Hurricane Charley

It all sounds wonderful but I don't seem to have much influence with FP&L.
It truly think it would be easier to fight City Hall. LOL

I'm not sure but part of the problem might be that there are so many small
towns in South Florida and nobody can ever agree on anything, especially
something that would be very expensive to do..

My part of Port St Lucie that didn't exist 10 years ago has sewers but the
rest of the city has cess pools and wells and is only now converting to city
water and sewers.

I have absolutely no gas line to my house and, although I asked for it, I
was told it simply wasn't going to be. So I use electricity for everything.

Phone service is better than electricity, but still iffy during a storm.

I know you probably think I live in the back woods but this is a town of
over 100,000. They just haven't quite caught up with technology yet !!!

Lucille

"Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr." wrote
in message ...
Hi Lucille


Now you've come up with a fabulous idea. I'm not very savvy when it
comes
to this sort of thing, but I do know that you can't dig down more than a
few
feet without hitting water. Can you bury lines under water like that?
If
it's doable, can you come down here and try to talk these dopes into
burying
the wires so we won't have so many power outages.

I'd be delighted to give you room and board and might even try to
entertain
you while you were here.

My wife is in Daytona right now, will be there til next week! Perhaps
I should send her over, hi hi.....

About underground utilities, I'm sure your Water, Gas, Sanitary Sewers
and Storm Sewers are underground.

If you haven't been getting water in your gas lines, and ground water
is not getting into your drinking water, why would ground water get
into electrical conduit?

The transatlantic telephone cable was layed across the ocean floor!
The problems it had was due to currents moving the cable around
scraping it raw.

As an aside, electricity is the cheapest utility to manufacture and
maintain, yet they charge the most for it! I've never understood why,
other than greed.

Even high voltage transmission lines could be placed inside of
underground conduit. I'm sure there is less metal used to make
conduit than those big towers they build. And the harmful magnetic
fields would for the most part be eliminated.
Maintenance of underground facilities is slightly higher than above
ground when something does go wrong. But above ground, with it's
exposure to all of the elements is also very high maintenance overall.

Something to think about:
How often has your gas service been disrupted?
How often has your water service been disrupted?
How often is your phone out of service?
How often is your electricity out long enough to make all your clocks
flash 12:00 or your computers to reboot?

See what I mean? Electricity is the most unreliable of our utilities.
Perhaps that's why the telephone company generates its own power!

TTUL
Gary

Hi Gary,
As a electrician I have replaced more metal conduit than I care to
remember - rusts out too quick. I have spliced NMD-10 where it was going to
be below ground on other jobs. I just used an ordinary 4" round outlet box
and made good grimped connections. Then I filled the box with roofing tar.
For myself I would never do it.

I installed two 2"dia. abs pipes between my house and home workshop, then
ran my wiring through them - hmmm that was 20 years ago.

Fred
http://www.stitchaway.com

W.I.P. - "Fiddler on the Roof",
"Oriental Maiden".
W.I.L. - "Romantic Venice",
"Ocean Princess", "Southwest Charm",
"Rainbow Trail", "Indian Pottery", "One Earth",
"Spirit of the Full Moon"
and "+?", "+?", "+?".
"Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr." wrote
in message ...
Hi Fred

Do you know what potting material is? (Not the kind for plants
silly!)

An underground splice in open wire is sealed using potting material or
encased in a waterproof jacket. Potting material is the cheapest and
most effective way of sealing a splice permanently.

Submersible pumps, the small kinds are encased in potting material.
Especially those used in marine and reef aquaria (sal****er).

Nonetheless, your still better off using conduit, it's cheap and
allows replacement of the wires without digging again.

TTUL
Gary

Hi Fred

Same here!

The professionally installed wiring to the 100 Amp garage box at my
new old home is not in conduit, and it's been cut a few times, but all
the wiring I ran to the storage sheds is NMD inside of PVC Conduit,
yes it may be overkill, but it will last forever.

Awhile before I moved south, I had to replace my sewer line, over 15
feet down, so you know what that entailed, shored walls and the like.
The copper water supply was very near to it, so, while the ditch was
open, I buried a 1-1/4 PVC pipe from the foundation to the street at
about the 4 foot level.
Glad I did too! Because not 3 months later the copper pipe began
leaking not far from the stop cock.
We drilled a hole in the foundation 8 inches below the old pipe inlet
and it lined up with the PVC I had buried. Sliding a new 3/4 inch
pipe into this, making the sweated unions in the nice heated basement
until the pipe reached the street was a blessing for the crew doing
the work. Of course, not having to dig a trench cut the bill down
plenty!

