1. When the Village of Royal Palm Beach delares an "emergency"
and...(drum roll)
2. Operation is limited to between the hours of 10AM and 5PM!!!!!!!
This has got to be the most stupid thing I have seen in many, many years.
Generators are now legal in Royal Palm Beach,FL, BUT......
Moderator: S2k Moderators
Generators are now legal in Royal Palm Beach,FL, BUT......
They can only be operated :
1. When the Village of Royal Palm Beach delares an "emergency"
and...(drum roll)
2. Operation is limited to between the hours of 10AM and 5PM!!!!!!!
This has got to be the most stupid thing I have seen in many, many years.
1. When the Village of Royal Palm Beach delares an "emergency"
and...(drum roll)
2. Operation is limited to between the hours of 10AM and 5PM!!!!!!!
This has got to be the most stupid thing I have seen in many, many years.
0 likes
-
HurriCat
And so-called "Americans" choose to live with the boot on their necks like this? SHAME on them! 
I can't believe that any such rules can be in effect - especially if the state has declared an emergency. The "piddle-widdle" games with trash cans, parked cars and paint colors is okay for the little dictators and the sheep who want to live like clones. If there is an emergency, then it's time to stop the playground stuff and be adults.
I can't believe that any such rules can be in effect - especially if the state has declared an emergency. The "piddle-widdle" games with trash cans, parked cars and paint colors is okay for the little dictators and the sheep who want to live like clones. If there is an emergency, then it's time to stop the playground stuff and be adults.
0 likes
"piddle-widdle" games with trash cans, parked cars and paint colors is okay for the little dictators and the sheep who want to live like clones
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I for one, am glad that people in out community are supposed to abide by the rules of our covenant and park their cars in their driveways, and put away their garbage cans and paint their homes respectable colors. They also have to keep their lawns mowed and cant park their boats and motorhomes in their yards. We paid the money to live in a nice neighborhood; we have the right to expect the rules will be followed. That makes me neither a dictator or a sheep.
I'm not sure about the details of the rule, but if EVERYONE had a generator and ran it all night long, it sure would be NOISY!
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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/storm/content/opinion/epaper/2005/06/26/a2e_generators_edit_0626.html
Here's an article about the situation, elaborating a bit on the details:
Here's an article about the situation, elaborating a bit on the details:
Crank up common sense
Palm Beach Post Editorial
Sunday, June 26, 2005
South Florida's municipal governments should understand that natural disasters force changes in people's lives that have to be reflected in the way laws are written. Ordinances that apply during good times and good weather often are not appropriate for the aftermath of a hurricane.
It is little more than common sense to conclude that restrictions on the use of generators must be eased to allow their use during legitimate emergencies. How to be appropriately flexible is a problem for governments. Royal Palm Beach limits noise levels of machinery to 60 decibels, which most generators exceed. The village, as The Post reported, is denying permit requests from residents who want to install them. Code enforcement officials argue that generators large enough to power homes are wired directly into the electrical system and come online whenever there's a power glitch or blackout — not just during hurricanes. Neighbors could be subjected to 60-decibel annoyance during brief interruptions of service that could become too frequent.
At the other end of the noise restriction spectrum is West Palm Beach, which avoids enforcing specific decibel levels and instead requires only that machines not be "unreasonably loud." The city treats hurricanes as the emergencies they are and thus takes a lenient approach toward even the generators that may be unreasonably loud.
On the Treasure Coast, Stuart has no noise ordinance; Port St. Lucie sets decibel limits — which the police department enforces — but suspends them for generators during hurricanes. Wellington comes down somewhere in the middle. The city has the same 60-decibel limit as Royal Palm Beach but waives enforcement during natural disasters.
"We try our best to come in with common sense when enforcing the regulation," says Doug Wise, Wellington's building official. Common sense should be the basis for the way municipalities regulate anything. Generators can be noisy and disruptive, yet noise is hardly the primary consideration in the wake of a hurricane. Generators enable people to endure hardships and can contribute to the safety of neighborhoods in distress.
