In this episode of Ready Radio, host John Rush is joined by electrician Bill Anderson to tackle the pressing issues of power outages and the fragility of our modern dependence on electricity. As the demand for electric energy increases, our outdated grid and infrastructure are pushed to their limits, often leading to unexpected blackouts. Bill shares insights on the frustrations faced in areas like Lakewood, where power outages disrupt daily life. This engaging discussion covers the challenges and potential solutions for a future where electrification is increasing but the support systems may lag behind.
SPEAKER 11 :
This is Ready Radio, preparing you to be ready for anything, now.
SPEAKER 10 :
Here’s your survival guide for Ready Radio, John Rush. And it is, Ready Radio, KLZ 560, thanks so much for listening, we appreciate it. This is a live program today on the 22nd of August, 22nd of August. So, rolling right along, Bill Anderson joining me. Bill, welcome. Welcome. Hey, John, how are you doing today? Good. Always a joy, a little bit of a cloud, and maybe a little rainier out right now, but still warm out. And because of some of that, and I saw some things this week where some folks were posting about different types of power outages, in some cases power outage struggles in certain areas. This happened to be Lakewood that I was reading, but it can happen any time, any place. I thought, why not talk today about about outages, given that you’re an electrician and you’re in that world. Let’s talk a little bit about that and how folks can be prepared for it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, there’s a lot of concern coming up, even going into this fall and winter. And there’s a lot of rumors kind of going around that, you know, the grid’s going to be in trouble and rolling blackouts and things of that nature. So, yeah, people are definitely concerned. And, you know, it’s something, you know, truthfully, long time coming. because the more demand we put on our electrical grid with the electrification of Denver, getting away from natural gas and kind of forcing electric dryers, electric ranges, Car chargers and all that, the grid, frankly, can’t handle it. The infrastructure can’t handle it.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right. And this particular article that I was reading, actually there was some content along those lines, and really people frustrated in the Lakewood area where XL is now going to send out drones to try to figure out what’s going on, why do we have these outages. They’re sort of, in this particular case, I guess trying to figure out, diagnose the problem, Bill, but people are getting frustrated. There are parts of the city where they can go two, three hours with an outage. There’s no reason why. They don’t know why. They don’t even know why it’s happening or when it’s going to happen. It’s not like it’s a planned brownout or anything like that. It’s just literally they’re without power. They don’t have, of course, air conditioning. Businesses aren’t able to do the things that they need to do when power is not on. And I guess everything I’m reading is it’s now becoming sort of this constant that people are now trying to figure out how to, you know, I guess you could say get used to, but that’s hard to get used to.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it’s definitely not what you’re accustomed to, and you’ve, you know, made your life surrounded around it. Unfortunately, the need of electricity, you know, where it’s no longer a convenience, it’s no longer a privilege, it’s actually moved into a necessity. Right. Because we have positioned ourselves in such a way that, you know, we’re so dependent upon it that, yeah, if something goes down, you know, there’s a good portion of the population that don’t know what to do. You know, there’s people that don’t know how to cook without… pushing start on their microwave. It’s kind of funny, John, because people look back into ancient civilizations and go, man, those people really were not that intelligent. That’s kind of our… you know, stereotyping, if we will, because we think we’re so advanced because we’ve got the modern day technologies and things like that. And it’s actually caused us to become, you know, not so smart. Those people knew how to do everything. They knew how to exist, you know, without the need of electricity. They, you know, they could go out and, you know, gather, hunt, cook, store, you know, keep whatever they needed to keep for, over the winter and didn’t have any of these modern-day conveniences. And they’re nice, and we should look at them as, these things are comfort, they’re nice for us, but if we start to become dependent upon it, then we really become fragile. I think I was texting you this yesterday, that we’re just waiting for all of this to come crumbling down, that the faster technology goes, especially with the AI and all that stuff, You know, there’s pros and cons with it, so we’re not totally against it. There’s pros and cons. It’s another tool that you could use for the good or for the bad. Correct. But you get what we call overspeed, you know, and you know what overspeed in an engine is. It begins, the RPMs go so fast, so fast, so fast that it ultimately destroys itself. It just comes apart. Right. And we’re to a point where I don’t know how much more change we literally can add to it other than what has already been set into play is going to go, go, go, and then ultimately there’s going to be a collapse. You look at the grid, and the grid is probably, I don’t know the exact dates, but it’s probably 60 plus years out of date, I would easily say. We think we’ve become more energy efficient with LED light bulbs and All this stuff, you know, the efficient motors that we have in our air conditioners, our refrigerators, our dryers, so on and so forth. They’ve got the little energy efficient star. But it’s really mind-boggling now that, you know, the old house, let’s just say, you know, could run easily on a 100-amp service. And now it’s like you need like upwards to a 320-amp, which is a 400-amp service. to feed a house. And it’s like, well, wait a second. I thought we were more energy efficient. Why is the demand more? And a lot of the infrastructure is weak from the transformer to the individual houses. So you’ve got to understand how the web works, the grid, if you will. You