Producing Confidence
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Producing Confidence
EP 10: Generator Safety During Hurricane Season
When inclement weather brings power outages, a generator can keep your household or business running—if it’s properly maintained and used safely. In this episode of Producing Confidence, Danos Operations Manager of Power Generation and Mechanical Bart Bergeron and Business Development Representative Bubba Himel share practical guidance on generator operation and upkeep.
They clear up common misconceptions about generator capacity, explain why standby units aren’t built for continuous long-term use, and discuss why managing your electrical load is key to keeping essential systems running without straining your equipment.
To learn more about Danos visit danos.com
Hello everyone. I'm Samantha McGee. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Producing Confidence. On today's episode, we've got two guests with me. We've got Bart Bajron, operations Manager for PowerGen and Mechanical. Bart has been with Danos for over 11 years and has 35 years of industry experience. And we also have Bubba Email. Bubba is a business development rep and he's been with Danos for nearly 25 years. He is a licensed electrical contractor with 43 years of industry experience. Thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1:So today we're going to talk about hurricane preparedness as related to generators, generator safety. Can you tell us why is hurricane preparedness such an important topic for our industry and our communities?
Speaker 3:Just essentially to get everything back running after a disaster. Being prepared just helps us keep people with air conditioning, with lights, stay comfortable, but also get the oil and gas field back into production.
Speaker 3:You know, minimize the downtime, you minimize the hikes in oil and gas prices. You know we have a team that's set up. We're ready to go. My generation, my power generation techs, are usually scheduled Once they know there's a named storm in the Gulf. We have some customers who want to put those guys on reserve and just knowing that the day after the storm passes and we're cleared to fly, we're in that first flight, getting back out there, helping them get, you know, good, clean power, keeping all the critical equipment from being damaged from great voltages, blowing holes in stators and just essentially just doing a process to minimize the recovery time and again get back up and running.
Speaker 1:Sure. So what exactly does hurricane preparedness look like for a customer? What do they do in advance of the storm.
Speaker 3:So in advance, on the customers on the platform, aside from what we do to support them, they're tying everything down. They're trying to keep marine debris down to a minimum. They're trying to make sure that their freezers are full of ice, duct tape, anything that's sold for a prolonged outage of plus two to three days. It won't come back to a complete mess of rotted food and just as more of. I guess it's almost second nature now in the Gulf. I mean, we've been living this. To me it feels second nature. We've been living this forever.
Speaker 3:But during the summer we know hurricanes are coming. You know how many, how bad. We know hopefully we are blessed this year that it's very minimal. But it's just a part of life being in the Gulf of America and getting prepared and, like I said, marine debris, having some filters, oil, everything to maintenance these units to get back up, not knowing having a good diesel storage supply because you will be coming back up with diesel more than likely nine times out of 10 on a diesel generator and just, I guess, keeping that best foot forward, knowing preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.
Speaker 2:I mean you know here in South Louisiana we're prone to hurricanes. I mean it is what it is. Being prepared is very important because you never know the severity of a storm and when it hits and how long you're going to be out of power. You know you want to keep your family comfortable but you're going to be out of power. You know you want to keep your family comfortable but you also want to protect. You know what you own and what you have. You know what's in your freezer, what's in your refrigerators and just make sure everything is, you know, taken care of. So you know having a portable generator or a home standby generator, having the fuel, the maintenance items and stuff like that is very important for us here in South Louisiana.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and so we're going to go back to our home preparedness and how to take care of our homes in just a second. But, bart, specifically for what your team does with our customers, what happens after a storm? Customer calls you, what do they do?
Speaker 3:So our guys are prepped up, we send them out with meagers, dry out kits, dryer bands, which are big heater bands, big space heaters, and we go out on site as pretty much first come, first serve.
Speaker 3:But we'll have some customers who want to reserve up to five guys right out the gate and those guys get first dibs. We get out on site and it's pretty much you're dead in the water, there's no power. You hear the fog horns going off Hopefully the batteries haven't been drained to that point and you just kind of get your. You know the guys get safetied up and they get down there and they start to testing the units to see how bad they are if they're wet. And once we get good, clean stators and we can dry them out, you know there's ways to do these without power other than batteries, which is our dry out kits. Once we get an established functional unit, then we can put the heater bands on which require AC power, which only comes from a functional unit, and then just slowly progress and kind of work with the customer to what's priority to get back on. If we get one generator up, they may want us to jump to another platform, get another generator up and just kind of knock out the fields per the client's priority.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So just kind of see how it goes and take each day case by case.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sometimes we'll see some units are taking way longer to dry out than others. So what we try to do is, like I said, get the ones we know we can, and while some are drying out, we're testing the others, and if we can move from one to the other, we do so.