TTUL
Gary

Do they Jim?

Most homes are supplied with Water, Sanitary Sewers (and on occasion
separate storm sewers), natural gas, telephone (usually more than one
line), many have cable TV too and lets not forget about the electric.

Sanitary sewers are the most complicated installation from home to
disposal (treatment) plant. Increasingly larger pipes must be used
until they arrive at their destination. Exponentially more expensive
that wire.

Your water supply and natural gas supply, also in pipes, not as
complicated as waste handling but still in a network of pipes that are
also increasing larger and/or higher pressure as they reach the supply
source. Again, exponentially more expensive than wire.

Your other services come in on wires too! Telephone is bundled wire
pairs, often two pairs per household AND each of these lines is
totally separate for each user back to the switching relays or more
modern types of switches. Again, Exponentially more wires than an
electrical service line.

Cable TV, they use coax, exactly how it's laid out from the provider I
don't know, never studied it much.

That's was just the transmission of the services.

Next we have to look at how those services come to be.

Supply water must be obtained and held (stored), then is filtered,
treated, filtered again and pumped to your home using massive pumps
through the network of pipes. Average cost about 13 bucks a month.

Waste water travels though its maze of downward sloping pipes where it
finally arrives at a treatment plant, solids separated, drain beds
filter out most of the waste, which must be handled also. Average
cost about 15 bucks a month.

Natural gas must be located, pumped, treated, held, then pumped under
high pressure over great distances and stored in local tanks where it
is repumped through a local network of pipes to the home. For the
most part, the cost of natural gas, considering its much more costly
piping and explosion proof pumping stations, etc. is not that far out
of line.

Your telephone service, quite a complicated and intricate array of
wires, switches, phone numbers (one or more for each household)
equipment to track all of this and make sure you get connected to whom
you are calling, etc. Basic cost is only $21.00 a month or less.

Now, what about electricity?
Each customer is NOT tracked at the source as phone service must be,
so there is no cost there. Like water and gas, electricity is metered
at its point of usage.
Other than rotten telephone poles and scrap wire, they have no waste
to contend with as does the sewer company. Wire can be recycled.
What is the major cost of supplying electricity to a consumer?
It surely isn't in the wiring, it's peanuts compared to the pipes
other utilities must use.
It surely isn't in complicated networking and separate wires to each
home as the telephone company must use.

Electricity is fed from it's generation point at high voltage to
substations that drop the voltage and increase the current and feed it
to a more localized area, often using a grid. This lower voltage
leads to commercial areas and residential areas where transformers
convert it to the power needed by the end user. For homes this is
normally 220 volts, run on aluminum wires through your meter to your
panel box. Often 4 or more homes are supplied by a single residential
transformer, and thousands of homes from each sub-station.

What does it take to generate electricity?
That depends upon your location.
Steam powered turbines generate much of the electricity in the
flatlands.
Dams are constructed to use water pressure to run turbines in hilly
regions.
Windmills are used in areas of high winds.
And to waste money, under the guise of generating low cost electrical
power, expensive and dangerous Nuclear power plants have been built.

Most of the dams built for the purpose of generating electricity were
built in the 40's and 50's. Not a single one that I am aware of is
even running anywhere near full capacity.
I recently moved to Tennessee where the TVA controls most if not all
of the dams. I go fishing quite often on the spillway sides of these
dams, and rarely is more than one turbine running and they have 3, 4
or even 5 turbines sitting idle. I'm sure other dams may be providing
the bulk of the electric and these particular ones may be backups for
times of peak usage. But when lakes created by these dams are
continuously maintained at High Pool, they cease to become flood
control facilities one of their main intents besides generating
electricity, and turn into recreational water parks.

Clearwater Lake in Missouri is maintained only at 1/3 pool, it
attracts some recreation, but is so isolated, it is not much benefit
for flood control in major cities north of that location. Ergo it's
only functional purpose is to generate electricity.

There is resistance in wires, so long distance transportation of
generated electricity is more costly than the building of more
localized points of power generation.

But, what does it cost to generate this electricity?
Basically, only the maintenance of the turbines.
The dams have been paid for for decades and no new ones are needed,
the ones we have are supplying very little of the power we use.

WHERE is the cost that warrants the high price for electricity?????

It's definitely not in the distribution system, which is the lowest in
cost of any existing utility!
It's definately not in the metering and billing systems, electric
meters cost peanuts compared to gas and water meters and last
infinitely longer in service.
It's definately not in technological advancements in providing
electrical service, the same turbines that were running when I was
born over 50 years ago are the same turbines still running today and
they may have kicked in a second turbine at the generating facility
since I was born.
It's NOT in new construction, the same power plants and same dams are
still providing the electric, with the execption of the political
playtoys called Nuclear power plants that was supposed to be built to
generate LOW COST electrical power, cheaper than water over a dam they
claimed.