have your power plant, which sends out high voltages to substations. Then once it gets to a substation, it might break down and go into a neighborhood where And then on a quadrant of four houses, let’s just say there’s another transformer that then distributes it to those four houses. And a lot of those are underground. And there’s a big push now to put all the electricity underground, get rid of the overhead lines and all that. The problem with that is, well, it’s pretty hard to service and it’s hard to change. So you’ve got to take the chain is only as strong as its weakest link principle here. And you could upgrade the power plants. Great. You could upgrade the substations. Great. Heck, you can even upgrade the transformers in the backyards. But what do you do with those individual lines going from transformer to each individual house that’s underground? There’s your weak point. You know, and now if you’re in Douglas County and let’s say you want to get a car charger, we just actually got done doing one. They require load calculation and all this. And now all of a sudden you’re sitting on a 200-amp service. Excel or Core or whoever you happen to have has only brought a 200-amp service from the transformer to your house. And now because of all the electric things you’ve added to your house, you’re over 200 amps. And you’re trying to apply for a permit, and they’re going, no. So what’s the solution? You’re wanting us to put all this stuff in, but what’s the solution here? Well, the solution is now you’ve got to start metering. They say, okay, you’ve got to put a metering device in. And so what a metering device does is once you reach that threshold of said, you know, whatever the threshold is, you know, getting close to 200 amps, it’s now going to turn things off. Okay. Throttle them back, basically. Yeah, so it’s going to throttle black, and it’s going to be a little mini blackout. It’s a blackout for your house, you know. So it’s like, oh, hey, you know what? It’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon. everybody’s coming home from work, everybody is hot, everybody’s air conditioners are kicking on. Oh, you’re over 200 amp. Guess what? We’re going to shut your air conditioner off. And you’re going to shut your car charger off. And we’re going to shut your dryer off. And we’re going to shut your electric oven off. And it’s like, but I need to cook. Well, you know, that’s the metering device. And so, you know, in California, they have the rolling blackouts where they did this per neighborhood because the infrastructure couldn’t happen. But we can even do it on a smaller level. And Excel was putting these meters on everybody’s air conditioners for a while. You had to sign up for it, but it would actually throttle your air conditioner. And when we worked for Excel, we were a subcontractor for them for many years, and we changed a lot of air conditioners out for them. Every single customer that had that, when we went to go change their condenser out, they said, get that thing off my system. because that thing shuts off in the middle of the hottest time of the day, and I need my air conditioner. And so that’s kind of what’s going on. And as we build more neighborhoods, as more and more people get things like car chargers and hot tubs and air conditioners and all these big loads start to transition because, hey, in Denver now, you can’t hook up your natural gas stove or your natural gas stove dryer, or in multifamily, you can’t have your natural gas, water heaters, or any of these things now. Everything has to be electric. Guess what? The grid can’t handle it. They’re forcing the situation through the legislation that they put in through this green thing. Here’s another thing that’s really ridiculous. Denver put this in in I was talking to a Douglas County inspector a few months ago, and he’s like, it’s coming to Douglas County. And that’s where every switch in your house has to either be a dimmer or a motion detector switch. Every new house, this isn’t old houses and things like this, but if you’re doing a remodel project or if you’re building new construction and it’s got a permit attached, it’s going to have to have an occupancy sensor and or a dimmer. Now, how frustrating is that to have an occupancy sensor in your house all the time? I, you know, sometimes walk through my house and I don’t want the light to come on. You know, and it’s just some of these stupid things. You know, have you ever been in the bathroom? You know, early when occupancy sensors first kind of came out, you’re sitting in the stall there at the bathroom and all of a sudden the lights go off and you’re waving your arms. I mean, you’re in the stall there, so you can’t really trigger the occupancy sensor. Right.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and really quick, just to back up for a moment, your point on safety-wise, even when we’re talking about some of the other things we talk about here on Ready Radio, there are going to be times where because of certain situations, do you really want, to your point, do you want that light coming on? In other words, do you want people to really know that you’re home or that you’re there, or are you looking out because it’s dark and turning the light on now disables your ability to look out and see what’s going on? There are going to be times where, to your point, you don’t want that light coming on.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, yeah. You know, I was thinking about that, and I think when I sent you The show notes here for today, it’s like my layering system, one of the suggestions are those little plug-in lights that you plug into your outlet, and it comes on when the power goes off, and it kind of provides you a little bit of path of lighting, which could be a good thing. I saw one electrician, he was like, I don’t know why every electrician doesn’t do this, and putting in the FrogEye EM backup lights, we call them FrogEye, they’re the two little bulbs usually attached to exit signs or whatever, but you can just have a wall-pack emergency backup. He had one in every room of his house, and he was like all, you know, kind of proud of himself for that. And I was like, oh, that’s great, but what about security reasons? And I want my house to go dark. I don’t want everything to be illuminated. So there’s a, you know, you’ve got to… Yeah, that’s an either-or.
