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Another storm, another power outage — 34 Comments

  1. My two-year residence in New England taught me that the power went out whenever there was a storm. Here in central NC, the storm passed east of us in the early morning hours Tuesday, and we had no trouble other than a few small branches down.

  2. A tip I read some time ago for people on going vacation but it should work with an impending power outage, too. Take a small cup (A Dixie Cup? or plastic cup) and fill it about 3/4s full of water. Put it in the freezer. When frozen lay a quarter on top of the ice in the cup (leaving the cup in the freezer, of course). When you return from vacation (or open the freezer after the power outage) if the quarter is still on top all should be good. If the quarter is now at the bottom of the cup, the ice has melted and re-frozen and the food should probably be discarded.

  3. Here in CT 700k+ without power. Best estimate for us is now Sunday. This one comes in second to the Halloween snow storm and ahead of hurricane Irene. Living on our generator for the refrigerator and well.

    Hopefully by this time next year we’ll be moving to Jacksonville area. In my view Connecticut truly sucks…terrible weather with multi day power outages, ridiculous taxes. By moving to FL, not only avoid snow, etc. I calculated we’ll save about $2k a month in taxes and expenses. And we’ll be 2 hours from one daughter, and 4 hours from the other.

  4. physicsguy:

    Sounds like an easy decision. Especially the part where you’re near your children.

  5. Three words: battery operated fan. You’d be amazed the difference it makes on a hot sticky night. Mine is a box fan, maybe 10 or 11 inches square, that I can also plug in. Cheap.

  6. “Here in CT 700k+ without power.”

    It was only a 4-hour outage in my part of CT, but that was bad enough. And I would agree that CT sucks, but unfortunately I’m in no position to move for the time being.

  7. PA Cat, You’re lucky. I’m in Lebanon, very rural so we’re always last on Neversource’s list. 🙂 Though my relatives in Wethersfield are out and have been since yesterday afternoon. That surprises me as they usually get the urban areas going first.

  8. physicsguy:
    Here in CT 700k+ without power. Best estimate for us is now Sunday. This one comes in second to the Halloween snow storm and ahead of hurricane Irene.

    I am CT-born-and-raised, but left CT before those storms. The Ice Storm Of 1973 is what I remember.

    The damage was so severe that one-third of the state was without power, during cold weather, at the height of the Christmas shopping season. Many people had no electricity for several days, and some were without power for a week as utility crews worked non-stop to restring wires.

    I don’t remember how may days we were without electricity- somewhere between 3-7 days. The furnace didn’t work because it needed electricity to start the ignition. Our fireplace became the center of the house. IIRC, inside temperature got into the mid 40s, which wasn’t that bad, as it wasn’t that different from the houses’s normal nighttime temperature. (Though they said nothing about it at the time, visiting cousins brought up , decades later, the COLD temperatures of our house. )We were fortunate that the temperature outside wasn’t bad – IIRC daily highs in 40s after the storm.

    We had a primitive gas stove that didn’t operate with an ignition, but with a permanent pilot light, so we could cook. We provided some meals for friends who had an electric stove.

    An octogenarian family friend recently wrote a memoir about her parents and her childhood in CT. She was a small child when the Hurricane of 1938 hit. As a result of the hurricane, their property had quite a few felled trees. Her father, in “if you have lemons..” mode, built a log cabin from the felled trees. He installed radiant heat in the concrete floor-at the time rather innovative. Unfortunately, the iron pipes corroded some years later. In researching the Hurricane, she found out that during the storm, hurricane gales resulted in salt damage 40-50 miles inland. That was one powerful storm!

  9. Neo

    It’s somewhat easier to keep warm without heat than to keep cool without AC, a thought that occurred to me rather forcibly last night when I woke up sweaty and uncomfortable and had difficulty going back to sleep

    I agree that if the night temperature gets a lot higher than what you are accustomed to, it can be hard to sleep. I do not use AC in Texas and know that a big temperature rise in the spring can make it harder to sleep. Though once my body is accustomed to summer heat, I have no problem sleeping at 84 degrees or cooler.

    If you went days without heat in the north, and the indoor temperature dropped to the 40s- my recollection of a NE power outage around Christmastime- you might think differently. Though having done so, I can testify that use of a good sleeping bag will result in a good night’s sleep when the temperature is freezing. My father told me that growing up in the Midwest, he and his sister slept outside on the porch with a warmed-up brick to keep the feet warm.