Speaker 1:So now let's flip to the home side of it. I know obviously our customers and their operations are a huge priority, because that keeps things running and keeps our lights on. But back home, when we're facing the storms and doing that at home, what are the first steps that we should take when preparing for hurricane season?
Speaker 2:So for me I mean making sure your generators are properly cared for and maintenanced. You know, gas sitting in a generator is going to come up the carburetor. Sometimes, if a generator sits too long, it's going to lose residual magnetism, which will cause it not to produce voltage, even though it's running and you're not getting any electricity. So keeping them running, keeping them maintained I usually run them once a month. Some people run them every three months. But it's very good to keep your generators running, maintained. Make sure you turn off the fuel. Don't let the fuel sit in the carburetor and let the carburetor get gummed up, because what happens is when a storm does come, people take it out after the storm and then they realize that hey, you know my generator's not running. Then they need to call somebody. If you do the proper maintenance before and you prepare yourself, then you'll be ready for what. You know what comes.
Speaker 1:Once a month. So that means we should always be in preparation mode with those generators, then right.
Speaker 2:I do. I mean, you know, some people are a little— and you're the guy who can fix it.
Speaker 1:So if you're doing that, then the rest of us need to be Right.
Speaker 3:And my biggest thing is don't wait until there's a named storm in the Gulf to try to get everything going, or even try to buy a generator. They will get gouged. Home Depot, lowe's, costco, they all bring in all these generators at way more than you could buy them in the off-season. Just got to be prepared. Little AC units, small air-conditioned and windy units. I have two in my closet still in the box, just never needed them, but I always had them just in case.
Speaker 1:You never know. Yeah, we don't want to be in August or September sitting in the heat, exactly. So what's one important but often overlooked item people should have ready before a storm hits?
Speaker 3:I would say the maintenance items for these units spare oil, spare filters, water. I mean just for yourself in general, for the human need, not just for the generators. But the biggest thing is these units are not designed to run 24-7. Generators, but the biggest thing is these units are not designed to run 24-7. They're designed to run smaller hand crank wheeled gasoline units and even your air-cooled home units. They're not a 24-7, even though some of them are advertised that way. They're 18 hours a day at best.
Speaker 3:And then you're looking at having to maintenance these items once every 100 hours, which is only five days plus or minus. So you want to have those maintenance items because, again, if we have a prolonged outage, like we did for Ida, it's going to be hard to come by. And I remember being in Lafayette and coming down to buy to assist. I went into recovery mode on our side of the business and I had my two supervisors under me handling operations in the day-to-days of the business. I was picking up oil and filters and trying to come down to buy and help everybody get back up and recovered, just because of the lack of supply that we had down here.
Speaker 1:So you say these generators aren't made to run 24-7. So what does that look like for a home and for the small units? How should people run those? How should they, you know, plan how they're going to run their units?
Speaker 2:So for me, your small units, every four to six hours shut it down, you know. Check the oil, make sure it's, you know, refuel it, but let it cool off before you refuel it. On the home generators, like Bart said, 18 hours max, but some of these people run them 24-7. And then seven days later they're wondering why the generator shut down and why it's not working properly. They've overused it. So just make sure that you know you got the manual from the manufacturer and it'll tell you what that generator is designed to do.
Speaker 1:So that'll tell you how long you should shut it down for as well.
Speaker 3:Right, yes, ma'am. Yeah, you always want to go by manufacturer's recommended specs. But as far as you know, you do have some more of these commercial light industrial units which are liquid cooled, radiator cooled, other than air cooled. Air cooled is essentially like a lawnmower engine, but you have your liquid cooled. Those are more prone to 24-7, but you are pulling a lot of. If you're natural gas and diesel, people will be shocked if they ran one of those units for five days what their gas bill will be. And Bubba had mentioned that we had one of our employees or coworkers I should say they had a whole home generator installed, liquid cooled. But there's such a pull on the infrastructure for natural gas that they cannot support all the added usage. We had what? 400 generators, bubba you said, plus in the city of Houma, and the pull on the natural gas lines is ridiculous. They were dropping out left and right.
Speaker 1:I remember that after I had I mean, in my parents' neighborhood almost every home has a home generator and then they weren't working because there was not enough natural gas.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:So what's something that we can do to overcome that obstacle?
Speaker 3:Buy a diesel yeah buy a diesel.
