Preparing for Power Outages?

I experienced the same thing -- probably not the same storm though! In any case, living without power for 48 hours is really quite miserable.

I just got up early, went to the office and shaved and showered there. Worked late, ate out and went home to sleep.

Home really was nothing more than a place to sleep.

Now that I work at home and have three kids, it would suck very much indeed!

There's a wealth of info on this site and other 'preparedness' and 'survival' sites (the later being a bit hardcore but having some useful tips). Check

I like the suggestions about flashlights and would add one more along that vein. Keep one under your bed at easy reach. We started keeping camping lanterns (use the big 1.5v battery) under every bed in the house. The kids liked the security and we didn't mind that they played with them occassionally. That's the best time to learn that the battery is getting weak. If your water comes from a well it's not an inconvenience to keep water in used juice jugs and 2 liter bottles in the crawl space or under the beds. Use an eyedropper-full of water per gallon of water to maintain purity. Avoid plastic milk jugs. I have had several split on the seam and drain into the crawl space. Imagine if that happened under your bed. Buy a little more of your usually consumed canned foods than you need each week, date them on top and rotate them - oldest to the front are the first used. That way you at least have 'something' to eat if the roads become impassable for a while. Read up on the proper way to install a generator and a Gen-Set (I think that's one of the names) so that you don't accidentally electrocute a lineman with backfeed amperage. OK, I'll shut up. Sorry 'bout all that - got a bit carried away.

Firewood for heat. Also have a "Big Buddy" propane heater. Generator to keep the fridge cold, a light or two, and tv or radio Bottled water for drinking Lake water for flushing toilet.

Where I live, we have 4 hour outages nearly every year. Not long enough to lose food in the freezer, but long enough to be annoying, so I installed a 15 KVA diesel generator, complete with automatic transfer switch, which runs off the same #2 fuel oil that the "conventional" heating system runs on. The longest that I had to be on backup power was 24 hours. In theory, I could run off the generator for a month before needing more fuel delivered.

Before I had the generator, I would use the old "spring box" which was the water supply for the place before the deep well was installed for a water backup. You have to boil the spring box water before drinking, but it's OK as it is for flushing toilets and the like.

Yes it does. We live in a mobile home park, "God's Waitingroom"

This is exactly what NJ did last year to Save JCP&L money.

Sissy, try 6 months on a homestead in Willow, AK. with 2 kids, 8 & 3.

Another than having a flashlight, nothing. If I lost power for that long, I would simply read by flashlight if I was stuck at home, or if I could go out, I would just go to my parents' house, my office at work, or visit with friends. Heating where I live is by oil, so I don't need power to have my heat, and even if I did, I would just go sleep at my parents' house in their guest room.

Of course, everyone's situation is different.

The message from Jonathan Grobe contains these words:

We're always prepared for it; every winter we can be sure there will be longer outages than that. The last one at New Year, lasted longer than two days. Lots of trees and lines down in 90-100 mph gales, and the engineers couldn't safely start repairs until the wind dropped. We were the last house on the island to get reconnected. A few years back, the entire island had an outage of no power for nearly two weeks.

Because that bad storm was forecast, before it started I'd run the laundry through the machine, made sure we had spare radio and torch batteries, fitted fresh candles into their holders, and fetched the gas camp stoves into the kitchen. If we get blacked out by surprise, all those are always kept in the same place so we can find them in pitch dark. I have oil lamps too but seldom bother with those. We normally use those radio phones which don't work in a power cut, but the old plug-in one does so I got that out and plugged it in.