SPEAKER 10 :
I mean, there are times where that might be very convenient. There might be times where that would be very detrimental.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. And it’s just, you know, the famous answer to every situational awareness, survival, self-defense question is, well, it depends. Right. Is this a good idea to get these? Right. It depends.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right. Okay. So I guess I could understand. Why they would want the code to be that way, because they want less energy usage. Therefore, you don’t forget to turn the light off. Once you leave, it will automatically go out. But, you know, there are times also where, hey, you know what? I want that light on. I don’t want it going off after a certain amount of time. I may even want it on for the security sides of things. To your point a moment ago, maybe we want a section of the house secure. to be lit because we’re going to go to another section where it’s dark and look outside to see who’s actually watching what’s going on. I mean, things along those lines, Bill, whereby you may not want that to go. And I get it. For everybody listening, yes, I understand, Bill. You do as well. There are overrides to a lot of these devices. I understand that. But in the heat of a moment, Bill, is that something you really want to be dinking around with?
SPEAKER 03 :
No, it’s something you want to have in your planning system and you need to decide all this stuff. And so, you know, when we talk about power outages, blackouts, if you will. I go back to my layering system that I kind of like. And, you know, we can understand that living in Colorado because, you know, we dress in layers for the weather. You could wake up in the morning and it’d be, hey, I need three layers on. And then by the time noon, three o’clock rolls around, you’re down to one layer because of our climate here in Colorado. And then as it gets closer to 4 or 5 o’clock, well, you’re putting those layers back on again. So I like the layering system, so it helps us identify. It’s kind of the same way. You know, hey, we’ve got layer 1, 2, and 3, depending on what is happening. And so that layer 1, the little blackout box, is something, you know, we’re looking for a power outage, maybe 1 to 2 hours. And it’s something that, yeah, people could say, hey, I’m going to give you the list item on this layer 1, And you can say, oh, yeah, I got this in that drawer over there, and I got the other piece in my desk, and I got another piece in the closet. And it’s like, well, when the power goes off, do you want to go around searching through your house to find all those, or do you just want to have one go-to place, or maybe a couple go-to places where you have a little plastic ammo can or a little – you know, little case that you buy from Harbor Freight. This is all cheap stuff that you could put together. And you got it labeled Blackout Kid or whatever you do. And you got it staged a couple places where everybody knows, you know, because things are going off. Your brain’s not going, gosh, where did I put that flashlight? Gosh, where did I put that? You know, and it’s like, hey, just the stuff’s cheap enough, John, that just buy multiples, right? And then you go to it and have one. The other side, too, is like, hey, maybe if I have one box and it’s like, oh, crud, I forgot to charge my flashlights. The flashlights are dead in this one. Well, I go to the next box or whatever. There’s a little bit of redundancy in there. But that layer one, you’re just looking for maybe one to two hours because that’s probably the most common thing you’re going to run into. Okay. That one or two hour.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay, so before we go to break, roll through a few other things that in that layer one, that short one to two hour outage, what are some things folks would want to have on hand? And again, keeping in mind that, yeah, right now I get it, folks. In most cases, power is out. It’s typically going to be when it’s super hot outside. It’s light outside. I get it. But that could switch. We could get into where we’re dark at 445 and 5 o’clock and still have power. an outage. So given that we may be in the light or the dark, what are some things, Bill, before we go to break that we should actually have on hand?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and there’s also, to your point, you could leave the office or wherever you work at 3 o’clock in daylight, and then by the time you get home, 4, 4.30, 5 o’clock, and it’s now dark, depending on, so you could be coming into a house. So there’s also, hey, what do you have on your persons or in your car or whatever? So yeah, the first thing I carry with me, no matter what, is a flashlight. I always have a flashlight with me. In fact, you could say I have three forms of flashlights, if you will. I’ve got my little Mini Warrior 2 flashlight that has many purposes. We do another thing we call skill stacking, right? So the whole adage is two in one, one is done. Well, I like that, but most people don’t apply that correctly. They think, oh, well, I’m going to have you know, two flashlights. Well, no, it’s like have redundancy and the purpose of what that thing is going to do. You know, I got a flashlight. My flashlight is also, if you will, a self-defense tool. So it’s got multiple purposes. But anyway, going back to I got the flashlight in the Warrior 2, I got a flashlight that’s built into my watch. And I actually use that all the time. Most everybody has a flashlight feature on their phone. So there’s redundancy there. But I have at least a way that, you know, I can get from Hey, I don’t need to go get any equipment because the equipment’s on me. Maybe I got to get from my car, you know, I mean, power’s out, but for some reason, my garage door opens for me magically. Right. It’s like Noah, Noah, you know, before they invented electricity, they didn’t have it. So they had to watch TV, but yeah, some people will get that here a little bit, but it’s like, Hey, you know, I got to get out of my car and in my house. It’s dark. My porch lights aren’t working, whatever. I’ve got to now fumble with keys or whatever it may be. So I’ve got some kind of a light on me. So light is going to be important. So whether it’s on your person or you go to that blackout kit, that first little box, hey, what kind of illumination do we have in there? We got things like, you know, People will give them away. Promotional flashlights.
SPEAKER 10 :
Collect all these things.