Speaker 2:You know, because, like Bart said, I mean the people at the front of the neighborhood where that line was coming in. They would get, you know, the gas supply by the time it got to the end of the neighborhood, which is the end of the gas line. There was not enough supply to power that generator to keep it running.
Speaker 1:So when people are looking for home generators, what should they look for? How do they decide what kind to get for their home?
Speaker 3:So you really give your specs and the size of your house, the square footage, the tonnage of your air conditioners is the biggest thing if you're electric or natural gas on heating stoves. So you get with the manufacturer of who you're looking at buying and they'll actually do the calculation. We go, put our meters on We've done it for the family here. We'll take a load survey and then we'll see what the max draw is and kind of based off of that load analysis, what size generator you need and then we kind of weigh the pluses and the minuses of natural gas versus diesel, depending on where you're at.
Speaker 3:You know, I think down to buying Galliano. It's not that big of a deal. But when you get to Houma and just the congestion and all the generators it becomes more of a burden on an already weakened infrastructure.
Speaker 1:And so for those obviously a lot of people listening to this are using generators. What's the number one safety mistake that people make?
Speaker 2:The number one safety mistake that I find people make is ventilation the carbon monoxide poisoning. It can kill you in five minutes and you don't even know it's happening. I think that's the biggest mistake that people make is they don't properly ventilate their generator and they don't properly have enough airflow to keep it cool and to keep the exhaust going in the direction that it needs to go into. I've seen people where they didn't have enough ventilation and it got sucked up into their soffit and then went into their house and then their carbon monoxide detectors on the inside of the house went off. Thank God they had them, because if they hadn't had them they would probably not be here to talk about it.
Speaker 1:How do you know if there's enough ventilation? What do we need to look for?
Speaker 2:You just got to make sure that the generator. When you install a generator, the manufacturer will tell you how far it needs to be away from a structure and I think most parishes and states have rules of how to install a generator and it makes sure that you have enough ventilation. So if it's inside of a fence, that's not a ventilated fence. It might be, you know, a wooden fence that doesn't have airflow. If it's next to a corner, it's got nowhere to go, so it's going to go up and it's going to get sucked in. Because of what's going on in your house with your air conditioning and all of that, you know it eventually gets sucked into there.
Speaker 3:I know a lot of the generics now have them pointing down just to kind of hopefully spread it out versus just straight up. Having, like Bubba said, having it pointed straight up to the eaves is just a direct shot into your attic, and then I mean it's just a matter of time before it gets, it finds its way into the home. And I mean it's just a matter of time before it finds its way into the home. Another one we find, though, with people trying to, I guess, get brave and we call them suicide cords, is where you have a double male cord and you plug into your generator and then you try to plug back into the house instead of just feeding multiple extension cords into your generator and plugging in your essentials, your refrigerators, your freezers, a window unit, and they have splitters for those.
Speaker 3:But when people try to backfeed into their home, not only are you putting the home electrical at risk, you're putting the guys on the poles at risk if you don't knock off your main breaker. So if you don't have a double throw, which is an on-off-on, you're either on shore power off or on your generator power, which isolates your utility power from your home, and it's just. You see a lot of back feeds and people don't really realize that it'll actually go back up past and back to the pole and you got guys who are trying to restore power and you can put their lives in danger as well. And to me that's one of the most besides the ventilation, because you hear more tragic deaths about the ventilation than anything. But you also hear about people backfeeding and not doing it properly, thinking they know and understand electricity and how it works but not realizing that they're actually going beyond their own home back to the source.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you know, even though you put, say they plug, they backfeed 110 into one of their wall sockets, even though you put 110 into that wall socket, by the time it gets to alignment it could be 13,000 volts. You know the transformers can work backwards as they work forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they step up and down. So they're coming from the poles stepping down to your home to 240, 120. And, like Bubba said, by the time you shoot it back, it's there to bite them.
Speaker 1:We should add the disclaimer that if you're not qualified to work on generators, don't do it. Do not, please don't.
Speaker 2:That's correct. If you're not sure what you're doing, please do not. And I've seen too where people have taken a plug and taken the plug and twisted one of the legs on one of the plugs to make it work, where they might have had a 15-amp receptacle and had a 220 plug, and they'll take that plug and twist it to make it work and it's not doing anybody any good because you're going to hurt somebody.
Speaker 1:So we talked about the biggest safety hazards. What about any misconceptions that people have with generators?