    A cousin in TX phrased the difference this way: “It’s easier to wipe sweat off your brow than to wipe icicles off.” A hundred degrees in the shade is tolerable. Ten degrees, not so tolerable.

  10. Gringo:

    I once went for 5 days without power in December and the temperature went to minus 5 Fahrenheit. Inside, it wasn’t quite that cold, but it was very much colder the 40 degrees. I had no trouble whatsoever sleeping. Lots of blankets. And during the day I wore many many layers.

  11. I bought a bunch of plug-in emergency lights a while back, put them in the hallways and bedrooms, then promptly forgot we had them. Then, a couple months ago, the power went out, and the little emergency lights went on. They were great!

    The ones we have unplug and become flashlights. They wouldn’t work if you were out of power for hours on end, but they supposedly work for about 4 hours.

    I liked them so much I got some more of them and now have them in most rooms in the house. These are the ones I got:

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003SVJED2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

  12. First World Problems: An interesting ironic expression originally coined and used by those in the First World who wish to destroy the First World.

    But will the collapse look like The Machine Stops or Archaeofuturism II? 🙂

    Whenever the power goes out, the place to be is firmly ensconced inside whatever type of housing architecture is traditional to the place one inhabits. Or colonial architecture in some parts of the world.

    Too much tropical humidity might turn one into Bull Connor or Blanche DuBois, but won’t kill so easily. Winter without heating scares the crap out of me.

  13. When we lived in northeastern MA the power was more likely to go out from a storm in the Summer than the Winter. We had a backup generator but it was not wired for, and not powerful enough, to run the house A/C. It did backup the heat.

    I can get by with a good fan and get a good night’s sleep. My lovely wife, not so much. We would sleep separately on those hot summer nights when the A/C was out.

  14. I suffered nothing than a few minutes outage in Connecticut.

    Plus the ironical effect of having to water my garden today because the wind dried things out more than the rain wet them.

  15. A nod to Zaphod and Physicsguy. It goes without saying that neo always gets pride of place with beautifully expressed and thoughtful observations.

    I am a transplanted midwesterner who has lived in the Northeast for most of my adult life, Connecticut in particular for the last decade. There is much to love about the state’s people and places. The politicians, not so much.

    I am all for self reliance but losing power biennially for days on end is ridiculous. At some point, if first world problems recur frequently enough, they compound and result in the creation of third world conditions.

  16. Ha ha. I start to read your post and I realize it’s really dark outside. I look at the house – completely dark. I look to the neighbors. Also dark. I head for my email – yep – power outage notification. They say 2 hours. The battery operated fan and the quarter – both are great ideas.

  17. “We had a primitive gas stove that didn’t operate with an ignition, but with a permanent pilot light, so we could cook. ” – Gringo

    We had an outage in the winter of 2018-2019, no heat overnight because the furnace is gas but the fan is electric.
    So, this fall, we installed a wall furnace with a pilot light in the central room of the house; it won’t heat the whole place, but we have air mattresses and sleeping bags.

  18. “Whenever the power goes out, the place to be is firmly ensconced inside whatever type of housing architecture is traditional to the place one inhabits.” – Zaphod

    This.
    Once air conditioning and whole-house heating were invented, everybody started building the styles suitable for the north-east climate, regardless of the local conditions.
    We had cousins who lived in an old house in Texas with 10-foot ceilings and a “dog-run” down the center hallway.
    Never needed AC, but got a tech (-ch- as in church) cold in the winter away from the fireplaces.

  19. I live w/o AC in temps that can reach 110 and humidity 90+%. I’m still alive. You adapt. Stop your whining. Sissies.

  20. I like to turn the heat on when the temps hit 110. That’s why I’m complaining.

  21. Must be great to have modern houses, designed to provide all the comforts of home, with running water on demand, comfortbly warm first floor bedrooms, tolerably cool living room in heat/humidity that would otherwise make the real estate unsuitable of habitation, light on demand at the flip of a switch, …..until the power goes out.
    I live in a house designed and built before residential electricity/gas/plumbing exhisted, and was all added in stages, not always delicately, but always with
    “durable” technology…heavy plumbing fittings, heavy wire, heavy fixtures,
    The BIG flaw is the abandonment of the original well, and the elimination of
    the outhouse, (now illegal)
    That double failsafe water supply is useless when the pipes freeze, toilets freeze, and they ALL begin to crack open.
    Too hot? The foot thick granite foundation cellar remains tolerable to sleep (or otherwise hide), just like when it was the nice “cool, dark, place to keep banked foodstuffs.

