"Sunny South Africa"

[nex]

Hi everyone, yeah I'm still around......

Hope everyone and their loved ones are still ok, not having much time lately for anything but being busy with doing much-needed maintenance to our home. 
The wife received a job offer in Namibia around September last year so we're waiting for the Nam government to review her w0#k permit which can take some time, we hope to get it.
Otherwise, all is well here in "Dark Africa", our power supplier has set up a new record, 3 weeks without a power outage, not even a 5 min breakdown, 
elections are coming up next month so outages will commence the day after election........

[PZ]

Good to hear from you, nex 

Also glad that you and the missus are doing fine. Power issues are awful - we normally see them in the winter and/or when the winds are stiff enough to down trees onto the lines. The outages usually don't last that long, but we've experienced up to about a week without power, hence the purchase of a generator a few years ago.

All is okay in my neck of the woods, but we're already worried about water shortages and forest fires in the coming season. Our area has recently experienced a huge spike in newcomers moving to the area - feels kind of like southern California these days. Housing prices have skyrocketed so that locals can't afford to purchase a home any longer, and old folks on fixed income are being ousted from homes they have owned for generations because they can't afford the property taxes.

I guess maybe things are not that "okay" after all.

[Dweller_Benthos]

This past winter was an El Nino winter, which means for warm(er) and wet, which where I live doesn't mean rain but ice and heavy snow, which brings down trees and power lines. I think I spent nearly was much in propane running the generator when the power was out that I did keeping the house warm. Makes getting my own solar panels a more attractive proposition every year.

But glad you're still hanging on there, and that the missus gets that new job!

[PZ]

I think I spent nearly was much in propane running the generator when the power was out that I did keeping the house warm. 

I was thinking of a whole house generator (like Generac) but heard that the propane consumption for internal combustion engines is very high - sounds like you might have experienced this?

[Dweller_Benthos]

Could be, I never really did a calculation on it, but it's probably not very efficient, at least compared to things like diesel. Thing is, I already have propane tanks for the boiler that heats the house and hot water, so just adding a generator to that made sense. Plus there's almost no maintenance required, I have the guy come by once a year to check the battery and change the oil. A diesel generator is another matter, you have to have diesel for it for one thing, and a pretty large tank to store it in I would expect. And I'm not sure on the longevity of diesel, so if you don't use it, does it "go bad" after a while, and you just have to throw it away and flush and refill your tank? Stuff like that makes them less attractive to me. Add in the maintenance as well, upkeep, etc, and it just makes sense to have a propane one that's hooked into the system I already have. I just wish it was quieter when running, but any generator is going to be noisy I expect. If I had it to do again, I'd have it installed further from the house on the side opposite the bedrooms, as it is, it's essentially right outside the bedroom window and makes for noisy sleeping.

I keep seeing that the government will give grants for solar panels, it looks more attractive all the time.

[PZ]

yeah, propane seems like a reasonable way to go. Diesel does spoil with time as does gasoline. I'm using a gas stabilizer and it has worked okay particularly because I have frequent enough power failures.