Speaker 2:I think one big misconception is the generator can run everything. If they don't know the size of their generator and the size of the load that they need for their house, they can overload that generator. They can overload extension cords. You know people will buy a cheap extension cord, which is probably a 16-gauge cord, where they probably need a 12 or a number 10, you know AWG cord. Just make sure that when you're buying the extension cords don't buy 100 foot if you only need 25 foot and make sure that the size is proper, because-.
Speaker 1:What difference does that make?
Speaker 3:So Volt drop at the end of the run and you I'm sorry Bob, no go ahead. So you have a volt drop. I was going to actually just add on to that right before you asked that question, because I've had it. If you have a, like, say, an outlet at your house and you put a small receptacle um a small extension cord like 100 feet of 16 and you try to plug air compressor into it, air compressor will not run. You'll have power in there, but you have such a large, large voltage drop from the source to the to the end. Because that's why you size copper higher. When you have longer runs you go up in copper size wires like 16, 14, 12, 10. The smaller the number, the bigger the cable. It's just opposite of what you would think. And when you're using those small cables you get a voltage drop and then you end up burning up electronics TVs for information critical things. They just won't even run compressors on your air conditioners or on your refrigerated freezers. But you'll be surprised what you actually can run Like a 6,500-watt unit. We properly installed. We've ran three freezers, two refrigerators, a window unit, a 6,000 BTU window unit, every ceiling fan.
Speaker 3:In my brother's home we did this for, oh what hurricane hit home prior to Ida. Gustav, was it Gustav? Yes, it was Gustav, and we did it. I went over there and isolated his home and ran it through a 30-amp plug and to keep our grandmother comfortable, we were able to keep her right in front of a window unit, oscillating fans, ceiling fans, tvs and that was all done with a 6500 gas unit that we had wheeled out into the driveway to allow it to stay cool and run.
Speaker 3:You don't want to, like Bubba said. You know, besides just ventilation, it's got to have some intake, it's got to have fresh air coming into it. It was amazing what you actually can run. But you know, while we're doing that, we're always checking our amperages and making sure we weren't overloading everything. So it's pretty resilient if you can keep the loads balanced and monitored. And do not try to put a five-ton home whole home air conditioner on a. It's not going to, it's not going to start, it's going to set a break on that little generator that's going to shut down and probably damage some electronics on your air conditioning unit itself.
Speaker 1:So do you guys have any examples of where preparedness or lack of preparedness really had a big impact on someone or your workplace?
Speaker 2:I've seen where, like family members, don't do the preparedness and then, once the storm is over, they can't get their generator to run. So you know they're calling me, of course, and I'm running all over town, you know, trying to find parts, trying to figure out what's wrong with the generator. Most of the time it's fuel. It's fuel gummed up in the carburetor. Sometimes it loses residual magnetism which is caused from either sitting up too long or the generator, you know, when it's running it shuts down under a load, running out of fuel or whatever. But lack of preparedness on people that don't know seems to put people like me and Bart and other electricians I don't want to say in harm's way, but puts us in a situation where, because of the people that we are, we feel obligated to go and run all over town while our wives and family's sitting at home we're trying to take care of other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got your own family to take care of, and also after hurricanes've got your own family to take care of, and also after hurricanes it's dangerous to be out on the road as you all know, it's amazing how much my phone rings during a hurricane Sure. Everyone's your best friend, huh. Oh hey, buddy, how you doing.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it's a hurricane, I see.
Speaker 2:So what's one quick win for Hurricane Prep that our listeners can do this week? I would say take your generator out, start it, load it and what I mean by load it is plug things into it. Make sure it's putting out voltage, let it run for 15, 20 minutes. Then take the load off, turn the fuel off, let it run out of fuel. Put some stabilizer in your fuel tank Seafoam very good. Yeah, make sure you put some stabilizer in your fuel tank Seafoam very good. Make sure you put some stabilizer in your fuel tank. And then next month, if a hurricane doesn't come, that's great, but next month do it again.
Speaker 1:Bart anything.
Speaker 3:Like Bubba said, be prepared. Have those spare supplies on hand. Know how to operate your equipment. If you don't know, call before there's a hurricane, you know. Don't be afraid to make that phone call, I mean we Call bark before the hurricane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It. Just it helps me stagger all the phone calls. No but it and we don't mind. I've never not tried to help someone on the phone or, and if we couldn't get to that point, drive out there and take care of it. Like I said, if it's customer and co-employees or fellow co-workers, friends, anybody, I mean I've helped the competition. You know, when our guys get offshore, it's not just our guys and the customers. A lot of our really good customers are comfortable with us guiding our people, but also, like some of our competitors, are like man, we didn't have enough guys, he's had to get this guy. Can you please help him? Of course, you know we never turn anybody away and that's the biggest thing you know. And, just being a part of Danos, the servant leadership that comes from the top down, that's what we try to implement with our coworkers, with our employees, with our techs with our coworkers, with our employees, with our techs, with our friends, customers, everybody.
