down.
SPEAKER 11 :
Absolutely. Yeah, no, and again, all of this, you know, my point with all this, Joe, as you know, is just, again, this is not just in Colorado. I mean, we’ve got listeners like you in Jersey, Jeff up in Montana. We’ve got folks down in Texas and so on. Guys, this is, you know, you can be anywhere in the country and have something like this happen. So, Joe, this is a universal thing, not just because of what we’re going through here in Colorado. It’s just a reminder that we’re going through it right now. But this can happen to anybody, anytime.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. And the reason I had one in Colorado, John, I remember back in, uh, 15 years ago, there was like a massive power outage and we were on a well and we had livestock and, um, we, you know, we had no, I had, I was taking the pickup truck and filling up water in town to bring back and keep the horses. So we got one big enough to handle the well pump and, uh, on in rush, like we’ve got, uh, two big five ton air conditioning units and to minimize the size of our installer put two time delays on the breakers for the AC units. Because if you try to kick on everything at once, you’re going to have to really grossly oversize your generator. So what we’ve got is it comes on, and then 30 seconds later, it triggers one AC to come on. And then 60 seconds later, it triggers the second. And we were able to knock our sizing down from a 25 kW to a 20. Yes, it costs a few dollars extra to put in those momentary time delays, but there’s a significant thousands of dollars difference between a 20 and a 25. So I would urge people, if your dealer isn’t aware or doesn’t offer that, ask them about, again, if you’ve got some big loads, ask them about, can you put some staggered time delays in? for your big loads. So, John, one other, we got time for something that isn’t about power generators? Yeah, no, you’re fine.
SPEAKER 11 :
Go ahead. You’re fine, Joe. Go ahead. You’re fine.
SPEAKER 04 :
Go ahead. Matching paint. Now, we had some wall damage. We had to repaint. We didn’t have any matching paint. So I took a little razor knife, cut a little two-by-two patch, just scored the wall and peeled off, you know, sheetrock has a paper backing. John, we took that 2×2 patch down to Lowe’s, and Home Depot has them too, these color-matching computers, and we gave them the 2×2 patch. And I was skeptical, John. After we painted, of course, because we cut the paper off, we had to spackle, you know, two coats of spackle to build it back up to be flush with the other paper. John, the match was absolutely perfect. You cannot tell. I stared. I took a flashlight and stared at the spot. where we had cut that little patch out.
SPEAKER 11 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
And you cannot tell. That’s how good the computer match of the paint was.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s amazing. That’s really good, Joe.
SPEAKER 04 :
I agree with you, Joe.
SPEAKER 03 :
I did the same thing with Lowell’s.
SPEAKER 11 :
Really? Yes. Oh, that’s amazing. That’s a good tip.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and again, if you want to do the 2×2, maybe do it behind a door where it won’t be noticeable. All you need is a little 2×2 patch, and just take a razor knife, score the paper, peel the paper off, and… And, again, the match, John, is absolutely perfect. I know where it is, and I’ve stared, and I’ve showed my wife. I said, can you tell where we cut that paper out? And she said, nope.
SPEAKER 11 :
And, by the way, that’s the advantage of what we have today that we didn’t have even a decade ago, Joe.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, because people, you know, we used to go to the store with a, you know, and we used to bring home the swatches. You know, they got this rack a little. And we could never get it perfectly right. And I was just so impressed. with the ability of the computer to perfectly match perfectly match the paint well the computer also takes care takes note of any kind of fading that the paint would do whether in sunlight condition or not so yeah it works wonderful yeah so again uh and the only thing you have to do is you have to just take and put two coats of spackle to where you cut the two by two out um to bring to bring it bring it back up to the thickness of the paper And it’s an absolutely perfect way to match paint.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Good to know, Joe.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, hey, last-minute Christmas gift. You know, when you go to the store, they have these in the nuts and bolts section. They’ve got these little racks with different studs and different holes, you know, to match your bolt thread.
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, you can buy for $20. You can buy a rack just like they have in the store that has all the metric and all the national fine, national course. holes and nut studs for studs to match your nuts and bolts. If you’ve got somebody who’s handy, for $20, you can buy your own at home. It’s a good idea.
SPEAKER 11 :
For years, the nut and bolt guys used to hand those out, and so I’ve got a lot of those, although And by the way, great idea, Joe, because anybody that doesn’t do nuts and bolts and things on a daily basis, and even somebody like me where you do do it a lot, and I can pretty much look at a nut or a bolt because of doing it for so long and almost tell you what the thread pitch is and whether it’s metric or American or whatever, those things still come in handy at times where you’re just like, you know, I don’t need the brain damage. What is this?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, what is this? And that way you don’t have to bring the old one to the store with you and then fucks around. So, yeah, they’re $20. You can buy them on Amazon. Same thing. I think Amazon is probably the best. And you can get them next day delivery, by the way. So if you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas gift, a nut and bolt thread gauge for $20.