The gas company has to continually explore for new pockets of gas.
The telephone company has to continually upgrade and update along with
advances in communication technology.
The water company has to increase their filtering capacity due to
increased pollution and increase their pumping stations due to
population growth.
The electrical generation stations have run at idle speed for decades
then as consumer appliances, air condition, etc. came into use, they
had to kick it up a notch, use another one of those sleeping
generators that has been on vacation for 50 years.

Again, WHERE is the cost?????

I understand that Fuels are at an all time high, but most of our
electricity is not generated by Fuels and those that are are using
Coal. Remember coal, that product we were running out of so OIL took
it's place, then natural gas. Hey, we haven't run out of coal YET!

The main reason I brought up fuels is that I did some calculations a
few years back when there were LINES at the gas pumps due to the
artificial gas shortage created to get gas prices up higher.
I could run my own generator for a full year, including maintenance
costs and I would have come out CHEAPER than paying UE (Union
Electric, now AmerenUE) their exorbitant rates.

At that time it would cost roughly 12 thousand dollars to sink a well,
another 35 thousand dollars to build a filtration, florinationion and
chlorination facility to supply my house with the water I used, not to
mention the cost to run the pumps. At 13 bucks a month cost for city
water, it could never pay for itself in my lifetime.

Sewer disposal, the building of a lagoon, it's maintenance costs and
chemicals; or the installation of a septic tank system and it's
maintenance costs. At 15 bucks a month cost for sewer service or
$180.00 a year, it would take a lot of years to warrant having my own
wastewater system.

But electricity, when you can generate it yourself CHEAPER than the
monopoly is selling it to you for, THERE IS SOMETHING DRASTICALLY
WRONG!

If you were going to open a business to supply utilities to lets say
50,000 residential homes. Now lets add a twist to this. You WILL
have competition doing the same thing!
We already know OUR competition sells water for 13 bucks a month.
We already know OUR competition sells sewer service for 15 bucks a
month, why it's higher than purified drinking water I really don't
know!
We already know OUR competition sells electricity for exhorbitantly
high rates, rates that you could easily undercut by probably 75% and
still be making 1000% profit above overhead and expenses.

It's not hard to figure out which of those three businesses you would
start up is it! Once up and running and HIGHLY PROFITABLE, you could
take on another 50,000 homes without increasing your costs more than a
fraction of a percent.

From 50,000 homes:
If you chose water, your gross monthly income would be $650,000.00
If you chose sewer, your gross monthly income would be $750.000.00
If you chose electricity, and charged 75% less than your competition,
your gross monthly income would be $1,875,000.00 WOW.
If you charged only 20% less than your competition, your gross monthly
income would be $6,000,000.00, Imagine, more than $4,000,000.00 per
month in excess profits just by cutting your competitors price by 20%.

What does the average home use, 2,000 to 3,000 kWh per month?
What would it take to generate enough electricity for these homes?
One thing I'm sure of, it sure don't cost no $7,500,000.00 per month,
which is what YOUR electric company is currently charging each of it's
50,000 customers.

Ever been to a hydroelectric dam?
How many employees did you see their?
None, the gates were closed and locked, is your probable answer!
Maybe one rent a cop on duty to make sure nobody breaks in.

TTUL
Gary

I'd just like to point out that in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania (and
presumably elsewhere) electricity generating plants run on coal. There
are huge costs there since they must buy and store coal. They are
supposed to upgrade the plants for emission controls but they keep
arguing that they can't afford to do that since they won't get anything
in return.

Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr. wrote:
I understand that Fuels are at an all time high, but most of our
electricity is not generated by Fuels and those that are are using
Coal. Remember coal, that product we were running out of so OIL took
it's place, then natural gas. Hey, we haven't run out of coal YET!

--
Brenda
"Nothing...I got nothing for sale."

Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr. ) writes:
Do they Jim?

Most homes are supplied with Water, Sanitary Sewers (and on occasion
separate storm sewers), natural gas, telephone (usually more than one
line), many have cable TV too and lets not forget about the electric.

(snip)
WHERE is the cost that warrants the high price for electricity?????

(snip)
But electricity, when you can generate it yourself CHEAPER than the
monopoly is selling it to you for, THERE IS SOMETHING DRASTICALLY
WRONG!
(snip)
TTUL
Gary

I wont attempt to answer this in detail. I was not talking cost, but
reliability. It is much easier to build reliable telephone, water, sewer,
etc services. Electrical distribution systems tend to be unreliable, through
no fault of the electric companies. Also, I live in Ontario, Canada,
where electricity is very cheap. We need to *increase* the price in
Ontario, which at the moment is government subsidized.