SPEAKER 03 :
Go to Harbor Freight and they give you that stupid little flashlight and you’re like, what am I going to do with this? I don’t know. Throw a battery in it and put it somewhere. Use it. Get those little solar lanterns or whatever. These things are cheap. Another great suggestion that I really like is you get those 99-cent yard lights, those solar yard lights, And it’s like, well, they’re not really putting out a lot of yard decoration, a lot of yard illumination. But guess what it’s also doing? Man, I’m walking up to my house. It’s dark. I pull that sucker out of the ground. I got a little mini torch, if you will, as I walk up to my door. I mean, there’s redundancies within these plans. So, you know, I’ve got the light. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’m going to need to get me through, you know, in a couple of hours. You know, if I… If I really want to get overzealous about it, maybe there’s a phone bank in there to charge my phone. Again, a lot of these are promotional items. You go to a fair. You go to a trade show. They’re giving this stuff out. They are. That’s right. I’ll take two or three of them, whatever. maybe glow sticks, you know, the little snap glow sticks.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I keep some of those on hand just for that very reason. You know, you’re heading down the same path that I’ve considered. And by the way, glow sticks can be short-term, long-term. They’re great because they, you know, while they’re not, you know, probably the kind of light, Bill, you’re going to put up and read by, they are enough to get you from A to B and illuminate things in a way that allow you to move around and do some things. And And yet, you know, as you as you’re mentioning there, I mean, they’re dirt cheap. I mean, you can buy packs of those things for hardly anything and find them at, you know, those of you that are listening. There’s always specials and things on those at different times of the year, Halloween, things like that. That’s the time of year when that’s done. And there’s a ton of glow sticks on the on the shelf for half price. Buy them.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, go to the dollar store and buy them or Amazon and buy them. I mean, you can lay those around your house and create, if you will, a path so that you can get to. And that, by the way, is another good exercise. Can you navigate your house, John, in the dark? Most of us can, but I get so upset at my family because they love to just kick their shoes off at the door. and wherever they happen to be, and I’m like, you guys are going to break somebody’s ankle or something. You know, get those – keep those paths clear.
SPEAKER 10 :
That way in the middle of the night, you know, if I’ve got to get up and navigate – Yeah, because I’m one of those, you know, because I don’t want to wake everybody and things like that. Bill, if I get up in the middle of the night or do something or get up – a lot of times I’m up before light. You know, I’m up when it’s dark outside, and same deal. You know, I’m navigating around in the dark because, you know, people are sleeping. My wife’s sleeping. I don’t want to wake everybody up. I don’t want to wake the whole household up and the whole neighborhood up by – turn all the lights on, so you move around in the dark, you get to where you need to go, and, you know, to your point, if you know where things are, that’s fairly easy to do.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, yeah, yeah, and do that. Again, I have the Berman Phoenix, I think, 7 as my watch, and, you know, it’s kind of a novelty thing with having that flashlight on it, but I’m going to tell you, I use it almost every day, especially for that reason, because I get up pretty early, you know, before my wife does, and You know, I’m navigating my sock drawer and all that with my little flashlight on my watch. And, yeah, you find uses for them for sure. I probably use the flashlight, the Warrior II, and the flashlight on my watch probably more than any other EDC item, if you will, that I have. You know, especially as I’m getting older, my sight’s kind of going. You know, that little extra light sure helps, you know, drop something in the car, behind the seat, under the seat, looking for something. I mean, it just really helps, you know, plus with the job I do, I always, you know, being an electrician, you’re usually fixing things in the dark because if there was light, you wouldn’t be there. But anyway.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yep. Nope. All right. Let’s do this. We’ll take a quick break. We’ll come back. Those of you that want to text in a question or an idea you want to add to this, feel free to do so. You can call in as well. 307-200-8222 is the text line. You can call us directly as well. 303-477-5600. We’ll be right back. This is Ready Radio, KLZ 560.
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SPEAKER 10 :
All right, we are back. Ready Radio, KLZ 560. Looks like John from Cheyenne joining in as well. John, welcome. How are you, sir?
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, I’m good. I’m listening to what you guys are saying. We had two blackouts here at my house in the last week and a half. You know, one was two hours, one was an hour and a half. But you’ve got to remember, even if it’s something minor, by the time the linemen get out and do their safety checks, it’s two hours.
SPEAKER 10 :
True.
SPEAKER 04 :
Good point. Most of the time. But here’s the thing. I encourage everybody, everybody, no matter if it’s, you know, they call it the smart meter, the advanced meter, the smart grid. Call your utility when you lose power because it helps them triangulate the outage.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
Because although the smart meter will call in, maybe not all of them got the call in. You know, we never get all the call ins. We get all the restorations, which help us see when it comes back up.