Speaker 1:I love that. So this may similar question, maybe the same answer, but what's one thing you hope every listener remembers after our conversation?
Speaker 2:Preparedness and keeping your maintenance supplies, making sure you have the proper maintenance supplies. So making sure you know you run that generator, making sure you know it works, making sure you have the proper extension cords, making sure your extension cords are intact, making sure you have the proper extension cords, making sure your extension cords are intact, that there's not a ground cut, there's not a nick in the wire, just being prepared for when something happens. I guess the Danos hotline 985-219-3313.
Speaker 3:Bart Badger on call please. I love that plug.
Speaker 1:Are there any resources available to employees or listeners to find out more about how to prep their generator or get ready for storm season? I?
Speaker 3:think usually all your user manuals, your technical information sheets on if you have the equipment. I mean chat GPT. I just learned about chat chat GPT. I know we've been using it for a while but that is awesome. I did test it on a generator so it did. It didn't get it 100% correct on the theory of a generator, but preparedness is is pretty preparedness is okay.
Speaker 1:All right, we'll make sure. I know we can't trust everything it says yeah, there's.
Speaker 2:There's hundreds of documents out there for hurricane preparedness and hurricane safety and generator safety. Esfi, which is Electrical Safety Foundation International, has a good one. Sleca has something out there, energy has something out there for people in other parts of the state. Slimco, demco I'm sure all of those have something out there. But yeah, there's stuff all over the Internet, but always, if you're not sure, call a qualified electrician and don't ever try it yourself. If you're not sure, call a qualified electrician and don't ever try it yourself. If you're not sure, if you have any part of being unsure of yourself, do not and make sure, because you know eventually you're protecting yourself, your family and others if you make sure you get a qualified electrician out there.
Speaker 1:That's great Great resources, great advice. Anything else that we didn't cover that y'all think was worth mentioning.
Speaker 3:The biggest thing is don't try to get on the road during a hurricane if you haven't been prepared. Just at that point you just kind of got to grin and bear it and wait till the sun comes back up and kind of just dust it all off and find out what's going on. After the fact Evaluate your situation. But definitely if, say, a generator goes down in the rain and the storm's passing through, probably not the best time to be running that unit, you want to have it for after the fact You'll probably have power throughout a good portion of the storm. But trying to run those units in sideways rain, wind-blown, heavy, heavy sheets of rain they will fail. They're water resistant to a degree on the design. They're not waterproof.
Speaker 1:They're not made to run during the middle of the storm.
Speaker 3:No, ma'am.
Speaker 1:No ma'am.
Speaker 2:And another thing you know carbon monoxide detectors. That's very important. I know we always talk about fire and smoke in your house, but your carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide detectors are very important. Everyone should have these in their homes. I have five in my home. You're probably only required to have maybe two at the most.
Speaker 3:I think I only have one right at the garage door. Yeah, I think I have one too.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go add that to my Amazon cart after this conversation.
Speaker 3:Be careful with those, because Lysol spray will set them off and fault them, just FYI.
Speaker 1:Noted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I had an issue one time where I had ran my generator outside of my garage. I turned it off. 30 minutes later I brought it back into my garage, went inside, took a shower. I happened to be home alone at the time. I was in the shower and I could hear somebody beating on my door. It was the fire department. The residual carbon monoxide that was still in the exhaust system 30 minutes later my carbon monoxide detectors was able to pick that up. So make sure you know you keep it outside long enough, let it cool off, if you got to put a fan on it or whatever. But yeah, that did happen to me one time. So just make sure. But I guess my point is make sure you have carbon monoxide detectors to protect you.
Speaker 2:So, important, yes, very important.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I know this has been very insightful for me. I know our listeners will also find it insightful. Bart, what's that hotline number again?
Speaker 3:985-219-3313.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and that is for our customers.
Speaker 3:For our customers, employees, techs anybody who needs help. Please ask for Bart Patrick.
Speaker 2:Or Bubba, or Bubba, sorry Bubba.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks again, Really appreciate it. I'm going to go home, get some more carbon monoxide detectors and pull out my generator and run that before we really have to face it during a storm. Appreciate it, guys.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you.
