RW>  MH> There was a guy here in MD that was doing that for years and
RW>  MH> eventually got busted.  The only difference was he used a large
RW>  MH> enclosed work style truck that had large tanks inside of the back.
RW> 
RW> Yeah, that will get somebody's attention right away. They won't miss a
RW> few
RW> gallons at a time, but they'll certainly miss huge quantities at a time.
RW> 
RW> I forget the amount of worth a theft has to be to meet felony charges of
RW> grand theft, but he probably met that within days, if not hours.
RW> 
RW>  MH> He was doing the same thing.  No one questioned him - they thought
RW> he
RW>  MH> was working on the tanks and would go in, get coffee, etc.  I give
RW>  MH> that an A for creativity.
RW> 
RW> He sure had guts to do that during business hours.

According to the article, the guy was in his 60s and had been doing this
for years.  He said no one ever questioned what he was doing.  It wasn't
until the same station was getting hit more than once a month - that he got
caught.  

He was using different stations all the time, but apparently was hitting
one of them too often and they were coming up too short.  He had several 50
gallon drums in the truck.  

RW> Ummmm, I wouldn't count on it. The engine that drives the generator would
RW> soon overheat, unless it's water cooled. You might be able to get away
RW> with using a fan to keep the air moving, but that wouldn't guarantee
RW> anything.

Since it was running during the hurricane, the wind flow shouldn't have
been a problem at that point in time.  :)  It also had liquid cooling based
on the rain going sideways and some of it getting under my deck.

RW> What was the outside temp?

It was in the mid 40s outside - very cool for a hurricane.  Add 40-80mph
winds and it was down right cold.

RW> LOL! There's 1100 watts right there. My 1100w microwave and the 1500w
RW> quartz heater on the same circuit blow the 15 amp breaker when they run
RW> together - if I forget to turn off the heater before using the microwave.

Our microwave is on it's own 20amp breaker.  Otherwise, it would trip the
15amp circuit where the toaster over plugs into.  

My old house had all the bathroom outlets run off the same 15amp breaker -
which drove me nuts (especially with several girls living in the house).  

Our current house doesn't suffer from that problem and they are all on
different breakers.

RW> That wouldn't cut it here. Our furnace/AC is electric.

Yes, there is no way it would work on a heat-pump or something like that. 
I didn't get a chance to test it running our A/C, but would imagine it
would have worked - provided we didn't have the microwave, toaster oven,
etc turned on.  

In that case, I would probably turn off all breakers in the house except
for the furnace and A/C (if it was summer) and wanted A/C.  Then after it
cooled down, I could flip everything back on and disable the A/C.  

Heating isn't a problem since we have natural gas, so the generator just
runs the blowers.  

- Mark

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