We always keep a good store of supplies in the pantry. Knowing we wouldn't want to open the freezer I got out some frozen bread and home-cooked food , and turned it down to max cold.. Last year we replaced an elderly fridge/freezer with an A-rated high efficiency model. With the power off, and the door left shut, it keeps food frozen solid more than twice as long as the old one did. We're at the same latitude as Moscow, and Jan in Alaska, but warmed by the Gulf stream . Even without central heating, in midwinter the indoor temp of this well-insulated high solar gain house doesn't drop below 55 F. We put on extra fleeces and were warm enough.In January it gets dark by 5pm , we lit candles, played games, listened to the radio. In our kitchen we have stainless steel splashbacks on the walls above the worksurfaces. Great candle-reflectors; so just four candles makes the night-time kitchen bright enough to cook and wash dishes.

At our previous place, the water supply was pumped so a long outage meant no water. If we had notice, we filled the bath, a barrel and saucepans, which gave a week of drinking and cooking water. For washing and flushing lavs, we fetched buckets from several outdoor roof-collection barrels, the stream in the garden, or if those ran dry, the river 50 yards away. At this place, gravity pressure makes sure the water still works during power cuts, what a luxury :-)

Janet.

Shawn Hirn wrote in news:srhi-C85B3E.18333625022007 @newsgroups.comcast.net:

How does the heat get out of the furnace, an oil powered fan?

The first thing to do is to decide what you need to have (light, heat, refrigerator, television, airconditioning...) and what you are prepared to pay for it.

had no electricity for 22 hours. I

I did same. Generator and panel have been in place one year and used

Frank

Oh, the first 48 hours is almost (and, in some respects, literally) a picnic.

It's the second and the start of the THIRD 48 hours when it beings to get "old."

That's what happened to us in the "Northern Neck" of VA when Isabel hit the fan.

We get 4-6 hour outages every time there are high winds or significant snow. Ice storms can put out "off the grid" for a day.

Unfortunately, our generator is just about impossible to start when it's below 32F.

And yes, we need electricity for our water and heat. We have "back up" LPG heaters. Next on the "wish list" is a kerosene heater that will also provide some light.

AND we found out that hard way that LPG comes in a "winter mix" and a "summer mix." The difference is that the "summer mix" only provides enough gas pressure to make the regulator work when the tank is over 70F.

NB: LPG isn't necessarily pure propane. It's often a mixture of propane and butane and "whatever."

What type of heater that does not need power?

I'm not entirely sure how I'd do an extended outage. The one I had in Seattle this year was tiny compared to my co-workers many of whom were out for 5+ days. There were lots of people sleeping at work, taking showers at the workplace and sending the wife and kids to go see grandma. If I remember right the entire town of Issaquah was out for 3 or 4 days and that town has about 30,000 people.

I've got warm coats, a fireplace, gas heat. So while the furnace might not work as advertised, I'd still have hot water, a source of warmth, and if I needed to keep something cool I'd just put it outside (in the winter of course).

I'm willing to sleep at your parents' house. What are the odds you and I will have power failures on the same day?

BTW, my parents too kept a flash light and a spare set of batteries. Good for blown fuses and looking in corners that don't get any light, or outside at night.

I keep plenty of canned (and frozen) food in the house because I like to have a variety available at meal time.

For 20 years I kept powdered condensed milk for emergencies, but there's never been a time I couldn't get to the store within 2 days, which is often as I go anyhow. So I tried the milk and it was terrible, and I don't think it was because it was 20 years old. Canned condensed milke might be better. My mother used that for custards or something.

The last one we had that long here was when it was really cold (icy out). I was glad to have a gas water heater.

BTW, a corded phone helped too (that was not out).

When there is a storm coming that makes me think we may lose power for a while, I fill the bathtub with water (so that I have water to put in a bucket and pour down the toilet -- no electricity means no well pump), I have bottled water for drinking (again, the well pump), we have a regular stock of foods that don't need to be cooked. We also have candles and flashlights, a charged/battery backup weather radio, an alternate heat source (a propane fired fireplace that requires no electricity), a 'normal' wallphone that does not require electricity, a full tank of gas in the car. And if the power goes out, noone is to open the fridge.

I joined a free, easy to use Yahoo! group and learned a lot.

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