  22. I really hate to suggest this, but: “A small generator.”

    Emphasis on “small.” I’ve lived through several hurricanes, the worst killing power for 6 days, others a day or two, plus the regular thunderstorm events; a small, portable ultra-quiet, RV-friendly type generator (3000 watts) saved the day, but I could have gotten by just as easily with a 2200 watt one. It kept the fridge and a couple fans running daytime, powered a small (again, emphasis on “small”) window AC at night so one small bedroom was cool enough to be comfortable.

    It does require some kind of fuel, which must be dealt with, and there are no magic bullets for which fuel is best. (tip: check out propane, which while not at all without some issues, offers additional advantages, such as providing for a stove not enslaved to the electrical grid).

    RE: Winter heat. When I moved I upgraded the older existing heat pump to a newer, more efficient one AND added a natural gas furnace, making the house “dual fuel” (having ready access to NG was a factor in the purchase of this particular house, but propane also works, with the advantage of having independent control of your heating source). Now, when temps drop enough that everyone else’s heat pumps start using their built-in very expensive “backup” electric resistance heat my heat pump shuts off and the system uses the gas furnace. Much cheaper, and the switchover point is controlled, by me, at the thermostat, plus I always have the option of manually switching to “aux heat” at the thermostat and excising need for the heat pump entirely. I’d need about 20,000 watts of 240 volt generator to run my heat pump even without using the backup resistance heat but only 875 watts of 120 volt to run the fan in my gas furnace (look up “locked rotor current,” aka “startup draw.”). That’s a rather large difference in initial and operating cost. With my arrangement I can power only 120 volt equipment, and how much is limited by generator capacity, but refrigerators, ceiling fans, portable fans, etc. are all 120 volt and fans consume only very few watts.

    Tip: engage a licensed, well-experienced and competent, electrician (someone very familiar with incorporating backup generator use into houses is who you want because it will involve not just a transfer switch but also wiring changes inside the house) for the wiring changes necessary to incorporate easier generator use; you can get away with extension cords – we did that in Florida – but a small (there’s that word again) transfer switch, as required by building codes, and moving some wiring connections around a bit makes it so much simpler and safer.

    Tip: Re-read what “Aesopfan” wrote above. The design of your house is important, and everyone wants, and is willing to pay for, fancy bathrooms, marble countertops and exqusite chandeliers but won’t spend a dime on extra insulation, controlling air infiltration, window efficiency or the basic design of the house to work better within its regional climate.

  23. Having a small, easy-to-start generator can be a lifesaver if there’s someone with medical devices. But I’d say always get a little more capacity than one “needs.” And, test it.

    If you’re not really handy, Lowe’s or The Home Depot can install a Generac with transfer switch which will use either propane or natural gas, and it will come on automatically when power fails. It also tests itself weekly. Budget about $10,000, but it will likely be less. It’s also a heck of a selling feature.

  24. What about just buying a Prius? You have a car, a generator – and you can take it with you if you move to a new house.

  25. Update. Still without power and town officials saying MAYBE next week. Neversource is clearing roads of wires but saying they’re not trying any restoration….nice of them.

    We managed to buy gas and propane in Willimantic as the town has power but the place was jammed. Heard later in the day that fights were breaking out at gas stations there as the stations were running out. What a wonderful place to live.

  26. We had pretty frequent power outages…and our street was apparently last priority for restoration of service. Finally got a very nice natural-gas-powered generator.

    This somehow caused the power company—maybe through quantum entanglement, or maybe just through magic–to embark on a regular program of tree-pruning, with the result that power outages have become a lot less frequent.

  27. “What about just buying a Prius?” Hold out for one of those new Ford F-150s with the onboard generator. You can power the house and use it to haul away storm debris as well.

    After the great ice storm here, when I was at home alone without power for six days, we got a gasoline-powered generator. We just replaced it with one that runs on those small propane tanks we use for the grill.

  28. That looks fabulous. Yes I want one. What a great truck. Priced at $28,000 + Thanks!

  29. Funny thing. This morn around 9:30am our power went out. A beautiful day, no clouds, max temp hit 82Farenheit according to my wireless outdoor thermometer.

    On my walk I went by 3 ComEd trucks. Turns out they were doing ‘maintenance’ and tree trimming. Total outage time a little over five hours.

    Thankfully just a tiny inconvenience today.

    Plus it was a good test of my UPS. I had enough time to properly shut down the PC and cable modem/wifi boxen.

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