Royal Palm Beach intends to discuss its restrictions next month. What all Floridians are looking for is a reasonable approach that allows people to do what's necessary to deal with extraordinary events.
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There are reasons, of course, for zoning laws and there are reasons for homeowner's associations to have rules of various sorts, but they often override common sense and many are strangely restrictive.
In an area where the ecology is threatened, where the electric rates are among the highest in the country and where we are continually experiencencing brown-outs and blackouts (at least once a week for one reason or another) and the electric company begs us not to use electrical appliances, old fashioned clotheslines are prohibited!!! So either you put your clothes in the dryer or drape them around inside your house, I guess. When we moved here, I put up a clothesline. Now, we are on a fairly heavily wooded lot and the land slopes (typical of our neighborhood)--no one can actually see someone else's backyard around here. In fact, it is often difficult to actually see neighboring houses unless you drive up their driveways, etc. So most people could spread their laundry all over their lot and no one would be the wiser. Note that we are near the ocean, the bay--and to top it off, our development has a private lake (owned by the homeowners association). So wet beachtowels are a huge amount of everyone's daily laudry...
But clotheslines are outlawed!!! Figure that one out! Curiously, most people obey the law in much the same way they obey the "do not remove this tag" notice on their pillows, mattresses, etc.
Well I'm waiting for the clothesline police. The same way I'm waiting for the mattress tag police--because yes I did cut all those tags off my pillows, sofa, mattress, etc etc. etc.
Sometimes the people who write the laws end up with unintentional laws. In one community I lived in, the zoning board made a rule the entire town was happy with to the effect that all pets and other animals had to have access to water and shelter from rain, etc. that did not depend upon human intervention. If you had your dog outside, there had to be some type of dog water fountain and a dog house type shelter. Or the dog/cat, etc. had to have a "doggie door" to get into the house. If you had some other type of animal, it too, had to have water and shelter. So if you had a horse in your yard, you had to have some type of roofed structure it could go under to escape from rain, etc. and it had to have water to drink... Well, in writing these laws, somehow the law said that fish (ornamental fishponds) had to have shelter from the rain! So everyone's little fishpond suddenly had some type of Japanese Pagoda or other "little house" in it... Which was of course foolish because fish don't care if it is raining or not. (The following year they amended the law to exempt fish from the shelter from the rain requirement).
I suspect that the original intent of the generator law was that it could be used only from weekdays from 9 to 5 (or whatever the hours were) WHEN THERE WAS NO POWER OUTAGE because they could not restrict the use to "emergency situations only." The bottom line is that if you actually own a generator, especially a portable one, you need to run it for at least 15 minutes once a month so it will run when you need it to. And you are likely to use it for lots of other stuff as well because it is a handy thing to have! Restricting usage hours when there is no power outage would make sense because there is always some clown who gets up at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning and decides that it is the ideal time to get out the mower, the chain saw, the generator or some other noisy lawn or garden maintenance equipment and wake up the entire neighborhood. I'll bet that community is smart enough to have passed laws against those other types of equipment being used early in the morning on weekends, etc.
It sounds as if they left a clause out of the law.
As for the generator noise, yes, they can be noisy. But there is a lot you can do to mitigate the noise levels--even on a portable generator. It sort of like a car--yes, inherently they make noise--but they make a lot more noise than they have to if you drive them around with no muffler...
You can do an awful lot with your "lean to" or other generator shelter to muffle the noise--and you can still have adequate ventilation, etc. and put up some noise baffles around it so that you can stand to listen to it yourself.
I think you're talking about an upscale community--if so, then lots of people have "whole house" emergency generators and those have--or can have--lots of noise baffles, etc. So perhaps the community is just trying to insist that if people have the generators, that the do the noise mitigation as well--sort of like requiring people who have swimming pools to put fences around them so that children, elderly alzheimer's patients, etc. won't wander on to their property, fall in their pools accidentally and drown.
