Losing Power

Jean-Paul said:
Homeowners must consider a permanent natural gas / propane generator
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Yes, we have one. Won't power the whole house but keeps the gas heaters going, refrigerator running, and a few lights on.

A few years ago we had a power outage when it was near 0 F with a fierce wind. Gas heat did not work and the house froze up, lots of damage to the plumbing. Now wouldn't be without one. It's natural gas powered and comes on automatically whenever we lose power.
 
Power was restored this morning, about an hour and 1/2 ago. I've been busy picking up leaves, small branches and bits of other people's roofing (I hope) from my yard. Part of my fence came down, too (bleh, home-ownership). Liam came to help with that this morning, and Grant brought us some firewood on Friday, I think. Good thing, too. It was getting cold in here.

We're all good. Only casualties were a few refrigerated items. Another storm alert came out today, though, but the wind isn't going to be as bad.
 
Alligatorob said:
Yes, we have one. Won't power the whole house but keeps the gas heaters going, refrigerator running, and a few lights on.

A few years ago we had a power outage when it was near 0 F with a fierce wind. Gas heat did not work and the house froze up, lots of damage to the plumbing. Now wouldn't be without one. It's natural gas powered and comes on automatically whenever we lose power.
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Calif never loses power for longer than a few days...at least, not here in the valley. But I'm gonna go look at some generators today. My DIL is going to take me to Citrus Heights to find one; apparently they're all sold-out here.

There's these new ones I want to look at that use less gas and run really quiet. They're also a lot lighter, I understand. Honestly, I think it'd be cool just to have one. Neighbors could come charge their phones and laptops and stuff.
 
So a couple days ago, when I moaned to Meesh about not being able to chat on SF, she raised an eyebrow and said, "Um...use your phone?"

I hadn't thought of that. She also said Grant could bring me a wireless phone charger. Didn't know those existed. So that was all good to learn, but the phone is way too small to use for social sites...for me, it is. But I did play some music and listened to a few lectures and weather reports, and that was really cool - broke up the boredom.
 
terry123 said:
Wondered about you, too, Murr when I saw the weather report for California. My sis lives in a rural area in La. and they have generaters.
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There's a huge area here in the Sacramento Valley that gets their electricity from a company that isn't PG&E - Pacific Gas & Electric. PG&E provides only gas here, and SMUD provides electricity, and they're super fast at replacing downed lines and blown transformers and etc.

But still, if they aren't priced too awfully dear, I'd like to have a generator.
 
Murrmurr said:
Power was restored this morning, about an hour and 1/2 ago. I've been busy picking up leaves, small branches and bits of other people's roofing (I hope) from my yard. Part of my fence came down, too (bleh, home-ownership). Liam came to help with that this morning, and Grant brought us some firewood on Friday, I think. Good thing, too. It was getting cold in here.

We're all good. Only casualties were a few refrigerated items. Another storm alert came out today, though, but the wind isn't going to be as bad.
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Thanks for the update. Looks like you have things under control for now, good news. Yeah, the house does chill down pretty quickly, so good that you have a fireplace if needed. Too bad about your fence, that's so common in high winds, but better than house damage. Good luck from now on.
 
SeaBreeze said:
Thanks for the update. Looks like you have things under control for now, good news. Yeah, the house does chill down pretty quickly, so good that you have a fireplace if needed. Too bad about your fence, that's so common in high winds, but better than house damage. Good luck from now on.
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Especially comparing this size house with our small apartment. To save heat here we kept the doors closed on some rooms and they got freezing cold. It would get too warm in our little apartment when two or more visitors were there.
 
Murrmurr said:
But I'm gonna go look at some generators today.
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Keep the receipt, it is possible you could get FEMA to pay for it. It appears you are in a federally declared disaster area, and under some conditions FEMA will pay for generators. You have to some how say it was required for some medical purpose, but in my experience that isn't a tough hurdle to pass. Here is a link to FEMA's generator policy:

https://www.fema.gov/pdf/media/factsheets/2011/rdgp.pdf

I don't know how current this is, but it never hurts to apply. Just start thinking of those electrical medical devices you have, and the things you need to keep refrigerated.
 
Alligatorob said:
Keep the receipt, it is possible you could get FEMA to pay for it. It appears you are in a federally declared disaster area, and under some conditions FEMA will pay for generators. You have to some how say it was required for some medical purpose, but in my experience that isn't a tough hurdle to pass. Here is a link to FEMA's generator policy:

https://www.fema.gov/pdf/media/factsheets/2011/rdgp.pdf

I don't know how current this is, but it never hurts to apply. Just start thinking of those electrical medical devices you have, and the things you need to keep refrigerated.
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Thanks! While I was at it, I found out our electricity provider will give me a deep discount, too. 👍
 
be ready for anything, i used to only worry for places like the philippine archipelago where we lost our seaweed farms during the super typhoon of 2021. watching the pounding that california is taking reminds me of the succession of 26 typhoons we get over a year. you guys are getting similar but back to back to back...

be safe everyone...
 
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My head pump system just shut down, and no one will be available to fix it until Monday, that is if I can get someone to come out right away. Sometimes around here it's a week. And the temperature is heading for the teens tonight. I have a wood heat backup so I'll be OK, but still it's an aggravation.
 
JustDave said:
My head pump system just shut down, and no one will be available to fix it until Monday, that is if I can get someone to come out right away. Sometimes around here it's a week. And the temperature is heading for the teens tonight. I have a wood heat backup so I'll be OK, but still it's an aggravation.
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Oh man, I've been there. When my kids were tots we lived in the lower Sierra Mts, in a place called Chester and also in neighboring Susanville for a while. We had a well and pump and the coldest winter on record in Chester one year. I spent an awful lot of time making snow-water on the woodstove for 5 or 6 days. And I came to really appreciate outhouses.
 
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Power is back, and that's nice but that 4 hr nap was awesome!

Power was gone from about 5pm to 11:30pm. We were just walking out the door to make a run to Target, but it's within 2 miles so we just came back in and lit the lanterns.
 
multimodAL said:
be ready for anything, i used to only worry for places like the philippine archipelago where we lost our seaweed farms during the super typhoon of 2021. watching the pounding that california is taking reminds me of the succession of 26 typhoons we get over a year. you guys are getting similar but back to back to back...

be safe everyone...
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They're on high alert for massive landslides down south. My daughter and her daughter's family live in one of the zones that's most concerning.

Like Calif doesn't have enough problems.

I lived in Thailand for several months a dozen or so years ago. Monsoons daily, almost always starting at about 2:30 and lasted a couple hours or so. They were actually quite beautiful sometimes.
 
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terry123 said:
We had advance notice here at the complex that the power would be out for 3 hours for my half of the complex. At least i knew it was coming so I took a much needed nap.
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This was a total surprise, so maybe we missed the warning (cuz we don't watch regular TV) or maybe it was caused by an accident or a fallen tree or something.
 
Does your power company post a map of the areas that have lost power? When we lose it, the map shows which areas have power so we can drive to another area for some things we might need. That’s if we can get our garage door open.
 
Jules said:
Does your power company post a map of the areas that have lost power? When we lose it, the map shows which areas have power so we can drive to another area for some things we might need. That’s if we can get our garage door open.
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They do. It's on their website. And when the power is out I can only get their website on my phone, and it's too tiny to bother.

Our power company sends me texts. They name the areas where there's no power, and give an estimated repair time, and they send updates. They'll even tell you if it's gonna take longer than they thought. And if it's gonna take days they send a list of your nearest warming station and evac centers and all that.
 
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