SPEAKER 11 :
Great idea, Joe. Absolutely. Good job. All right. Joe, man, Merry Christmas, man. Appreciate you very much. You’re welcome, John. Take care. All right, have a good one, sir. And let’s do this. We’ll take our second break. We’ll come back, finish things up. Keep the text messages coming in. I’ve got a text message. Somebody that’s in the generator business texted me. I’ll read in a moment, so don’t go anywhere. This is Fix It Radio, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 06 :
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SPEAKER 11 :
All right, we are back. Fix-It Radio, KLZ 560. Myself, of course, Larry Unger with me today. Josh Goff just got here from Ridgeline Auto Brokers, Legacy Automotive as well. And Josh was asking me about my portable battery backup. And for those of you listening, I’ve talked about it before. And this is not an advertisement. I don’t work for them. I don’t get any bonuses, any kickbacks, nothing. But the Jackery, J-A-C-K-E-R-Y, Jackery.com. That’s a device I have, and I’m using it to power my fridge, my main fridge, and I can run the fridge off of a 1,000, their smallest unit, their 1,000-watt unit. I can power the fridge all day long. It takes about two hours or so to charge back up off my generator, and I stick it right back on the fridge, and off I go. And I actually bought that to do radio remotes and things with, knowing if I didn’t have any power, that would run all of my gear, and I’m confident now that it’ll run it a long, long, long time. and they’ve got multiple units. I just happen to have the smallest unit, but you can go up in size on it and run literally a lot of things off of it. If you’re somebody where you just don’t want to dink around with having a backup generator and all that, or you live in an apartment or something like that to where you still want to make sure you have power, but there’s no way you could use you know, a generator or you’re in a townhouse or a condo or something like that to where you just can’t use any other kind of generation device. Maybe you’re on a, you know, multi-level housing situation and, you know, you’re on a second story or something or just know where you’re going to be able to run a generator. These things would work inside of your house. Just plug into it, whatever you want to plug in and off you go.
SPEAKER 10 :
And the one you have is small enough you can take it camping.
SPEAKER 11 :
About the size of a lunchbox. Yeah, easily pack it with you. It literally isn’t much bigger than that. You can throw it in the backseat of the car or the trunk of the car or do whatever. And, yeah, you could use it for virtually anything you want to. So, yeah, it’s a really, really handy device. And they make them even. larger than that to where they’ve got like they’re almost a built-in dolly with wheels because the batteries will get really heavy but you keep that thing charged and keep in mind i started using mine in this particular round of things i had it out in my drive radio trailer i hadn’t used it since summer at the last remote we did all the way back in like august So I hadn’t done anything to charge it up. I hit the button. It was still 100%. So it hadn’t lost anything from the end of July until now. So think about that. Four months later, basically, it was still rolling, ready to go, and plugged it in. So in other words, you get that thing ready to go and get it all charged up, and you’re done. You’re good to go.
SPEAKER 10 :
And does yours have USB ports and all that on it too?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, my particular one, yeah, you can charge your phone, you could do any number of things on it and it would be just fine. So, yeah. Anyways, does it work well? Yet again, I’m not advertising for them because all I did before I bought that device was I did a little bit of research Kind of looked around all the different brands that they have that are out there. And I just found that I thought that one had enough other features and things with it whereby, yep, I can make this thing work at the end of the day. And the cool thing about this one, which I think they all have, it’s got even a little digital gauge. It tells you how much battery power. is remaining and all of that. And then of course on my fridge, what I’ve done is, you know, just don’t open it any more than you actually have to, because every time you open it, you know, you lose some cooling and now it has to kick in the compressor and off you go again. But again, even with mine opening it, you know, periodically throughout the day, not a ton, but you know, get an ice or whatever you want out of the freezer or whatever. I mean, it’s running both sides just fine. And in all of that for, in my case, it was on sale. I paid like 400 bucks for the thing. So best $400 so far I’ve spent. Right. And I’ve got a generator, too, that I’ve been using and all that. And it’s great, too, but you’re fussing with it all the time.
SPEAKER 09 :
I know, yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s the biggest issue with it. Now, the plus side with the generator is even a small generator with a couple of these battery packs, you can use a generator to just charge battery packs if you want to. And then you can kind of swap out and do whatever you want to. Now, like I said earlier, though, the downside to everything I just said, manual labor. You’re still doing all that manually. So I’m going whole home generation because I’m tired of dinking around with this. All right, I did get this message. I said I was going to say this a moment ago. Remember, getting a portable generator set up under ideal conditions is a whole different than doing it under duress, blah, blah, blah. You’re right, by the way, absolutely. You want a generator that comes on automatically when you’re not at home. Kohler Cummins also require an annual service, two for warranty. Some need the valve lash checked on the air-cooled ones. It’s not a huge deal, but liquid cool, of course, are the most robust, but they’re the most expensive. In this case, he did a 26KW Generac. Generac is as good as a Kohler or a Cummins anymore. Kohler used to be the gold standard, but they’re now difficult to work with and hard to get parts for. They sold out to a private equity company. This person’s been in the business for almost 25 years. So… There’s your answer when it comes to whole home generation. And from what it sounds like with him, you know, bottom line, price out what you want to do. Sounds like Generac is a really good way to do it. So at the end of the day, off you go. Nothing wrong with that. And just remember, as we’ve been talking, yes, you’re going to have to go through and do some service intervals on these on an annual basis. And if you don’t know how to do that, you’re going to be paying somebody to do that. Which, it’s not much different than changing the oil in your lawnmower. No. So if you can do that, you should be able to do your generator, but you’re going to have to service them on an annual basis, yes.