The bottom line is that you cannot legislate "good taste" (and people will find really awful--but legal ways around attempts to do so) and you cannot (and should not, in the end) pass laws that go against common sense and common good. What if they tried to enforce the law against running the generators at night in a household where someone was on a life-support machine??? What if a child in the house had asthma or something and turning off the generator at night made the neighborhood peaceful, but the child died because the A/C was off in his/her bedroom and the child had an attack? This law is not at all comparable to the law that says you can't keep 5 junky cars, and 3 sailboats in your front yard year in and year out.
By the way, if a car or truck is registered, has passed inspection and is insured, it is not a "junk"--no matter how much of an "eyesore" it is. And some very expensive (and new) cars are eyesores... Last weekend I saw about $75,00+ worth of rolling eyesore in NH. It was pretty amazing! For one thing, a lot of it was painted "gold" (everything that would normally be chrome--and a lot that normally would not be) and the rest was "burgundy"--but some sort of electric burgundy--and we're talking some very expensive customized Lexus... There had to be a story behind that car... (The town it was in is a very upscale town--but the epitome of quiet, unostentatious money... That car looked like a NYC drug-dealer's dream. Very out of place....)
My considered opinion is that generally it is best not to worry too much about your neighbors' taste, etc. and to not incite them with laws and covenants, etc. We have some neighbors who have removed just about every piece of greenery from their lot (they are the exception to the "heavily wooded lot" tendency around here) and covered their property, lotline to lotline with gravel! It is the ugliest thing imaginable, it has cost them huge dollars, and no one will ever buy their property without insisting that the stuff they spent thousands to dollars trucking in is dug up and trucked out again. But it is "legal" because it never occurred to the people who wrote the ordinaces that someone would be idiotic enough to do that! It's better to encourage what you DO want than it is to make rules and laws against what you don't want.... IMHO...
I do hope that they sort out the generator rules.
It saddens me to see this tendency toward wanting so many rules and laws about how other people should behave and so much effort put into homogeneity... I personally think that the rock people are idiots and that their house is ugly, but I do believe that they have the right to do that--and in the end, the property values they affect are their own property values. It's "neat" and "clean" enough--it's just ugly. But they have the right to have a terminally ugly house if they want to. I personally think the car I saw in NH is a very expensive eyesore, but hey, if someone wants to drive around in something that makes them look like a drug dealer, and makes people shake their heads at the amazingly bad taste, then that is their "right." Similarly, we have people who have some pretty amazing Christmas decorations. Hey, if they want to pay $1,000 a month to the electric company for the month of December, and they have the money to do that, I guess they can provide entertainment and laughter for the rest of us.
Variety is perhaps what America is all about--and you often see the differences when you drive around. In Bridgeport, CT there is a nicely kept side-by-side duplex house. In one front yard is the entire canon of concrete saints, and the Virgin Mary sheltered by a grotto made from a former bathtub. And in the other front yard is a large, fat Buddha, also concrete, smiling at the neighbor's display.
America--what a country!
In an area where the ecology is threatened, where the electric rates are among the highest in the country and where we are continually experiencencing brown-outs and blackouts (at least once a week for one reason or another) and the electric company begs us not to use electrical appliances, old fashioned clotheslines are prohibited!!! So either you put your clothes in the dryer or drape them around inside your house, I guess. When we moved here, I put up a clothesline. Now, we are on a fairly heavily wooded lot and the land slopes (typical of our neighborhood)--no one can actually see someone else's backyard around here. In fact, it is often difficult to actually see neighboring houses unless you drive up their driveways, etc. So most people could spread their laundry all over their lot and no one would be the wiser. Note that we are near the ocean, the bay--and to top it off, our development has a private lake (owned by the homeowners association). So wet beachtowels are a huge amount of everyone's daily laudry...
But clotheslines are outlawed!!! Figure that one out! Curiously, most people obey the law in much the same way they obey the "do not remove this tag" notice on their pillows, mattresses, etc.
Well I'm waiting for the clothesline police. The same way I'm waiting for the mattress tag police--because yes I did cut all those tags off my pillows, sofa, mattress, etc etc. etc.