SPEAKER 12 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
But the outage is a lot of times we don’t get them all. The meter might call it in. It might not come in. So call. And then the other thing is if you can’t put the utility that you have to call your power outage in, put their phone number in your phone, in your cell phone. Yeah, good point. Because usually your cell phone will still work. The other thing is, is if they have a website, 90% of utilities, like I’m on an REA, and they have a great, on their website, they have an outage map. You can hit it. You can zoom in and say, oh, okay. Like the last one, there were 190 customers out. So you say, all right, well, it’s probably something happened on a line, open to reclosure, open to sub, and it’s going to take time. And that will help you as you learn. You know, if it’s 20 outages, it might be on in an hour. But if it’s 300 people are out in the same area, it might be longer than that because there’s probably a repair. Good point. About a month ago, when we had the outage, it lasted five and a half hours. The substation got hit by lightning. So they had to reset everything and safety first. And I’m sure the electrician, I’m sorry, I’ve thrown a blank on his name. Bill. Bill, we’ll tell you, if a substation gets hit by lightning, it’s not a quick fix.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, no, it’s not a quick fix. And a lot of those people now don’t even have the transformers in stock to replace them because for a while there was a big shortage on getting the transformers. Oh, yeah. They all came from China and things like that. And, yeah, that’s a big thing, you know. But, you know, sometimes you have a power outage and you’re not home and you don’t even know, so you’re not able to call in. I mean, I get notifications online. But, yeah, to your point, if you’re home, you know, you kind of help that procedure of, hey, I’m out, hey, I’m out. You know, and what’s another thing I would add to the box there, John, even on that level one is, is have some kind of a radio, right, whether you’re picking up just AM, FM, and getting NOAA for the weather alert. But if you’re a hammer, you know, you can jump on your ham radio and be like, you know, that’s part of that network that you kind of set up within your community. And you’re like, hey, who’s all out? Because in my neighborhood here, we’ve had power outages before, and I’ve actually watched, you know, we have CORE, which used to be IREA, They’re driving around looking at all the polls to see what transformer it is because they don’t even know. They’re like, well, is it this one? Is it that one? Which one is it? So to John’s point, they’ve got to figure it out sometimes.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, good point.
SPEAKER 04 :
And a lot of times the data is only as good as the people who entered it. And if you entered a meter on a wrong transformer, then that could roll up to – the circuit, not exactly just that one transformer, which will then, of course, now the lineman is patrolling the whole circuit. But you were talking about moving stuff underground. If you ask any lineman, they would rather patrol with looking for an outage above ground because it’s just easier to work than having to go and start dumping below ground to find a break if there’s a below ground, you know, in the bigger cities. And they’re all pushing for that. And they’re saying, well, what about the damage? Well, it’s a lot easier to find and isolate the damage if it’s above ground than if it’s below ground.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I’ve been on tons of calls out here where we live because there’s a lot of stuff underground. And by the way, if you have a meter… that’s attached like to a pole or to a pedestal. Right. And then it comes to your house that underground from, you know, from the meter to your house is no longer their responsibility. It is yours as the homeowner. So if that’s where your failure is, it’s on you to find it. Yep.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh yeah. You’re, you’re calling your electrician at that point. That’s why the other thing, most utilities, and I learned this when I was doing customer service to the utility, did you check your meter? Is it, Is your meter on? Because now everything’s digital. You know, there’s very few old mechanical meters left out there. So if your meter’s dead, then you know you’re not getting any power. But if your meter’s on, probably something on the other side of that meter, maybe check your main breakers. And that was always one of the things we would tell customers when they called it. Did you check your breaker? Did it trip by accident? Because if there’s a bad storm, it could trip your house breaker. But you were saying about a kit. When I first moved out here 21 years ago, and I’m out in the middle of nowhere, we have a flashlight on our nightstands. Just a cheap, I think I paid, you know, Harbor Freight flashlight. And you check it every now and then. But it’s on the nightstand. So if the power does go out, at least you have a flashlight you can reach for right there. It’s overnight. Yeah, and that’s where I do like the…
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s where I like, John, those battery-operated flashlights. I know the whole thing now is the rechargeables. You plug it in, the USB-C and all that. It’s like, yeah, but is that thing going to be working when you need it to work? Versus, hey, this thing takes a couple AA, AAAs, whatever it may be. Hey, if I’m really into the rechargeable thing, go buy rechargeable AA and AAA batteries, right? Go do that. But, hey, now it’s like, hey, this thing doesn’t work. I can run over to this drawer or even maybe in that same drawer I’ve got a couple of extra double A’s, swap them out real quick, and now it’s going to work. It’s going to roll for me.
SPEAKER 04 :
And the large pack of double A’s or triple A at Costco are dirt cheap. You know, you can get 30 or 40 batteries for $10 or $12. And there you go. If you keep them in a cool, dry place, they kind of last almost forever. I mean, you know. But the other nice thing is the headlamp I use for backpacking, I keep it available when I’m not out on the trail. It’s rechargeable. But if it’s dead, I can pop the rechargeable battery out and put three AAAs in it, and it works just the same, which is a really nice feature.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s kind of like the dual fuel generator. It’s like, hey, I don’t have gas, but I got propane. I switch the nozzle, we’re good to go. Like my little Olight Mini Warrior 2, it’s a special 18650 battery, but I bought a bunch of them. I recharged them. I actually have. I don’t think I’ve done this before with John. Maybe we’ve talked about this. But I got this great little charger. It’s called an All Maybe charger. I picked it up on Amazon. And it actually can charge various types of different batteries. But then I can turn around and use it to charge my cell phone if I want to. So it kind of swings both ways, if you will.