SPEAKER 10 :
And that’s always the problem. People never service it, and then when they need it, it doesn’t work. But just put it on a normal schedule, like changing the filters in your house or maintaining your lawnmower.
SPEAKER 11 :
And to your point, I will say this. I don’t know what made me do this, but I’ve got two little generators. And this summer, I don’t know, long about July or so, July or August, I got both of them out, made sure all the fuel in them was fresh, added some BG Supercharge into the fuel to make sure they would still stay fresh, and fired them all up, made sure everything worked right and so on, put them all away. And then when I got them out a couple of days ago, it took me a few pulls. Gas is getting a little bit – keep in mind, these are vented systems, so they’re not a closed – there’s air getting into it, in other words, so they’re not going to last as long. But you know what, with the supercharge in it, and that was fuel that’s about now, oh, I don’t know, four or five months, actually probably older than that, because I didn’t drain and fill that generator. So the fuel in that is probably now a year, year and a half old, but the supercharge will make it stable. And I will say this, and this is something to note, I probably should talk about this on Drive Radio. So when I first fired it up, I tried to run multiple things off of it, and I’m like, yeah, it’s struggling to run more than one thing. So here’s what I knew. Okay, the fuel’s getting weak. It’s not going to power this like it should. So I went ahead and got it up and running, ran about a half a tank out of it, filled it back up with fresh fuel. I noticed I had more power with even just a half tank of fresh. And by the time I got to where I put a full new fresh tank of fuel in it, then, of course, my power was increased dramatically, and I could pretty much run whatever I wanted to off of it. when the gas does get a little bit aged, it may not go completely bad, but as all of us in the automotive world kind of know, the power output isn’t going to be the same because of the fact that that fuel itself just isn’t as volatile as it normally would be. It’ll still run, still start, no problems, but you’re not going to get the same capacity out of the generator that you normally would because that fuel has gotten old. So just something to think about. But back to Josh’s point a moment ago, those devices, when not being used, yeah, even Bill talks about this with me on Ready Radio. You’ve got to exercise these things to make sure that they’re working, whether you’re utilizing them or not.
SPEAKER 1 :
Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
You can’t just let them sit.
SPEAKER 10 :
No.
SPEAKER 11 :
Because about the time you need it, it ain’t going to run. No, it’s not going to run at all. And that was my fear yesterday. I’m like, oh, jeez, I know I ran this thing back in July. Is it going to go ahead and start? You know, sure enough, and I’ve just got a little cheesy champion. This one of mine isn’t anything fancy. I mean, I think I bought it on sale at some point from somebody thinking, oh, if I ever need it, I’ll at least have it that way. And I’ve used it periodically to run some power tools and things like that. Yeah. At the end of the day, I’ve gone pretty much battery on most everything now, even on the power tools and stuff. But I got it out, you know, again, just a couple of days ago and sat it outside and pulled it a few times with the choke on and it sputtered for a second and fired right up and And frankly, that little thing, it ran over 24 hours the first day, and it’s been running now constant without stopping since yesterday at 530. So it’s gone another full 24 hours plus, and it’s not, I mean, this isn’t a Honda or anything fancy. It’s just a little champion generator, but it has done everything I’ve asked it to do, and I can’t complain. But as I said earlier, the work factor in all of what I’m doing is the biggest issue. I want things now, you know, I want them automated. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Go back to what you were talking about, doing your own oil changing, keeping up on maintenance. You want to make sure you keep records for your maintenance because it will affect the warranty if you don’t have the maintenance records to show that you actually did, in fact, change the oil and so on.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
Anyway, so for all of you listening, I know we’re wrapping things up here. This is our last show on Fix It Radio for 2025. Yes, we will be back for 2026. We’ve got, of course, another full year of doing what we need to do and getting things handled and all of that. So we’re not going anywhere. And I just want to say a special thanks to all of you that make this show work. Between Larry being here and, of course, Josh, of course, Mark Guernsey is going to be with us on Drive Radio in a moment. Charlie Grimes, of course, our engineer. And there’s a lot of folks, you know, back behind the scenes that make things happen. Ann, who’s my producer and does everything on the website and so on, appreciate all of that. her and everything she does as well. But guys, that’s going to be it. We will be back again for 2026. Never fear. You can always send me a question through the text line 307-200-8222. Fix It Radio, KLZ 560.