Sometimes the people who write the laws end up with unintentional laws. In one community I lived in, the zoning board made a rule the entire town was happy with to the effect that all pets and other animals had to have access to water and shelter from rain, etc. that did not depend upon human intervention. If you had your dog outside, there had to be some type of dog water fountain and a dog house type shelter. Or the dog/cat, etc. had to have a "doggie door" to get into the house. If you had some other type of animal, it too, had to have water and shelter. So if you had a horse in your yard, you had to have some type of roofed structure it could go under to escape from rain, etc. and it had to have water to drink... Well, in writing these laws, somehow the law said that fish (ornamental fishponds) had to have shelter from the rain! So everyone's little fishpond suddenly had some type of Japanese Pagoda or other "little house" in it... Which was of course foolish because fish don't care if it is raining or not. (The following year they amended the law to exempt fish from the shelter from the rain requirement).
I suspect that the original intent of the generator law was that it could be used only from weekdays from 9 to 5 (or whatever the hours were) WHEN THERE WAS NO POWER OUTAGE because they could not restrict the use to "emergency situations only." The bottom line is that if you actually own a generator, especially a portable one, you need to run it for at least 15 minutes once a month so it will run when you need it to. And you are likely to use it for lots of other stuff as well because it is a handy thing to have! Restricting usage hours when there is no power outage would make sense because there is always some clown who gets up at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning and decides that it is the ideal time to get out the mower, the chain saw, the generator or some other noisy lawn or garden maintenance equipment and wake up the entire neighborhood. I'll bet that community is smart enough to have passed laws against those other types of equipment being used early in the morning on weekends, etc.
It sounds as if they left a clause out of the law.
As for the generator noise, yes, they can be noisy. But there is a lot you can do to mitigate the noise levels--even on a portable generator. It sort of like a car--yes, inherently they make noise--but they make a lot more noise than they have to if you drive them around with no muffler...
You can do an awful lot with your "lean to" or other generator shelter to muffle the noise--and you can still have adequate ventilation, etc. and put up some noise baffles around it so that you can stand to listen to it yourself.
I think you're talking about an upscale community--if so, then lots of people have "whole house" emergency generators and those have--or can have--lots of noise baffles, etc. So perhaps the community is just trying to insist that if people have the generators, that the do the noise mitigation as well--sort of like requiring people who have swimming pools to put fences around them so that children, elderly alzheimer's patients, etc. won't wander on to their property, fall in their pools accidentally and drown.
The bottom line is that you cannot legislate "good taste" (and people will find really awful--but legal ways around attempts to do so) and you cannot (and should not, in the end) pass laws that go against common sense and common good. What if they tried to enforce the law against running the generators at night in a household where someone was on a life-support machine??? What if a child in the house had asthma or something and turning off the generator at night made the neighborhood peaceful, but the child died because the A/C was off in his/her bedroom and the child had an attack? This law is not at all comparable to the law that says you can't keep 5 junky cars, and 3 sailboats in your front yard year in and year out.
By the way, if a car or truck is registered, has passed inspection and is insured, it is not a "junk"--no matter how much of an "eyesore" it is. And some very expensive (and new) cars are eyesores... Last weekend I saw about $75,00+ worth of rolling eyesore in NH. It was pretty amazing! For one thing, a lot of it was painted "gold" (everything that would normally be chrome--and a lot that normally would not be) and the rest was "burgundy"--but some sort of electric burgundy--and we're talking some very expensive customized Lexus... There had to be a story behind that car... (The town it was in is a very upscale town--but the epitome of quiet, unostentatious money... That car looked like a NYC drug-dealer's dream. Very out of place....)
My considered opinion is that generally it is best not to worry too much about your neighbors' taste, etc. and to not incite them with laws and covenants, etc. We have some neighbors who have removed just about every piece of greenery from their lot (they are the exception to the "heavily wooded lot" tendency around here) and covered their property, lotline to lotline with gravel! It is the ugliest thing imaginable, it has cost them huge dollars, and no one will ever buy their property without insisting that the stuff they spent thousands to dollars trucking in is dug up and trucked out again. But it is "legal" because it never occurred to the people who wrote the ordinaces that someone would be idiotic enough to do that! It's better to encourage what you DO want than it is to make rules and laws against what you don't want.... IMHO...
