I could never afford a 7-day UPS...

Jean-David Beyer

Power went out at 2PM Monday due to Sandy.

So no heat. No hot water. No kitchen stove. After a few hours, no telephone (except my cell phone).



By the following Sunday, the house went down from 69F to 58F. I could raise the temperature of one room by 2F by burning 8 candles. I was surprised my high sensitivity CO detector went off doing that -- after a while.



Sunday night the power came on. 11F setback, essentially.



Two observations: my insulation must be pretty good that the indoor temperature went down so slowly.



11F setback is too much; normally I do not use setback because radiant slab takes too long to make setback practical. It took about 36 hours to get the temperature up to what I want, and I had to raise the reset by 20F to get it that soon. I normally have it set to be just enough to makeup the heat loss, but no where near enough to recover from much of a setback.



When the power failed, I switched off the boiler at the circuit breaker. Good thing. Power flicked on and off quickly at initial restoration. I would not wish to do that to the controller. It took about 15 minutes to stop that. Then I turned it on.

Jean-David Beyer

Backup generator installed a little over a year ago. Power went off for a couple of hours in August or September (when I was not here), but my UPS immeediately clicked in and 7 seconds later my backup generator took charge. My UPS can keep my computer up for about 2 hours, so it handled the 7 seconds with ease.

RobG

Where have you been JDB?

Jean-David Beyer

I have been just too busy with doctor's appointments (growing old is not for sissies), doing what I call social service work, home maintenance, all the tedious bother of everyday life.

For example, I spent three days taking a friend who has no living relatives, and no friends anywhere near where she lives to the doctor to do a follow up on major eye surgery they did the week before. Two surgeons took about 5 hours. But she lives 175 miles away from me, and the doctors are 200 miles away from her, so all in all, I did 750 miles in a little under three days. Things like that happen to me (or my friends) a lot.

Another friend requires lots of help too. When my friend was 10 years old, someone beat her mother to death. Her father died of cancer. She has two younger half-sisters. The three girls were raised by their schizophrenic grandmother who was extremely abusive. A friend of mine and I got a social service agency to take the three girls away from the grandmother. The two younger ones were put in foster homes and the oldest spent about 3 years in a mental hospital, but since they did not diagnose her correctly (borderline personality disorder, if you know psychology), they just fed her meds that made her kind-of obese but did not help her any. She is no longer in mental hospitals, but has major psychological, social, and economic problems. I have worked very hard to help her, but this one project has now gone on over 8 years.

So sometimes no time for Heating Help.

BobC

You had more important work to do.

Bob

Jean-David Beyer

It is a matter of priorities, but those are mine.

I no longer am in daily tears about those three girls (though I was for several years), but two of them are serious challenges (one is two hours drive away from me and often homeless). The third one has been adopted which seems to be wonderful. Dealing with the oldest one is a severe challenge. One winter she called up asking for me to wire her some money for a place to stay. I checked the weather: 20F, sleet, etc. And she on the street. But if I sent her money she might spend it on proscribed substances. I finally said no, but that really really hurt. Try leaving a loved one out in the cold and feeling good about it. I will never know if that was the right decision. She did live through it.

Gordy

Your AWESOME Jean. The world could use a lot more people like you.

Glad to hear you are doing okay.

icesailor

Jean-David:

I understand more than you will ever know.

Remember what they tell you on an airliner before they take off and the flight crew gives you the safety briefing.

If the oxygen mask drops down, put YOURS on IMMEDIATELY, before you try to help someone else. If you are incapacitated from a lack of oxygen, you are of no help to yourself and any others.

Its "One Day At A Time".

You're not responsible for other peoples problems. You can help, but enabling is not help. Its not your fault.

There's a great line in a Paul Simon song "Graceland".

Is this my problem,
Is this my fault.
If things don't change,
I'm gonna call the whole thing to a halt.

Jean-David Beyer

"If the oxygen mask drops down, put YOURS on IMMEDIATELY, before you try to help someone else. If you are incapacitated from a lack of oxygen, you are of no help to yourself and any others."

I took a one-week personal development seminar in the early 1980s. One of the things they said was, "First take care of yourself, so that you can take care of others." Like your example of the oxygen masks.

"You're not responsible for other peoples problems. You can help, but enabling is not help. Its not your fault. "

That is generally true, but with sufferers of BPD, it is extremely difficult. One must balance validation with the need for change, and these often (usually) contradict. And there is no "right way" to ensure that validation is not enabling. I go on the basis that I will always be wrong, but that doing my best is better than not doing anything at all. I did specifically hunt up a psychotherapist whose specialty is treating people with BPD to help me with this balancing act. I see this therapist only about once a month these days, but she is a big help nonetheless. But for a sufferer of BPD, proper treatment involves two $150 sessions a week, and I cannot possibly afford that. And with my friend's other issues, it would not be the top priority, since she would need a stable, supportive, supervised environment for the therapy to be effective.

No one ever said it would be easy.