SPEAKER 04 :
I have a set of Ryobi One tools, and I have about… six or seven batteries for them, which I keep those charged. And one of the nice things on the Ryobi radio, it has a USB-A connection that I can put and charge my phone off of it if I need to.
SPEAKER 03 :
But I’ve also got a little… Go ahead. People talk about Ryobi and things like that, and it’s like cheap and stuff. Yeah, their stuff works fine. Yeah, it works fine, right? Or even going to Harbor Freight, you know, it’s like, You know, if I’m going to buy a tool, I just had this conversation with somebody on the job site the other day because there’s the whole DeWalt versus Milwaukee debate going on. And I’m like, you know, if I need something with some meat to it, like I have a threader, a pipe threader, they’re threaded to 2-inch GRC. I’m going DeWalt. I’m sorry, Ryobi just ain’t got the chutzpah to get me through that stuff, right? If I’m drilling with our whole hog, I’m drilling studs for my electrical wires. That sucker’s DeWalt. You know, I’ve got a big impact gun. You know, it’s DeWalt. I mean, now my smaller little screw guns, if you will, I’m buzzing in outlets, buzzing them out, running a self-pop or whatever. I’ll go with a Milwaukee on those. They’re not as big. They’re not as heavy. You know, so, you know, hey, they’re changeable. And now here’s the other thing, right? You can get on Amazon, and I have several of these, but they make adapter kits. So that you can put your Milwaukee or your DeWalt battery onto this adapter and go into your Ryobi tool. So, you know, this whole thing, you’ve got to be, you know, stick to one brand. It’s kind of for the birds now. It’s like, no, there’s adapters where you can interchange batteries and you can use, you know, drills, you know, whatever. Now, I did buy a four-gallon Ryobi sprayer. I’m mixing my own fertilizer and spraying my plants. And because of the watertight compartment, I’m not able to use that adapter. But, you know, still, pros and cons to things. But, no, those things are great. You can even get those little things that plug right onto your battery, and it’s a little USB charger or a little radio that you can, you know, again, redundancy, stacking purposes, if you will.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yep.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, that’s the other thing, John. We talked about this with blackouts in the wintertime. And you can get them at garage sales or you can go to like Sierra Trading Post or REI and go to their sale section, their return section. Everybody should have a sleeping bag for everybody in their house. Because even if you’ve got blankets and everything else, you can tuck inside that sleeping bag. You’re always going to sleep warmer. But going back to Harbor Freight, I mean, I don’t I’m not a professional mechanic anymore. So their sockets are just perfect for me as a homeowner. And they had the same lifetime guarantee as Snap-on. If you break it, you take it back to Arbor Freight, they’ll replace it. So why would I pay four times as much for a set of snap-on sockets when I could buy them at Harvard Free? You don’t need to.
SPEAKER 10 :
Not anymore, you don’t. I mean, and again, and I am, you know, was, you know, turned a wrench for a long, long, long time. And granted, back in the day, we didn’t have even, you know, some of the choices that we have today. I’ll tell you right now, even as a quote-unquote professional professional, uh mechanic especially if you’re one of those folks out there listening where you’re getting into the trades you’re thinking about doing some of these things uh yeah you and and i i wouldn’t have said this even 10 years ago guys but the reality is some of the other tool companies that have come along gear wrench you know harbor freight’s got their their line and and so on and and the reality is They are so much better than they used to be. And I get it. It’s the Chinese copying what Snap-on invented. I fully understand that. Please, nobody text me and tell me that that’s what’s going on because I know that. I know full well how this works. They copy. They go and make it, in some cases, even a tad bit better than what it may have been from someone else. That’s what’s happening. The ICON brand through Harbor Freight is exactly that on the same token. Right. If somebody wants to take advantage of that, and literally you can buy, I don’t think I’m exaggerating, guys. You can buy a full set of Icon wrenches or ratchets or whatever, and it literally is probably 20% to 30% of the price of Snap-on, and I’m not far off on that. So that is a huge savings. And even as professional mechanics guys, there’s a lot of guys out there that have made that switch. And I’m a Snap-on guy through and through. Love them dearly. But man alive, when you’re talking about saving 70%, 80%, that’s huge, guys.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, absolutely. If you’re a kid just coming out of Wild Tech and say you’re going to your first job and you’ve got to start buying your tools.
SPEAKER 10 :
Go buy Icon.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, buy the cheaper ones, and then as time goes on and you make more money, you can upgrade.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. That’s exactly right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, John. No, I’ll do it, John.