--
Jim Cripwell.
The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of one's life, any
time that is spent in stitching.
Adapted from a sign on The Cobb, Lyme Regis, England.

Hi Lucille

As you know I just moved from my home town of St. Louis to Knoxville,
so it is a MAJOR change for me.

I am within the City Limits of Knoxville, population 173,890.
Knox County, which includes Knoxville, population 382,032.
Which if comparing to St. Louis means only 208,142 live in the County
itself outside of the city limits.

St. Louis IS NOT situated in St. Louis County, St. Louis City is it's
own county. So unlike Knoxville and Knox County 2000 Census, where
the population of Knox County includes the city of Knoxville because
it IS situated in Knox County, St. Louis County census figures DO NOT
include the County of St. Louis City in those numbers as they are a
separate county.

St. Louis City, population 348,189
St. Louis County, population 1,016,315
So to compare with Knox county the above numbers must be added
together or 1,364,504 people for St. Louis and St. Louis County.
The entire Metro Area consists of over 6 million people.

St. Louis County has something like 628 completely separate
governments and each one does their OWN thing. Plus there are several
unincorporated regions within St. Louis County as well.

I do not know of a single residence in the entirety of St. Louis City
that does not have easy access to natural gas service. Meaning a gas
line runs down their street and is available.

I also do not know of any parceled subdivision in St. Louis County
that does not have natural gas service. Some of the few remaining
farms may not have natural gas, but I'm sure it is along the main
routes throughout the entire county.

It is unfathomable to me, that a metropolitan city such as Knoxville,
within the borders of the city limits themselves, that there are many
longstanding subdivisions where natural gas is not available, and not
even anywhere close enough if you could afford to bring it in.

But with the cost of natural gas reaching extortion prices, it's sort
of a mute point now anyhow. Many that do have natural gas are
switching to electricity because it is slighly cheaper now in warmer
climates.

Speaking of technology, everytime I go out driving around I get lost
for the simple fact that there are very few street signs here.
They have big fancy ones up along the major roadways, but not even a
wooden post on side roads at T intersections so you know what road you
just came to. Very few RR crossing signals, no safety rails and very
few shoulders.

Compared to the predominantly straight roads in St. Louis County,
which are wide, shouldered and guard railed by even the most minute of
ditches and embankments, Knoxville has not progressed much beyond goat
tracks, the roads are very narrow, road edges undefined and often not
even as wide as your driving lane, no shoulders and very steep cliffs
touching the edges of the roads, no guardrails except where over 1000
people died from falling off of them, which was enough to start
affecting their tax base.

Nonetheless, I still like the place! It could use some improvement
though. I've only seen one police car one time in a year patrolling
our area, which probably explains why the average speed in a 30 mph
zone is over 50 mph.

What is really hard for me to get used to down here is that virtually
no one obeys even the simplest of safety and courtesy traffic laws.
Cars drive and park where they want to, often facing the wrong way and
2 or more feet from the edge of the already too narrow roads.
Boulevard stop signs might as well be painted green, nobody even slows
down for them here.
One would think, the larger the city, the more discourteous the
drivers, and down south here in the Bible Belt in a fairly small city,
more people would be courteous and obey the traffic laws.

Ever been honked at for NOT running a Red Light?
I lived in St. Louis for over 50 years, I've had people come around me
at red lights to run them, been rear ended by someone planning on
running a red light with me stopped at it.
But I have NEVER been honked at to run a red light!
I don't drive much, but in less than a year, I have been honked at at
least 20 times if not more, by people who would get angry and back up
then burn rubber around me as they went through a red light.

One lady who did this with three small children in her car pulled
right in front of a larger bread truck and two of her children were
killed. I waited around to MAKE SURE I would be an eyewitness on the
accident report of her purposely running that red light.
The cops don't care what happened, the bread truck hit her, and that's
all that matters to them, they would NOT take my account of the
accident.
SCARY isn't it!!!!!

TTUL
Gary

"Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr." wrote
in message ...

It is unfathomable to me, that a metropolitan city such as Knoxville,
within the borders of the city limits themselves, that there are many
longstanding subdivisions where natural gas is not available, and not
even anywhere close enough if you could afford to bring it in.

I have no idea why they didn't bring gas lines in--I know there are some
places where it is available, but they didn't and when I asked said they
wouldn't. Oh well !!