I do hope that they sort out the generator rules.
It saddens me to see this tendency toward wanting so many rules and laws about how other people should behave and so much effort put into homogeneity... I personally think that the rock people are idiots and that their house is ugly, but I do believe that they have the right to do that--and in the end, the property values they affect are their own property values. It's "neat" and "clean" enough--it's just ugly. But they have the right to have a terminally ugly house if they want to. I personally think the car I saw in NH is a very expensive eyesore, but hey, if someone wants to drive around in something that makes them look like a drug dealer, and makes people shake their heads at the amazingly bad taste, then that is their "right." Similarly, we have people who have some pretty amazing Christmas decorations. Hey, if they want to pay $1,000 a month to the electric company for the month of December, and they have the money to do that, I guess they can provide entertainment and laughter for the rest of us.
Variety is perhaps what America is all about--and you often see the differences when you drive around. In Bridgeport, CT there is a nicely kept side-by-side duplex house. In one front yard is the entire canon of concrete saints, and the Virgin Mary sheltered by a grotto made from a former bathtub. And in the other front yard is a large, fat Buddha, also concrete, smiling at the neighbor's display.
America--what a country!
0 likes
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HurriCat
alicia-w wrote:"piddle-widdle" games with trash cans, parked cars and paint colors is okay for the little dictators and the sheep who want to live like clones
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I for one, am glad that people in out community are supposed to abide by the rules of our covenant and park their cars in their driveways, and put away their garbage cans and paint their homes respectable colors. They also have to keep their lawns mowed and cant park their boats and motorhomes in their yards. We paid the money to live in a nice neighborhood; we have the right to expect the rules will be followed. That makes me neither a dictator or a sheep.
I'm not sure about the details of the rule, but if EVERYONE had a generator and ran it all night long, it sure would be NOISY!
I GUESS you're right - hard for me to express properly - that it's good for YOU, etc. So I do apologize for the dramatic language. It is easy to get big-mouthed when emotional. I can apologize and do
With the emergencies, though, I stand by my guns. First, it is unlikely that "everyone" will be running generators. I should also think that the noise in whatever amount is what is called tough-noogies - especially during a power outage. I refuse to accept having the sick, elderly, children and infants all in discomfort because someone disapproves of NOISE. It's after a storm, for cryin' out loud - did the storm itself obey your regs? What an outrage!
(Yeah I'm a jerk on this one)
So, some apologies and some disagreement. We CAN all get along!
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We have a portable and I can run most of the house with it except for the central air, range, water heater,dryer & oven. I have a 12000BTU window unit that I put in our master bed room and the portable handles it well. My wife has a mild form of Multiple Sclerosis and asthma. Extended periods of heat and humidity aggravate both conditions. I need to contact the city re: exemptions. FPL is now selling & installing whole house systems but they told me that they have not done one yet in Royal Palm Beach because of this permit business.
I sure would like to know that my wife would be comfortable in an extended outage with out the politics of this 10 to 5 stupidity.
I like others in my community spend a lot of time and money maintaining my property but I think this crosses the line.
I purchased a DB meter from Radio Shack and measured the noise levels of several A/C condensing units in my neighborhood and found most of them to fall in the 70 ~ 80 DB range. This is the same range of the whole house generators with residential mufflers and sound dampening housings. Yet we don't have restrictions on central A/C systems...so why generators? It's a matter of perception. Go figure.
I sure would like to know that my wife would be comfortable in an extended outage with out the politics of this 10 to 5 stupidity.
I like others in my community spend a lot of time and money maintaining my property but I think this crosses the line.
I purchased a DB meter from Radio Shack and measured the noise levels of several A/C condensing units in my neighborhood and found most of them to fall in the 70 ~ 80 DB range. This is the same range of the whole house generators with residential mufflers and sound dampening housings. Yet we don't have restrictions on central A/C systems...so why generators? It's a matter of perception. Go figure.
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