SPEAKER 10 :
I’ll let you go. I appreciate it, and we’ll continue on here. But no, Bill, John’s exactly right on all of that. I think that’s the point of this program continually, Bill, is we’re not telling anybody to run around and go buy gobs and gobs and gobs of stuff. In fact, I have done programs here in the last couple of weeks on my Saturday morning program talking about how to downsize and get rid of some stuff. We’re not talking about that here. But in some cases, Bill, and in fact, in a lot of cases, you can repurpose and even find a lot of the things that you and I are talking about. As you just said, some of the giveaways, garage sales, some of the thrift stores, things that people will throw in a bag and give away might even be some of those handy flashlights that you’re talking about. We’re not talking about going out and spend a lot of money. In some cases, you can pick this stuff up for pennies on the dollar.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and a lot of the stuff you find at garage sales is going to be the better stuff anyway because, you know, you threw out the comment of, oh, don’t call me and tell me, you know, China, China, China. I got news for you. It’s all being made in China anymore. It is. No, you’re right.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I mean, on the Snap-on stuff, they still make a lot of stuff here in the U.S., but it is definitely being copied and made in China. In general, John, right. Yeah, and yeah, to your point, I mean, the reality is there is probably not many tools, and even some of what Snap-on sells, depending upon what you buy, may still come from there as well. So, no, you’re 100% correct on that, Bill. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 03 :
I used to be a huge craftsman, you know, in the 80s and early 90s there. Everything had to be craftsman. Craftsman? Craftsman is garbage now.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah. Back in the day, because it started to get worse and worse, when I was a kid, I bought a lot of Craftsman stuff just because I was getting into the trades. It was good long-term lifetime warranty, all of that kind of stuff, Bill. And there was one close by, and you could get things handled very easily. And then as time went by, we changed the name from Craftsman to Crapsman.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, exactly. It’s garbage right now. And we were probably buying those about the same time. you know, given our age and stuff. So, you know, yeah, it was back then it was, yeah, lifetime guarantee. You took it back to Sears, no questions asked, they gave you another one, but not anymore, not anymore. So, yeah, you know, back to that level one or that layer one, you know, those are some of the things that you want for that one to two hour thing. And then you go into the next layer, which is the layer two, and you’re looking for about that two to four hour period. time duration now. Okay. So now, now we’re, we’re in it a little bit more and now, you know, life has to happen a little bit more. So, you know, maybe now, depending on when it hits, what do I got going on? Is it around dinner time? Do I need to start thinking, do I got to cook something? Um, you know, and, We’ve got to also remember, too, hey, listen, if the power’s out for four hours, you’re not going to starve in four hours. No, you’re not. No, that’s right. We don’t need to go to— We’re not cooking.
SPEAKER 10 :
You’re not going to die in four hours. Grab a protein bar or something if you have to. You’re going to be just fine.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, people go all extreme with this stuff, too, and it’s like, well, I’ve got to have so’s and ovens and— you know, MREs and all this stuff. And it’s like, well, that’s for the longer haul. That’s probably for that level three where you’re looking at eight plus a few days of no power.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yep. Did I lose you, Bill? Are you back? We lost you for a second. Let’s do this. No, you’re back. No, you’re back. We lost you for a minute. You broke up. You’re back now.
SPEAKER 03 :
Sorry about that. I must have had a little… All good.
SPEAKER 10 :
You’re fine. All good now.
SPEAKER 03 :
So that layer two, we’re extending that time a little bit more. If you’re not opening or closing your refrigerator a lot, listen, your food is still okay. It’s still safe. But if you had some frozen water bottles in the freezer… at this point, you know, and you’re starting to be concerned about your fridge stuff, pull those frozen water bottles out, and yeah, you can keep the empty jug of orange juice or the jug of milk that you don’t have filled up with water, freeze it, and this is for the purpose, right? Now I could throw that into my refrigerator, and I just kind of turn my refrigerator into a little bit of a chest cooler, an ice chest cooler. So if I need to do that, I can do that. We’re just getting a little bit more deeper into it. You know, if you’re in a position where maybe it’s wintertime because, you know, you’re more likely, John, to have a power outage probably during a storm, during a blizzard or something like that. And so you’ve got to remember, hey, there’s other things that could come into play here. Maybe temperature is dropping and they need to figure out how to keep some heat on. Now, to your point, have those blankets available. Do we have a… a source of heat that doesn’t require electricity. Now, again, depending upon your house, how insulated it is, you know, as long as you’re not opening and closing a bunch of doors, it’s going to hold the heat for a good time and you’re not going to freeze to death in a two to four hour time frame.
SPEAKER 12 :
Correct.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, go put a sweater on, right? Go put some socks on, whatever. But now you’re starting to, hey, I’m starting to think about this. If you live on a well and you have emptied your pressure tank, Now you’ve got to think, okay, I need to refill that pressure tank if I want water. If I don’t have some water storage on hand, a couple of gallons or whatever to flush the toilet or to wash my hands or to do whatever, maybe I’ve got to now think, okay, do I have a portable generator? At least 220 volt, 30 amp on a way to get my well turned on for a minute to at least repressurize my tank so I’ve got some more water again. But, you know, you should be able to exist, you know, two to four hours without running water. And that’s where the water storage. I know a lot of people on wells think, hey, I don’t need water storage because I got a well. And, you know, now they’re getting into that. four hour of, hey, the kids all just went and flushed the toilet and lived life as normal. And all of a sudden now I don’t have any pressure in my tank and I have no water. And now that gallon on the shelf now becomes handy, even if it’s just for washing my hands. And by the way, there’s two purposes to store water. We’re going to store water for drinking, sure. But you know what? I can store water in the used orange juice container, in the used milk container, in And I’m not going to drink it, but I’m going to do a lot of other stuff. You know, most of our water isn’t used for drinking. Most of it’s used for washing or whatever. And those types of water storages are perfectly fine for that. True. starting to build into that. You got anything to add to that later too?