Speaking of technology, everytime I go out driving around I get lost
for the simple fact that there are very few street signs here.
They have big fancy ones up along the major roadways, but not even a
wooden post on side roads at T intersections so you know what road you
just came to. Very few RR crossing signals, no safety rails and very
few shoulders.

There are at least 1 or two people killed on the RR tracks here even with
the safety rails. Apparently people think they can go faster than a 70 car
train. Too often they find out that's not true.

Compared to the predominantly straight roads in St. Louis County,
which are wide, shouldered and guard railed by even the most minute of
ditches and embankments, Knoxville has not progressed much beyond goat
tracks, the roads are very narrow, road edges undefined and often not
even as wide as your driving lane, no shoulders and very steep cliffs
touching the edges of the roads, no guardrails except where over 1000
people died from falling off of them, which was enough to start
affecting their tax base.

Some of our roads don't have wide enough shoulders and except for the major
highways rarely have guard rails and there too we are always hearing about
someone who drove into a canal and drowned.

Nonetheless, I still like the place! It could use some improvement
though. I've only seen one police car one time in a year patrolling
our area, which probably explains why the average speed in a 30 mph
zone is over 50 mph.

We have plenty of police cars but they seem to only give tickets at certain
times of the month. Could I possibly think they are trying to meet a
quota??? Never !!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is really hard for me to get used to down here is that virtually
no one obeys even the simplest of safety and courtesy traffic laws.
Cars drive and park where they want to, often facing the wrong way and
2 or more feet from the edge of the already too narrow roads.
Boulevard stop signs might as well be painted green, nobody even slows
down for them here.
One would think, the larger the city, the more discourteous the
drivers, and down south here in the Bible Belt in a fairly small city,
more people would be courteous and obey the traffic laws.

I often state that the drivers in New York were more courteous than the ones
here. Maybe the heavy trafftic kept them honest. Or maybe they were just
more disciplined. I'm also convinced that the cars that are sold in Florida
have heaters that are mostly totally unnecessary but they seem to leave out
the directional signals. Or maybe people think that the law about using
directionals was written only for the day you take your driving test and
isn't needed after that. And since you can make a right turn on red, there
is no need to stop at the corner and look to see if a car is coming. You
can just barrel right through and let the other driver worry.

Ever been honked at for NOT running a Red Light?
I lived in St. Louis for over 50 years, I've had people come around me
at red lights to run them, been rear ended by someone planning on
running a red light with me stopped at it.
But I have NEVER been honked at to run a red light!
I don't drive much, but in less than a year, I have been honked at at
least 20 times if not more, by people who would get angry and back up
then burn rubber around me as they went through a red light.

Just a little patience would go a long way.

Scary isn't the right word for some of the things that happen. Just a bit
of education might help some.

Lucille

"Lucille" wrote in message
...
I often state that the drivers in New York were more courteous than the
ones
here. Maybe the heavy trafftic kept them honest. Or maybe they were just
more disciplined. I'm also convinced that the cars that are sold in
Florida
have heaters that are mostly totally unnecessary but they seem to leave
out
the directional signals. Or maybe people think that the law about using
directionals was written only for the day you take your driving test and
isn't needed after that. And since you can make a right turn on red,
there
is no need to stop at the corner and look to see if a car is coming. You
can just barrel right through and let the other driver worry.

Lucille


I did notice during my visit in San Diego recently that very, very few
people use their signal lights, rarely did I see them used. It was almost
as if there was a law against it or something or everyone had ESP. Terrible
tailgaters as well down there regardless of how light the traffic was. I
saw a bumper sticker years ago that read in smallish print " If you can
read this you are to close" I told DD that I would have a look around and
if I found one I would send it to her.
Ruby

Ruby wrote:
I did notice during my visit in San Diego recently that very, very few
people use their signal lights, rarely did I see them used. It was almost
as if there was a law against it or something or everyone had ESP. Terrible
tailgaters as well down there regardless of how light the traffic was. I
saw a bumper sticker years ago that read in smallish print " If you can
read this you are to close" I told DD that I would have a look around and
if I found one I would send it to her.

Driving in the U.S.: Courtesy and knowing the rules of the road have
deteriorated over the past 20 or so years.

I was walking with a baby stroller. At the crosswalk, a driver ed car
nearly hit me. The teacher hollered at me for stepping into the
crosswalk while a car was coming. Did I forget to mention the car had a
stop street at a major intersection? I was furious and nearly went to
see the superintendent of schools, but knew it would fall on deaf ears.

Yes, tailgating is the rule, no matter your speed. It is getting awful.
I blame driver's ed and parenting.

Dianne