The high efficiency furnaces are making chimneys obsolete. In order to vent the hot water heater after installing a high efficiency furnace,, the chimney has to be "lined". Basically a flex duct inside the chimney. The water heater cannot be in the chimney alone. Apparently, the water vapor can freeze.
So, you may be able to vent a generator through a liner.
To be honest once you drop below the 2 KW range and only need to keep a few lower powered criticle items and devices going a big inverter powered off one or two deep cycle batteries that can be recharged off any of your vehicles is probably going to be the simpler set up.
You would be surprized at how many small lower powered devices can run off of modified sine wave power sources with no real trouble.
Sure, I can believe that. I have an uncle living in Califon NJ. They live way up this sort of gravel road in a heavily wooded area. A major storm and the single power line coming in is felled by countless fallen trees. While the woods can be beautiful they can make for a nightmare in a severe storm. We had people in this area go a week without power and most of those areas were covered with fallen trees that snapped poles. Takes a long time to cut up all the trees, plant new poles and string new lines as well as transformers.
Ron:
Oh sorry to hear about that. I guess out in the sticks it takes longer to clear all that up and rebuild as you say. I'd love to live out there but yes as soon as a storm hits you better be ready with the appropriate equipment. If i lived out there i would definitely invest more time and money into surviving the storm aftermath or else have somewhere else to go where it was not likely to happen there too.
KeepIt:
That's interesting. That's quite a bit of urine to accumulate though. Not sure if that would do me any good either, but it's still interesting. I have to applaud them for doing such a project and i think they have the right idea about producing things that people can use that doesnt just come from somebody that wants to get rich.
Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.
The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.
The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.
The first step requires more energy than you will get out by burning the hydrogen or using it in a fuel cell. There are additional problems with the other steps as well.
I just saw another program on TV last night where some reporter got some guy back to see what his home looked like a week after the storm. He wasnt allowed into the area because they said there was danger of gas explosions. But the reporter some how got him in, and when he saw his 'house' he found that it wasnt there anymore, but in pieces, literally scattered across the whole area. All the houses in that area where completely destroyed. That's down on the Jersey shore.
They are now saying that was one of the biggest storms to ever hit NJ, and that the cost went up to 50 billion, up from the original 25 billion estimate. That's now up to one half of Katrina.
Many of the people from these areas were evacuated with plenty of time which means many lives were saved. They attribute this to better computer models of weather systems in giving much advanced warning of what is coming. It didnt save their houses of course but it did save many of their lives, however changed those lives are now.
It's very sad what nature can do sometimes. And to think that this is just a fraction of what can really happen in the future. If a super volcano erupted tomorrow it could take out 90 percent of all life on earth within a couple months. But there are other things too i dont want to get into.