SPEAKER 10 :
No, I think you’re on the right track. I think this would be where potentially, and again, we can get into this a little bit more at one of our later shows here. This is one of those where some of the, and I finally broke down, bought one because of some of the things I do on remotes with radio show and so on. I finally broke down and bought one of the, it’s called Jackery, but there’s a lot of different brands out there. And I did enough testing so far this summer where I can literally run the entire show for the entire four plus hours that I’m on, Bill, and it barely even drains the, I think it’s 1100 watt unit that I bought. I mean, it just, there’s not enough draw coming off of it to where it’s just the radio equipment that I’m using to come back here and and at the end of the day it’s just not drawing much now for some of you where you’re thinking you know i maybe i do need to want to you know maybe i need to keep something running not going to run a well with that by the way but maybe i need to keep something running something online per se one of those and they’re not as expensive as they used to be one of those things bill as the more get made The cheaper they get, and you can pick those things up now in some cases for when they’re on sale. Costco, other places, for 40%, 50% off in some cases, depending upon the deal they’re having. That may be something you want to pick up and put into that Layer 2 end of things.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, Harbor Freight even sells Jackery. There you go. I had one, and I had bought it, and I don’t even think I charged it. And I don’t know what I was doing. I was like, oh, I’m going to go grab that Jackery thing, and hadn’t used it. Hadn’t charged it, and it had a full charge on it. So the retention of these things are great. What I will say with that, though, John, is you probably need to run some tests. You need to play around with it while the power’s still up. That’s right. See what the capability is. Because everybody wants the magic formula. Hey, what size generator do I need? What size battery? Solar batteries, what these are called, solar generators. Right. What type of solar generator do I need? And, again, what’s the answer, John? It depends. It depends on what you plug into it. That’s right.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and it’s like me, you know, this summer, Bill, playing around with the one that I had and learning, you know, okay, and this one, by the way, for all of you listening, is really cool because whatever you plug in, it will literally tell you this is your load. I even did it where, because we were on a hot day, Bill, it was even running, a fan, you know, one of the box fans. And of course, the box fan drew far more than the rest of my equipment did, which of course would make sense because it’s a motor that you’re running full bore. And I had it on high speed. And interestingly enough, when I took that off, I’m only pulling about 35 watts or so. So less than what people used to run with a, you know, 60 watt light bulb telling you how long that battery pack would last quite some time, by the way. Even with the fan running, I was only pulling about a 100-watt light bulb when it was all said and done. So those are the things you’re talking about, though. For those of you listening, do some testing if that’s something you’re thinking about. And Bill can answer some of these questions even directly for some of you when it comes to how do you test that without actually buying a unit. There’s meters and things out there that you can do that with.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, there’s, again, I saw them at Harbor Freight the other day. It’s called kilowatt. It’s a little device that you plug in to your outlet, and then you plug whatever appliance you want into that. And there’s a little display there, and you can see how much it’s drawing. You can even do a time capture, hey, for an hour, you know, this thing came on or off. You know, it’s cycled because, like, refrigerators only cycle about once every 15 minutes or so. They’re not on continually. And it’s like, okay, so then you can start geeking out on the math if you want. and going from there and buy these little kilowatt things. You get them on Amazon. They’re pretty cheap, you know, not too expensive at all. And you can at least run some numbers if that’s what you want to do. The good thing about a solar generator, John, versus a generator, so a generator has to run continually at a certain RPM. I think it’s 3,200 or 3,500 RPMs. I can’t remember exactly offhand. in order to generate that sine wave for the electricity. And you’ve got to have that constantly going so that we have that quote, on-demand electricity. Whether I’m using that much or not, you know, if I have nothing plugged in, I still have to have my generator running so that when I do flip that switch, The power is there. The nice thing about the batteries is, hey, if I’m not using it, I’m not draining it. That’s right. So it’s kind of like the new Instant Hots or the tankless water heaters, if you will. Correct. It’s only doing it on demand. So you can have a combination of both, actually. And, you know, use your solar generator. And once that thing goes dead, hey, let’s fire up the little portable generator and top off the solar generator. And while it’s topping off the solar generator, I’ve got power to use for whatever I’m using it for anyway. And then once it’s topped off, I kill the generator, save the gas, work that battery again. So it’s building the system.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. And that’s it. Another week. Bill, appreciate you. Have a good weekend, sir.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, that went fast. Yes, it did. Yes, it did.
SPEAKER 10 :
Always does. All right, we’ll be right back. Ready Radio, KLZ 560.
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SPEAKER 10 :
All right, that’s it for Ready Radio. Hope you guys had a great day today and learned some things as well as I did. I always do, by the way. Appreciate Bill joining us. And again, don’t forget, go to the website, ready-radio.com. This is Ready Radio, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 02 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
