how would you cope with a powercut?

Question

we lost our electricity supply along our street on weds eve, it was off by the time i got home from work and didn't come back on til midday on thurs!! I had such a nighmare in trying to cope with it (good job i wasn't born before electricity and our now general day to day appliances came along!!!!!!).

how do you cope in this sort of situation??

Answer 1

I live in a very rural area, actually among an Old Order Amish Community. If the power goes out, I can't look out and see if anybody else has power, or if it's just me...

I have a gas heater (LP) that will heat most of the house without a fan.

My husband has a generator welder...the Onan generator will carry a 220. We'd use it intermittently for a short term.

If it were a long term situation, I could easily install a woodstove for heat and cooking. You would be amazed at the ingenuity my neighbors display.

In the summer, they have a toasty warm solar shower. It's a small building with a solid roof... they fill large drums with cold water (via a hose, pumped by wind power) which are kept on the roof. A shower head comes down from the drum with a shut off valve. The sun heats the water all day and they take a nice toasty shower. Large family? Need more drums!

They cut ice from the ponds every winter and store them in extremely well insulated "ice houses." It lasts all summer, well into the fall with no electricity.

The spring house, constructed from either solid limestone or insulated concrete blocks, has a pool of sorts. Water is piped in from the wind powered pump, it comes in one side from the bottom and drains off the top of the opposite side. The run off is used to water stock and irrigate the garden.

So now here's the big question for a person like me who is converting to as simple a life as possible, inspired by my neighbors. No, I don't want to give up my curling iron and replace it with foam rollers. I like my microwave and love the internet. I'm not likely to give these conveniences up any time soon...but I am not so dependent upon them that my life would be traumatic without them, long or short term. Would it be a huge change? Sure. Would I survive quite happily? Absolutely.

Answer 2

We still have an open fire place so we can keep warm. Cooking is no problem as we have a gas hob. For lighting, we have a camping (butane) lantern which is pretty good plus a few torches and candles. We keep a battery radio and a battery powered guitar amplifier .... no reason to stop annoying the neighbours just because the power is off (only joking, honestly!). Power cuts while using the computer caused problems once or twice so I bought a couple of uninterruptable power supplies. Unfortunately, they are even less reliable than the electricty supply. The freezer is fine for a while as long as we don't open the door. The really bad aspect of power cuts is the realisation of the extent to which we have become dependent on electrical appliances, though perhaps it is good to be reminded every so often.

Answer 3

By singing not so polite dities about our wonderful and glorious government owned monopoly power provider. Blackouts and brown outs (very low voltage not enough to turn electric motors but enought to burn them out) are a regular feature of life in this place.
In the office we scream shout abuse the the power company and go outside to start up the standby gen set.

At home we do more swearing and shouting and reach for the candles, kerosene lamps (The pressure ones are great), torches (LED ones are good as you don't have to buy batteries as often.) (Rechargeables are good too.) If you can get hold of a gas LPG mantle lamp they are great, trouble is here in the tropics it gets bloody hot with all these heat driven light sources. Make sure that we have a gas stove, kero or firewood would do.

Keep the fridge and freezer firmly closed to keep food cool as long as possible.

A BBQ using gas or firewood is a great idea for cooking.

Go to bed early.

These are things we do often, sometimes 3 times a a day, sometimes 3-4 days at a time. (Its only 3:40pm and already had 2 blackouts today!)

In your situation another much more fum optioon would be to get dressed and collect the family (if you have one) pick up the credit card and go off to the nicest resturant, or pub whatever takes your fancy, have a nice meal and bottle of wine/or other flavour and when you get home you will be in a good mood and sufficiently jolly not to let it stress you.

Answer 4

We have a lot of power cuts in the area where I live. The very young think it's exciting, the young adults panic, and the older generation, me included, just get on and cope with it.

I always keep candles, matches and a torch where I can find them easily in the dark.

There's always something that can be eaten cold, even if it's bread, cheese, tinned fish or cereal, and water to drink.

I now have a camping stove for use in emergencies - I only have electricity for cooking.

If it's daylight, I do something like reading, needlework, gardening, tidying.

If it's dark I take advantage of a bit of peace and quiet, (except for the sound of younger neighbours panicking) and relax, which is even nicer with an aromatherapy candle or burner.

It's handy to have at least one reliable battery or wind up alarm clock.

Do make sure candles are used safely.

Answer 5

We have a gas cooker so the tea supply does not run out, In North Cornwall power cuts used to be very common and I used to live right out in the sticks where we had one at least every month.
We have torches and basically just get on with life the only thing we worry about is the food in the freezer.
We have a battery powered T.V and radios and if the cut goes on too long we dig out the gererator just to keep the freezer working.
One bit of advice though is try not to use candles.

Answer 6

Dealing with electricity outages means you need to be prepared. In rural areas, it is common to have trees on wires and loss of electric.
Keep fresh batteries in all flashlights, keep some bottled water available, if possible, have a wood stove for heat if during colder months, have a gas stove top so you can cook, buy some lanterns and keep in a handy spot. Also, with portable tel. phones, they do not work with out electric so always keep a traditional phone plugged into a jack. Know the tel. no. of your electricial supplier so you can report outage immediately and be on top of the list.

Living in the country, we have been through days with no electric and have learned to always be ready...just in case.

If you have the funds, you can buy a small generator for about 500 dollars and it will have plug you can run an extension cord for your refrigerator and a couple of lamps.

Most difficult is water to flush toilets...if you have a well. If you have an outside water source such as a pond, you can get a pail of water to use for that purpose.

If there is weather forcasted that you expect severe thunderstorms or heave tree icing in winter, fill your bath tub with water.

other wise, just grin and bear it...nothing you can do !

Answer 7

Every town with in a 20 mile radius of my home lost power due to an ice storm. My granddaughter was only 3 days old and living with me. You can imagine my fear of not being able to keep her warm. I found a company that supplies construction companies with equipment. From them, I purchased a gas Dewalt generator with a Honda engine. It is mounted on a two wheel cart so it can be easily moved where ever you need it. The cost was $1,800. It is worth every penny. It can run my subpump, all appliances, and even the dryer. It is easily stored in my building when not in use. The generator runs about 8 hours on 5 gallons of gas.

Answer 8

I use candles and a fire. We have a cabin in the woods with no utilities, so it would be like that, and there were frequent powercuts during the oil crisis, so i'm somewhat used to it, though it is irritating.

Answer 9

It's always nice to have some camping gear, pack stove, lanterns, candles, flashlights. Couple ice chests so you can save the perishables in your frig. when that last hurricane (non katrina)went thru by the time the electric came on most everybody in this neck of the woods had scraped up an electric generator of some kind if only big enough to run the frig and a fan.

Answer 10

I would make sure I had a candle heater -- then at least I would have light and a little heat. The candle heater is a steel and ceramic radiator that gets its power from a jar candle. It converts the thermal energy of a candle into dry radiant space heat and still supplies light. I wouldn't want to live with out one.